I'm Surrounded . . . Again . . .

When Teri and I moved from our previous home in Spanaway, I had a pretty sweet home theater set up. It wasn't my dream system and there were a few tweaks I could have made, but it worked. Since we've been in the new home, one of the compromises I made was to not have a dedicated home theater room. I was simply just going to make the family room work. Well, we've been there nearly two years and for two years, I've been without my surround sound speakers. NO MORE! Last Wednesday, my good friend and next door neighbor, Ken and I did a litte home improvement project. We ran both our surround sound speaker wires. His in his living room and mine in my family room.

Teri is not at all happy with me. (Sorry honey!) But I did warn her that one of the speakers would not be ideal. You see behind the couch where the speakers would reside is a huge couple of windows. So it's impossible to mount the speakers on the wall behind. AND the ceilings downstairs are 9 feet tall and mounting the speakers directly overhead is not ideal either. So the only other choice was to put them on stands at the back of the room. Now Ken and I found some really cool Leviton floor plates to run the speaker wires up and through using Leviton's quick port connectors. So the floor installation is very neat and clean. When we move out, there are little brass caps that screw into the plates as well so they just look like a floor mounted outlet.

The stands I bought are 30" Plateau ST series with Cherry bases (to match our furniture) and black poles. As speaker stands go, they are pretty nice. They are fillable with lead shot (to keep them upright when a 60 pound lab slams into them) for sound dampening and include carpet spikes for sound isolation. The right speaker sits behind our overstuffed chair in a corner and backed up to the dark green wall, you barely notice it. However, the left speaker is kind of out in the open and I freely admit it's not nearly as pretty as having nothing there. IMHO, putting a nice plant next to it, or something to disguise it, would make it look better. I know it'll never completely disappear, but you work with what you have right?

So anyway, now that I have them hooked up, I calibrated the speakers using the microphone included with my new receiver, the Denon 4308ci. After setting everything up, I popped in the Star Wars Episode I disc, turned the volume up to +4.0dB and sat in the ideal listening position. Hitting play on the disc brings you to the THX sound where the planet explodes amidst thunder, lightning and rain. It's AWESOME! My 10+ year old Klipsch speakers still perform well and I won't be replacing them anytime soon.

Saturday night, I ordered 3:10 from Yuma in HD on OnDemand and watched it. Until Teri told me to turn it down, it sounded GREAT! Last night I sat down to play Call of Duty 4 on Xbox 360. Between the Mitsubishi 57" rendering the action at 1080i and my surround sound setup, I would have sworn I was in the midst of a shootout in Bagdhad. It was incredible!

Today, I have a transaction closing in which I get a $500.00 best buy gift card. I'm going to use it to buy a new Blu-Ray DVD player. I had originally thought I'd get a PS3 to handle the BD duties, but after reading . . . and reading, then reading some more, I think I'm inclined to wait for the new Panasonic DMP-BD50 to come out. Everything I can find says it should be out in early April. Over on AVSForum, the reviews of the DMP-BD30 (the predecessor to the BD50) rate BD picture quality as superb although upconverting SD discs is less than ideal. I have the Xbox 360 that can play my SD discs just fine, so I'm not as concerned about that. However, the BD50 is a full 2.0 spec BD player and streams all the latest codecs (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA) which the Denon is happy as a clam to decode. Expected price is around $500. About $100 more than the PS3 and it's not a gaming system. However, the PS3 would have required some modifications to work with my Pronto remote and by most accounts, the picture quality isn't quite there compared to a dedicated BD player.

Now to figure out which will be the first BD disc to buy to watch in full on 1080p resolution . . . decisions, decisions.

Thanks Teri for being such a sport with the speaker. We'll figure out a workable solution. And you have to admit, it sounds AWESOME! :-)

Bicycle . . .

So I think by far my weakest link for our indoor triathlon next month is the exercise cycle. There is just a mental break I hit when I'm on that thing. It's not comfy, I hurt, and I feel like a sloth on it. So I know in the next few weeks, I REALLY need to have a cycling emphasis during my workouts. Probably doing 2 cycling to every 1 run or swim workout. This morning was a cycling workout. Normally I get on and do 6.2 or 12.4 miles. 12.4 (20K) is the distance for the tri and I hate the machine so much that as soon as I see 12.4 on the distance, I hop off.

This morning though I decided I was going to do an hour. I was going to try to maintain 90 - 100 RPM for the entire hour. After about .75 miles I decided I needed to raise the seat. So I hit the pause button and raised my seat. I couldn't figure out how to restart, so I just started over. Every 6 minutes the readout says XX% Complete! I set the right readout to show RPM and not distance and the left readout was showing time elapsed. I set the main readout to scroll between stats, calories burned, average heart rate, watts, etc. I just started and kept pedaling. The issue I have with the bike is that my ass eventually goes numb. So 4 or 5 times I had to stand up and let the blood back into my butt. I hit 12.4 miles at just over 41 minutes. Not a record by any stretch of the imagination, but pretty average for me as of late. I just kept pedaling. At the end of an hour, I had gone exactly 18.0 miles. More importantly though, I pushed through my mental block of "I hate this friggin machine" and just kept going.

Hopefully, if I can continue to do hour workouts on it for the next couple of weeks, the 12.4 during the Tri will feel like nothing. Hopefully.

A Weird Thing Happened to Me On the Way to the Triathlon . . .

OK, so you know I've been talking about this indoor triathlon that my boyz and I are going to do next month. I've been training (although not very hard for the last month) for it. So have my boyz.

(OK, Side note to Scott and Erick - Guys I want you to know that I'm really proud of you for the progress you've made. Scott, you especially. From going from wondering if you could even complete it, to thinking you could do it in 4.5 hours to FINISHING it on Saturday in just over 2, AWESOME, AWESOME achievement!)

Scott and Erick have been training together at LA Fitness in Tacoma. Steve and Brandon have been training together at the LA Fitness in Redondo. I've been training at the YMCA in Puyallup. I really wanted this to be a challenge for all of us. And deep down, I know it has been a challenge. Setting a goal, especially one to do 15 +/- miles over 3 events in one day, and achieving it is no easy feat. But I guess that I wanted there to be some mystery as to the outcome on April 20th. A couple weeks ago, Erick reported that he had finished the whole thing (20K bike, 3K run, and 1K swim) in 1:45. On Saturday at Scott's, Scott revealed to me that he had completed it that afternoon in 2:19 and Erick was down to 1:32. While really proud of them, I was pretty pissed at the same time. OK, maybe not pissed, disappointed? To me it was like sneaking into the family room a week before Christmas and ever so slowly undoing the tape on packages revealing your treasure, slowly redoing it all and then trying to act surprised Christmas morning. It just doesn't work.

So today Teri said "You really don't seem like you care about this Triathlon anymore, what's up?" I replied "I don't. It's not a challenge anymore. Now it's just going to be a normal workout for a couple of the guys." And it's true. I really don't care. The mystery is gone. It's not like a real Tri where someone could crash on the bike or have a flat. We're doing it on exercise machines and in a pool. And since at least two of the five participants have already done it once or more, the mystery is gone for me. I got all excited about doing shirts and had even planned a little awards ceremony for our May meeting with medals and everything, but now all the excitement and joy is gone for me. (yes, I'm whining) I wanted to really celebrate and embrace our "Big" accomplishment. But now it seems neither big, nor an accomplishment. And to complete the whine . . . working out alone sucks @$$.

C'est la vie . . . there's always Ocean Shores in July.

Davie - Here's the Tangent . . .

In an e-mail to a good friend yesterday I had a thought and meant to expand on it in that e-mail, but forgot, so I'm expanding here. Yesterday I was responding to Davie in an ongoing thread we've been having about spirituality (OK, you can get up off the floor now) and one of the things I mentioned was my church youth group. It occurred to me during that e-mail that I was kind of the de-facto leader of our youth group. Everyone kind of looked at me for direction. It triggered a chain reaction in my mind. Please note, this post is not to "toot my own horn" rather I noticed a pattern in my life yesterday and I'm wondering what it will be like if I actually embrace it and revel in it.

Before I get started, I want to mention that I've always admired my dad (OK Dad, you can get up off the floor now) and I don't think I've ever said that really TO him before. But working for the Post Office for an ungodly amount of years, he was a manager fairly early in his career. He went from management to being a Station manager to being a full fledged postmaster of Ocean Shores before he finally retired. I've always admired that leadership quality in him. Other than a couple of rotten apples towards the end, everyone I ever spoke to about my dad enjoyed working with him and for him. I really admired that quality about him and always thought I didn't have much of that in ME.

That view is about to change:

• In High School, I was voted president of our explorer post for search and rescue. I wasn't one of the older kids, or even one of the grizzled veterans, but for whatever reason, I got along with everyone and was voted in.
• At church, as I mentioned, I was looked to as the de-facto leader of the youth group. Yes we had a youth pastor that was the real leader, but I think if you polled the people in the group, I was kind of the one to set the direction.
• In DaBoyz group, I'd say Steve and I are maybe looked to a little more for inspiration than the others. For example, I started this whole indoor triathlon deal and it's been awesome to see the boyz really run (and bike and swim) with it. (Please no flames, again I'm not trying to toot my own horn here boyz, just recognizing a pattern)
• I'm part of the Agent Advisory Council at the office. The AAC acts as a sort of liasion between the agents and our broker and staff. We're all a team, but to be picked to be one of 5 agents in the office (out of 90) as part of that team, is really an honor. And the AAC recently nominated me to lead our all agent meeting on Tuesday . . . eeks!
• My broker recently picked me and two other agents in the office to become certified John L. Scott Mentors. This means we get to work with and guide new agents to our office. It's really a cool way to give back and really an honor to be chosen

I guess what I'm noticing here is that I do have some leadership qualities. That I am a well liked and respected member of both my personal and professional communities. Sometimes in the stress of the day, it's easy to lose sight of that, or rather not notice it at all. Anyway, it's an interesting thing to note. I wonder where it can take me by being aware of it?

It's all about the 2 - Major Milestone

So the past couple of days, really I've been dumbfounded by my weight. I don't know what I was doing right and thought I was doing everything wrong. But for some reason my weight held steady around my low . . . and by this morning even, the scale read 300.0. Last night for dinner, I had a salad that Teri made at Safeway's salad bar. It had artichoke hearts, mushrooms, ham, peas, peppers, etc. It was really good! Then I had way too much of the Country Crock loaded mashed potatoes. Followed up with some roasted turkey breast. Overall, not a horrible dinner. Waking up this morning however, I expected to see 303 or 304 on the scale. When I saw 300 even, I knew what had to be done. I had to get to the gym. So I slipped on my clothes and was out the door at about 5:15.

I decided I'd run this morning as that seems to be the fastest way for me to burn calories. So I hopped on the treadmill and did:

• 2.0 Miles @ 5.1 MPH
• .25 Miles @ 3.5 MPH
• .25 Miles @ 6.0 MPH
• .25 Miles @ 3.5 MPH
• .25 Miles @ 6.0 MPH
• .2 Miles @ 3.5 MPH

I wanted to make sure I burned enough so the plan was to then get on the stair machine from hell. Well my knee hurt too much so I only did 30 seconds of that. I figured I had to be OK with my run, so I headed home.

When I stepped on the scale, much to my delight, it read 298.0. Frickin' finally UNDER 300! It came about 2 weeks later than I thought it would, but it's still here and that's the important thing. Now if I can shed another 18 pounds by Mid-May, I'll feel awesome about hanging out in Mexico for a couple days! (OK, I'll still feel awesome hanging out in Mexico for a few days regardless!)

Thanks everyone for all your support! I really appreciate it!

I don't get it . . .

So yesterday I broke two of the seven deadly sins. I was a glutton and a sloth. I absolutely pigged out for dinner and I did nothing but sit on my Hurlbut yesterday. I lost a pound and a half. This morning I wanted to see how much damage I did with my dinner last night so I stepped on the scale. It read 300.5. I checked it again, same result. I don't understand it. I should have gained a couple pounds at least. I won't even tell you what I ate for dinner, but I'll just say that this morning I was feeling ill from the amount of food that I ate. It was disgusting. I'm happy about the 1.5 pounds, but I really don't get it.

Miscellaneous BS . . .

Yesterday was a rough day. I started out in a bad mood, a funk even. I had a sales meeting and then I was supposed to do tour. But I had missed all day working on Monday due to some family commitments so I skipped tour. I had to go to a client's future home to watch a septic tank being pumped. Actually by that time the day was getting a lot better. Weird how watching . . . . ahem . . . get sucked out of a tank can brighten your day. Maybe it was the fact there were no issues with the tank that had me happy. I don't know.

So on the way home, I thought I'd pick up a little something for my wife. She's a huge Stargate fan, and yesterday the Stargate DVD movie, The Ark of Truth, was released, so I was going to swing by Best Buy and pick it up for her. As I exited highway 512 and turned onto 94th Avenue East, traffic was backed up from 112th. I was taking a left turn at 112th, so I hopped into the turn lane. Traffic had parted to let a gentleman exit the strip mall on the west side and as he was coming across the two southbound lanes, I saw him, jammed on the brakes and laid on the horn. He neither saw me or heard me . . . we met in the most unfortunate of ways.

After making sure we were both all right, I called 911 to report the accident and we waited for the police to arrive. They did in short order and he took both our statements, which were pretty much identical and gave us the case number. When he arrived, I didn't think I'd need a tow truck . . . when we were getting ready to leave however, I noticed that there was a reddish liquid dripping from my car. So here comes the wrecker.

I'm now driving a POS Chrysler 300. I miss my little Acura already. I hope they can have it back to me in a week or so . . . it's amazing the creature comforts you get accustomed to having. Even this morning leaving the driveway I reached up to hit the button to close the garage door and realized it wasn't there. So I had to go back inside, get a remote, and head out. Hope I don't have to show too many homes this week, without my nav system I'm lost! Oh well . . . it'll look as good as new when it comes back. It's at Pacific Motor Company in Tacoma. They do fantastic work. Or at least they did a dozen or so years ago when I was in my last accident. [SIGH]

When I woke up this morning, I was still in a funk. I put away some laundry and picked up around the house a little bit. Due to my not working out and living in the drive thru the last couple of weeks, I've been hesitant to step on the scale. I really didn't want to know. I figured my weight must have ballooned up to about 310 by now for sure. But I figured I'd better find out how bad it was just so I knew how hard I had to work the next couple of weeks. I stepped on and it read 301.5. WHAT? I stepped off and stepped back on . . . 301.5. No way. So I stepped on Teri's scale. 302. OK, so let me get this straight. About all I've done to work out the past two weeks is yard work. I've eaten like a pig and I'm still down to 302? How is that possible? I must have lost muscle and gained fat? Who knows? I'll take it though.

Mood today: Frustrated but Hopeful

A little encouragement goes a long way . . .

Since I've been writing this blog for over 2 and a half years now, I've gotten lots of great feedback. Some of it has been encouragement towards my goals, some just saying "Hey, I enjoyed your post today". I think I actually like the attention. You'll see on the right hand side of the blog, recent entries on my professional blog at Hurlbuthomes.com. There I pontificate about all things real estate and community related. I occasionally get nice comments there too. But I blog somewhere else too . . . yes folks, I have three blogs. I'm a blogomaniac. I subscribe to a Real Estate community called Active Rain (http://www.activerain.com/) It's kind of like MySpace, but for Realtors, lenders, title reps, staging pros, home tour people, etc. If you're in the biz, it's a GREAT spot to go and learn all manner of things real estate related. I like giving back to my professional community, so anything I have something weird or unique happen on a transaction, I blog about it there. Now, AR also has a points system. The more points you have, the higher ranked you are in your town, county and state. These points spill over into AR's public site called Localism (http://localism.com). So if someone were searching for say a real estate agent in Puyallup for example on Localism, they would see my bright and shining face as the Featured agent in Puyallup as I have the most points of anyone in Puyallup. I'd show up as #3 i n Pierce County and #63 in Washington. The more you blog, the more points you get, etc.

One thing that's REALLY cool to me is that if enough people like what you write, you can get recommended to be "Featured". Then your blog post gets posted on the front page of Active Rain, more people see it, more people comment on it, and you get more points. A typical blog post is worth 200 points, and Featured posts can garner up to 450 points. Well yesterday I wrote an article that ended up as my THIRD featured post. I never write anything there with the intent of getting it featured. I just write about what happened, what I did to solve the situation and leave it at that. I honestly don't think about it after that. Until I see my mailbox streaming in with Active Rain comments. Then I find out I got Featured . . . There is just something about having a peer reviewed article getting noticed and appreciated that just makes me glow. It's really kind of cool when people in your profession stand up and take notice and appreciate what you've written. You kind of have that "I have arrived" feeling. Like "Yeah, that's right, I DO know what I'm doing and I am a bad ass!" Or something like that.

So with all of this encouragement, I've decided to write a book. I'm going to leave my comment at that. Just know that I'm writing a book. I have about 12 pages down on paper now. My intent is to write about 100 pages and see what happens from there. I won't tell you about the subject matter, so don't ask. Right now it's a very private thing. It's something I've always wanted to do. I don't honestly know if it'll ever see the light of day, but I'm writing it none the less. We'll see what happens . . . .

Back in the Saddle?

So over the past week and a half while I've been struggling with my Cellulitis, I've been eating horribly. I slipped easily back to my old habits and spent a fair amount of time in the drive thru. There was one large difference this time though, I actually felt guilty about it. I often felt sick after eating, I think mostly a mental thing. I was utterly disgusted with myself. Fortunately I only gained about 4 pounds so I didn't pay too horribly bad on the scale. However, I know left alone and unaware, the scale would have had a much different number at the end of the month had I continued.

So this morning, still feeling not 100%, I skipped the gym and took a long hot bath. I've been avoiding the bath lately too. The PSE bills for the winter have been outrageous and since we have a gas hot water heater, I've tried to abstain from taking baths. The gas portion of our bill sucks up about 66% every month, so I've been trying to find ways to cut it back. So the baths had to go. I'll just have to find somewhere else to read. ANYWAY, I followed my bath with a bowl of cereal. On my way to CitiLife today, I had a Zone Perfect bar and when I arrived, I had my turkey and ham sandwich and an apple. I'm going to jump on The Daily Plate when I'm done with this post and record my intake for the first time in a couple weeks. Time to get back on track and beat that 300 pound mark into submission.

My leg is still somewhat red from the cellulitis and I'm now through my course of anitbiotics. So I'm going to monitor it the next couple of days and if it gets worse, I'm going to have to go see the doctor. Not something I'm looking forward to.

06 Mar '08 - 12:52 | John | General | No comments yet | Permalink

My "Wuss Workout"

I think everyone needs a "Wuss Workout". This is the workout that you know that just by getting to the gym, or wherever you work out, you could complete in your sleep if you had to. My "Wuss Workout" happens to be the pool. I know that if I just make the effort to get to the gym, I can crank out 1 - 2,000 yards without thinking much about it. So having not been in the gym for the past week+, I did my wuss workout this morning. I did not want to get out of bed. I definitely did not want to get dressed. And I damn sure did not want to drive to the gym. But once I got there, in the pool with a splash and I was off. A very lazy 1,000 yards this morning.

So daBoyz and I met on Monday night for our monthly goals review/BS session. I've got to give out big props to my boy Erick. Erick announced Monday that he's officially under 300 pounds. NICE work man! And of course he's now done the full triathlon twice, which has me insanely jealous. There's something about setting a goal for yourself and watching others achieve it before you do that just gnaws at you. And when they make it look easy . . . well don't even get me started. But seriously E . . . good job, I'm really proud of you. I'm really proud of all my Boyz. They've really taken to this triathlon training and mentions of eventually doing a 70.3 Triathlon were bantered about on Monday as well. From thinking that we might not even finish our little 24K indoor tri to wanting to attempt a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike and 13.1 mile run all in a day . . . that's pretty amazing. It's nice to see the transformation.

I'm hoping now that I'm mostly done with my Cellulitis that I can get back on the horse and start working out and eating right again. I went grocery shopping yesterday so I won't have the "There's nothing to eat here" excuse any longer.

February Goals Review - March Goals

February 2008 Goals Review:

OK, I'm pretty sure I sucked ass this month, let's review. Still really need to concentrate on my intake and get better at logging stuff in The Daily Plate

• Eat less fast food in February than I did in January. This will mean less than 6 trips to a fast food restaurant. NOT EVEN CLOSE! This week being sick, I know I've been in a drive through at least 6 times alone. FAIL!
• Drink less soda in February than I did in January. This will mean drinking soda on less than three occasions in February. UMM Nope. Each of those trips to the fast food restaurant included a soda of some sort. The rest of the month was OK, but not fantastic.
• Perform at least 15 workouts in February. This is to include a minimum of 5 workouts where I do at least two triathlon events.I was really good on this one! I know I hit at least 5 days where I did two or more events. I may have just missed the 15 total workouts with it being a short month and my missing the last week of it, but I'm saying COMPLETE!
• I will weigh less on March 1st than I did on February 1st (308.0). My stretch goal is to lose 8.5 pounds in February putting me UNDER 300. I was 302.0 as of yesterday morning. I forgot to weigh today, but we'll call it 302.0 to end the month. So 6.0 pounds gone for the month and that's with missing a week in the gym. Didn't get under 300, but that'll come (hopefully) next week.
• I will continue taking my daily vitamins AND Fish Oil supplements to the plethora of pills I'll be popping in the morning.Yeppers
• Do at least one group workout with some or all of Daboyz training for the Triathlon
Nope, tried, but couldn't connect

March 2008 Goals:
Again, why fix what's not broken. My goals in March will pretty much mimic my goals in February with some slight modifications:

• Eat less fast food in March than I did in February. This will mean seriously re-dedicating to my focus and keeping the car outta the drive through
• Drink less soda in March than I did in February. I'm allowing the occasional Rock Star as a drink. The important thing is that it does not have High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Perform at least 15 workouts in March. This is to include a minimum of 5 workouts where I do at least two triathlon events. (Swim/Bike, Bike/Run, etc.) AND at least TWO days in which I complete the entire Triathlon
• I will weigh less on April 1st than I did on February 29th (302.0). My stretch goal is to lose 7.5 pounds in February putting me UNDER 295.
• I will continue taking my daily vitamins AND Fish Oil supplements.
• Do at least one group workout with some or all of Daboyz training for the Triathlon

That's it . . .

Are You Uncomfortable?

Have you ever had an "ah-ha" moment? Then later that day or week had another "ah-ha" moment? And then maybe just to make a point, sometime later, but still soon enough to remember the first two, you have a third, unmistakeable "ah-ha" moment? That's the universe flicking you in the nose and saying "Hey! You! What do I have to do? Put this on a bus?"

As you can probably imagine by now, I've had three such "ah-ha" moments this week. Let me explain. On Monday I was attending the first day of the Brian Buffini Turning Point Retreat. During the morning's discussion, Brian metioned something about getting uncomfortable. i.e. You can't sit back and be comfortable, you've got to do things that make you uncomfortable to grow. OK, great.

Tuesday I was in a seminar on new home sales. The trainer, Jeff Shore, had a whole section on how top sales professionals do what's uncomfortable for them to expand their business and grow. I'm seeing a PATTERN . . . .

Two nights ago, I wanted to have something to fall asleep to, so I scanned my vast library of Tony Robbins "Power Talk" series. I have to explain this. A couple years ago, I ordered a Tony Robbins series on CD from a late night infomercial. I'm embarassed to admit, I'm an infomercial guy. If it dices, slices and cleans your living room sofa, I'm SOOOO there! So along with this Tony Robbins series, they signed you up for a month of his "Power Talk" series. If you don't like it after that month, you can cancel at any time you'll only be billed for the ones you keep blah blah blah. So my kit came and I never opened the "Power Talk" CD I got . . . and I continued to receive (and not open, not once) "Power Talk" for the low low price of $29.95 per month for the next two years before I finally cancelled it. I literally have 24 - 30 "Power Talk" CD packs unopened in my office. So I grabbed two. One was about overcoming problems, which I listened to that night and the other was "Raising Your Standards". I popped the latter into the CD player in the car for my trip to Olympia this morning. I could have literally chosen from 30 other CD's, but why did I pick this one? It was somewhere in the middle, looked like EVERY other CD, but for some reason it stood out to me.

During this conversation with my close personal friend, Tony, he mentioned that we need to quit "shoulding" on ourselves. Say it, you'll giggle just like I did. We need to turn our "Shoulds into Musts". Instead of "I should go on a diet" change it to "I must go on a diet so that I can . . . " fill in the blank there. Tony goes on to say that the only way to really grow is to get uncomfortable. Wait. Back that up. What did he say? Uncomfortable? I swore that's what he said. Yep, that's what he said. OK, universe. I get it. Seriously. Tony made the weight lifting analogy. You're working on your biceps and doing curls. You want to do 10 reps of some weight. Which is the one you least want to do? Yep, number 10. Which is the one that's going to give you the most growth? Nope, number 11. You've got to do the stuff you really don't want to do or the things that make you uncomfortable to grow.

Tony goes on to further say that we're doing just what we need to do to survive. We're making just the amount of money we need. Not the amount we want or the amount we've set goals for, but just the amount we need. But if we just got uncomfortable for a bit and changed our thinking from "Shoulds" to "Musts" and stretched ourselves a bit, our growth would be exponential.

So my new mantra is "Are you uncomfortable?"