--:-- Ryan Hanley: All of these things, this political divisiveness, all of these things are all combining together to make the environment very difficult for us. And what I'm trying to do is give people a way to process some of this stuff and say, I can let go of some of these things because what other choice do you have? You can't focus on all of these things. We can't do anything about a whole bunch of them, but we still have to live our best life.
--:-- [Intro music fades in and out]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today, we have a guest, second-time guest. But if you went to Elevate 2018, if you were listening to this podcast, if you were in my world in 2018 and you went to Elevate, you would have heard Anthony speak live. He was one of the keynotes that we had at that event. One of the best sales speakers, sales teachers that you are going to come across. I've read all of his sales books. I've read every book that he recommends as well on the topic. He has a tremendous blog. He puts on an amazing event, Outbound, with Jeb Blunt. And his new book is actually his first move away from sales specifically, called *The Negativity Fast*. And this book, I just love it. I love it for our time. I love it where we're at.
--:-- Frankly, even though it isn't a sales book, if sales is what's important to you, this concept of removing negativity, of removing distraction, noise, of removing negative energy from your life is going to help you achieve more in whatever you do, sales specifically. Because if you're sitting there making calls and you're feeling negative, if you're allowing negative stories from whatever aspect of the internet or your life to enter your brain, you are not going to be as successful. And this goes for everything that you do. It goes for your success in your marriage and your relationships and how you handle your kids, your friends, coworkers, your community, the little league team that you coach. If negativity rules your life, you are never going to get to the best version of yourself.
--:-- I think that today with the onslaught of information that we have from the various different communication sources, be it main street media or social media or whatever, it is very difficult to stay away from negativity. The processes, the techniques, the ideas, the concepts that Anthony shares in this podcast and that he also dives deep into in his new book, *The Negativity Fast*, is just as timely as timely gets. I couldn't be happier to have Anthony on the show. It is always a blessing and I think you're going to love this episode.
--:-- With that, guys, if you do love this episode, if you do find value, the only thing I ask is that you share the show. That's it. Share the show. Text it to somebody. Email it to somebody. Put it in a social media group, a Facebook group, whatever. But sharing the show helps more people find what we're doing here. Helps more people get the ideas of peak performance, high achievement, becoming the best version of yourself. It puts it in front of them. And maybe one little idea that they pick up will help them grow and get to that point where they feel like they're operating at their optimal level, which is what we want. It's why I do this work, to get more people operating at their optimal level. I love you for listening to this show. I appreciate you for listening to this show. Let's get on to Anthony Iannarino.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Met Seth Godin at his place before.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yep. And he had like a condo and they had just a great setup. And I was in an Industrious, which is like a WeWork. Yep. And it's all glass. Can't do any video. Can't do any audio because everything's bouncing. And I told my wife when I got in the car, I said, I want you to find me a place where I could do this. And then I had all this equipment here. And then the pandemic happened. And all my clients were like, how are we going to do training? And I'm like, we're going to do a virtual. But I've got lights everywhere, all kinds of stuff. So it's a nice place to be.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, that's cool. I mean, the brick background is great. I am in the process of gutting and refurbing a house. And I'll have a nice setup there, a nice office setup. And it'll be perfect for everything that I do. Once it's done, we're like halfway through it right now. So I won't be in until like January. And actually the basement and kind of office studio and that kind of stuff won't be done probably until the spring.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Since last time we talked, I got divorced about two years ago and she kept the house, obviously. I should say obviously, but in an effort to amicably remove myself from that situation, I did not fight for the house, we'll say. And so I've been living in an apartment for the last two years, which is fine. But it doesn't lend itself super well to this kind of stuff. So I have a co-working space.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You know what Rod Stewart said, right?
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: What?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: He said, "The next time I decide to marry a woman that I hate, I'll just buy her a house."
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yeah, exactly. It is funny. Life works in a lot of really interesting ways.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It sure does. I can't begin to say that I understand it, but I have learned over the last few years how to ride the waves in a way that you can make it through.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: So it's been interesting. Just this week, I found out that the company that I founded and sold in 2022 that I've been kind of in the earn-out period of, the company that bought us decided to shut the company down on Tuesday or so yesterday.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So you're just like cruising along. I know a lot of people that would have bought their business back.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: I'm glad I'm trying to do that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. But they have to be willing to do that.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yeah. Probably not going to raise. I'm on the business advisory council for the Cleveland Fed. So they brief me and I brief them. Their briefs aren't as good as my briefs, but they don't particularly like my briefs a lot of times. They think about economics and look backwards. I'm trying to show them demographics because the demographics are very bad for us. You're not going to have nearly enough people. We don't have nearly enough babies. It's going to get really difficult in the next 10 years. You're going to have 70 baby boomers retire.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Sure. Yeah. And then you got to think to yourself, how much of that is engineered?
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: All of it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The lack of people.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: The lack of people. Some of it, yeah. Not to get too conspiracy theorized, though I love conspiracy theories, but you listen to people like Bill Gates and stuff say that we need to take out half the population. We can't feed them. We can't house them and all this stuff. And it's like, that feeds in people lately. They're fat.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, I know. We can. Apparently we can feed them. Yeah. And I think like these people weigh 400 pounds. I caught a decent amount of blowback, which I don't literally don't care about because it's true. But I said on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, I asked the guest facetiously, or rhetorically, I guess is probably a better way to put it. "How many fat 80-year-olds do you know?" And he got really quiet. And I said, "That's not a trick question. I'm being serious. How many fat 80-year-olds do you know?" And he's like, "I don't know any." And I was like, "Exactly. Exactly." Because they're not eating the same.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: The other thing is that they ate different. Like my grandmother, everything had butter.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I mean, the food supply is not good at all.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: There's no doubt about that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, think about what we've been taught. We've been taught that olive oil is bad for us. You can drink olive oil like water. Your body just processes it and passes it through you. There is such a thing as easily processable, good for you fats and bad for you fats and these different things and the sugar. I mean, I try to explain to my kids all the time, like, guys, you will never live in a world that sugar isn't in everything. And you don't understand, sugar is a narcotic. Like, in a different version of reality, sugar is a narcotic like cocaine is a narcotic. We have sugar one day, my wife and I do. So on Friday, we get an ice cream cone. That's it. That's what Dana would call F-F-Friday.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Have you ever seen him do that where he cooks something just totally awful but that's the one day? So that or you could do Tim Ferriss's cheat day that he put in one of his books.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think, and this is what I try to work with my kids on too, is if it's not real then you shouldn't put it in your face. If it didn't come out of the ground or someone didn't have to kill it or you didn't have to kill it, you probably shouldn't put it in your face. Now granted, am I going to have a protein bar once in a while? Yeah. Are they mostly chemicals? Yes. But on a small or moderated basis, some processed stuff is not going to really harm you as long as you're not eating it all the time. We have an entire culture that might eat real food once a month. The rest every other day is processed crazy food. And then we wonder why people are low productivity, low testosterone, low ambition, why we're producing a culture that is anti-competition, anti-masculinity. No wonder you're eating this garbage food and your body doesn't know what to do. And it's sad and depressed and tired. It's crazy, man.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Don't look into water. Don't look into water.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's the next thing that I have to do. The next part of my life that I have to start to re-engineer is how I intake water. I have a buddy who just started a water company and he delivers it. Every single drug that people take is in our water supply in microscopic amounts. Everything. Viagra, sedatives, everything. It's incredibly... How do you filter your water? What do you do for your water?
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: I filter it with the refrigerator first and then I put it into another filter.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I do it two times. Like a Brita or what do you use?
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: I forget the name of the one that I got. I like it though. I told my wife, I said, "This even gets rid of arsenic." And she said, "Yeah, but I'm just putting it back in anyway."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I like your wife.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Awesome.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, I think that, dude, I'm glad you're on. I'm excited that we're chatting again. Last time I think we chatted was before the Elevate Conference back in 2018. That's a while. That's five years ago. That's crazy. I went to see the Eagles in Cleveland. I took my wife and my daughter, one of my daughters and her boyfriend. And it was that same place that we were.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yeah, the hell in there? I said, "I spoke here" and I was like, "I can't bring to my mind. I can't remember why I was here." And then I was like, "Oh, it was the Elevate conference."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was right next to that Hyatt.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yes, yep. So yeah, I was right there and it took me a minute to figure out like, where was I?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's hard when you speak as much as you do. And I don't speak as much as you, but I definitely get around. All the ballrooms start to look the same.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: There are definitely venues that you'll remember. I just did a really cool event in Dallas by the ballparks there where it was called Something Live.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, yeah. I know. I've been there.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yeah. Really cool.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I've been there, too. Yeah, really cool setup. That was awesome. I just loved it. The acoustics were great. The way the audience was set up. I think the stage is a little too high.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yeah. I thought that should be down a little bit more.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yes, I agree with you. The people who are in the front in those high tops, you're kind of looking straight down at them like this. But in general, I like that venue. I'll remember that venue. But the hotel ballrooms, they're gray rectangles.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yeah, they're all the same.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, so that can be tough. But back then, you were talking about sales. Not that you don't still talk about sales, but the new book is slightly different, kind of a move away from that. So talk to me a little bit about, you've been known so much about pure sales content for so long in business, focused growth content. And this has got a slightly different spin. So what was the impetus for that? What captured you and said, you know what, I want to write this book. This is a little different, but I think this is a story I need to tell.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Jeb Blunt and I do a conference every year, except for last year. We took it off because we were just too busy. It's called the Outbound Conference. And it is for sales leaders and sales managers and salespeople. And Jeb is with Wiley. That's his publisher. And he brought Shannon, who was his acquisition editor, to Outbound. And it was an ambush. I mean, so I got ambushed. They're like, "Hey, come over here in this room. We're going to talk about books." And I was like, "Okay." I didn't know if I was gonna self-publish or what I was going to do. I did three books with Portfolio. And we talked about it. And I said, "Listen, before we do this, I need to know how much latitude do I have on what I want to write." And she said, "We'll probably let you write whatever you want to write." And I said, "Well, I have this idea for a book called *The Negativity Fast*." And it's something that I did for myself a long time ago. And I'm still on my negativity fast, by the way. I have not watched media on television for 20 years. I mean, I've not watched it. So I have no idea. When I tell people to stop watching it, they go, "How am I going to know what's going on?" All the negative people around you are going to tell you. I promise. You don't have to worry about that. They're going to want you to know that they're unhappy about something that's going on in the world. You'll hear about it. But you don't have to consume that poison and ingest it over and over every single day. You are going to be negative.
--:-- And look, so the model changed. Fox decided we're only going to talk to conservatives and MSNBC, we're only going to talk to liberals. And then we're going to get them to hate each other for some reason, even though that should not be anything that anybody worries about. Whatever somebody else's politics are doesn't have anything to do with you. And you shouldn't try to talk people out of their politics anyway. It's like trying to get a Catholic to join the Church of Satan. It's not going to happen. It's too far away, right?
--:-- So I asked if I could do this book, and she said, "Yeah, we'd love to do that book." So that meant I signed up with them, and I did this for a couple reasons. One, it doesn't take you very long to recognize how negative, how stressed, how much people are anxious, how much they're negative, how much they complain. All you have to do is just pay a little bit of attention to that and you'll see that. What I wanted to do was give people a book with a number of strategies that are all science-based. So I'll tell you why I did the science-based approach here. When I started reading about gratitude, there are a number of claims that are made by science. And when you start reading the list, you're like, too many things. It will lower your blood pressure, increase your immune system, give you better cognitive, you will be cognitive better. You will have less inflammation in your body and everything that you can think of, like any good thing that happens, you won't be depressed. You won't have anxiety. You won't have stress. And when I was writing all these things down, I'm like, no one can believe this. That's too many things. If it did three things, that would be amazing. But it does like nine or 10 things, just gratitude by itself. So I thought I better cite this because people are going to go, "He's just making this up. It's his opinion. It's conjecture." But it's not. So I cited everything in the book and there's a lot of sites.
--:-- [Interruption - Ryan Hanley's mid-roll ad]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show. Subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show. And I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: ...tations in there because I want people to know like this isn't my opinion on anything. This is what the science tells us. I know it's not good to talk about the science anymore. After the pandemic, we don't talk about science, but this was just reading the papers and then understanding how they learned some of those things. And the book doesn't read like a science book, but there's just enough in there that if you wanted to go look, you could go find a citation and read it yourself if you want to. So I just wanted to make sure people know that all of these things are well documented.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, I think that's the right way to go about it, too, because oftentimes you can tell the difference between what I will call an amateur publication and a professional publication in so much as they can tell the same stories, except one will readily and willingly cite where they were either inspired or informed. And the other will talk just on conjecture and subjective opinions. And that to me is a huge signal on whether you're getting a professionally published work or an amateur published work. So that feels like the right path to me always.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: I had my editor reading the manuscript and she said, "You wrote in here that you're more likely to make sure that your pets have their pharmaceuticals than take them yourself." And she said, "That can't be true." And I said, "It's true." And she said, "It can't be true. No, people are going to take theirs more than they would give their pets their pharmaceuticals." And she goes, "How would you even know something like that?" I said, "Two years in a row, I spoke to 600 veterinarians and they told me that." And then I gave her the citation and I said, "Yeah, here's a citation. It's been cited." That is who we are. We love our pets and we don't take as good a care of ourselves as we should. And I think everybody would agree with that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Right. Yeah. I think the same stat for your kids as well. If your kids have a medicine, you'll make sure your kids get it. If you had the same exact medicine, you won't take it. It's this odd responsibility to others where we will treat ourselves horribly yet do everything we can for the people that we care about.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Right. Yeah. That's right. I'm sure there's some evolutionary biological reason for that, and probably a good reason, but it's definitely... I've heard that before. I actually caught that from a pet sitting conference that I spoke at a long time ago. So they were talking that the owners would give their pets better care than they give to themselves. Regular doctors visits, et cetera.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'd like to stay on gratitude specifically for a second because a lot of the work that I've been doing recently in my career has shifted from highly tactical to more of, we'll call it human skills. And they often get classified by a lot of people as fluffy or things that are like luxuries to think about, like taking time to show gratitude or to just simply write down what you're grateful for. I think to many busy individuals, and I'm going to put "busy" in air quotes because I think that most of us are not as busy as we think we are, that feels like a luxury for people who have time. Anthony, I would love to spend 10 minutes writing down what I'm grateful for every morning. I'll do that when my career gets in order or my kids go away to school or when I get my X, Y, Z under control. And they never make time for these things. I guess before we get into exactly why gratitude in particular is such an important aspect of removing negativity from your life, how do you get people to actually slow down and find these moments so that they can do some of the things that are going to help them?
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: I will give you and your audience the best possible advice that I can give you about gratitude. Martin Seligman is known as the father of positive psychology. When he went to Penn, I think, there was only negative psychology. So you need a pharmaceutical or you need a psychoanalyst or both. And that's how people thought about pessimism and all of the negativity. And what he decided was that that's not a very good way to live your life. You should flourish and we should flourish and we should be happy. And one of the things that he did, he ended up on the cover of Time magazine and he had an entrepreneur that helped build a website for them and it was called "Three Blessings." So if you're listening to this, you want to write this down. So it's really easy. You'll be able to remember it. What you do is you write down three things that went well for you in the day. So at the end of the day, don't do it in the morning. Do it at the end of the day. What are the three good things that happened to you and why. And so if you do that for two weeks every night before you go to bed, what Seligman said is that the people that did that were no longer stressed, no longer anxious, didn't have the same level of depression for as long as six months after doing that.
--:-- So I've done this with one of my teams where we did it on Google chat and everybody put their three blessings down and then other people would support those blessings. And I thought, well, we'll do that for a couple of weeks. People are still doing it. They still want to write down the good things that happened. Now, if you had a journal and you write that down every night and you start stacking up the days that you do that, when you pick that journal up and you start looking back, you're going to go, every single day, good things happen to me. Every single day, something good happens to me. Instead of what we have is called negativity bias. Mostly we're looking for the negative because we're paleolithic people that are now living in this world of accelerating constant disruptive change and it moves faster. The rate of change is faster than we can process it. So people like Alvin Toffler, who wrote *Future Shock* in '65, said, "If we don't get control over the rate of change, then we're going to have a massive adaptational problem in our psychology, in our world, in every part of our lives if we don't get that under control." So now we just got AI, right? So it's getting even faster and the change will come even faster now that we have these things. So my opinion is we have to try to get control of that in our own life. And if you would do that exercise, Seligman said, comparing it to pharmaceuticals and psychoanalysis, it's more powerful than both. So this is something that you can do for yourself. And if you start stacking up all the good things that happen to you, you'll be surprised at how many good things happen to you every single day and every single week. And most of us are focused on the problems that we have and the negative parts. But you can beat that back some just by being grateful and writing down these things at the end of every day.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So since my divorce, I have kind of, I don't want to say, I have reestablished faith in my life. I kind of got away from it while I was married. And I was always, I always had a strong faith when I was a kid and got away from it and then have come back to it. And what's really interesting to me is that, I'm not a religious scholar, but certainly my understanding of the Christian religions and the baseline on all those, just saying some prayers at the end of the night, just talking to God and thanking, simple prayers, like thanking God for the food that you had and for the relationships that you had or the people that are in your life, just saying two or three things like that before you go to bed. That's a practice that's been going on for, well, I mean, we'll say at least 2000 years, if not much longer, depending on whether you believe Graham Hancock or not. And to me, it's like these are core things. And I kind of want to move this into the rapid pace of change. I want you to get to the acronym and all that you talk about because I think that is what I would love to focus the second half of our conversation on. But there are some of these core things like having gratitude, showing love, et cetera, that have been stripped from our culture. And I don't know, nor do I think we probably have the time here to necessarily dissect all the reasons why. But these are core aspects of who we are. And we talk about these things in a secular way. But man, I unabashedly believe that secularism is a big part of the negativity and stuff that we have in the world. But these are parts of our humanity. They're not like hacks of the modern man or modern woman. These are core aspects of who we are if we look back at all the, you could look at almost all the major religions that have lasted. And what does Joe Rogan say? Any religion that's been around for 2000 years, there's probably something decent in there that you should follow. They all come back to some of these practices that are just really core to who we are.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: It's been a little commercialized. You may not know this but contemplative prayer is one way to reduce your anxiety, your stress, and your negativity. So that is a proven thing. Now that you're saying it, but I'm telling you that the science supports that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It does.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: So it is supported by people who have studied it. So yeah, that shows up in the research as well.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I want to talk about ACDC, the Accelerating Constant Disruptive Change. This concept to me, and I'd really like to spend at least a large portion of the remainder of our conversation on this because this is something that, man, I don't know how any of us are prepared for this, right? And like you said, it's like every month a new technology comes out that moves the world even faster. And it's so difficult to keep up. And that in and of itself creates these anxious vibrations. So I'd love for you to break down the concept and kind of talk through some of this for us.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: When I was a kid, I played rock and roll. And I was a dead ringer for Bon Scott of AC/DC. And now I have a different ACDC. I'm going to read this to you just because I can't remember all of the things that I wrote here in the epigraph. Toffler said, "The acceleration of change in our time is itself an elemental force." And he says, "Unless man quickly learns to control the rate of change in his personal affairs as well as in society at large, we are doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown." That was 1965 in a magazine called *Horizon*. That's how long he saw this way before anybody else. *Future Shock* came out in '70.
--:-- You know who Yuval Noah Harari is?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, *Sapiens*.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: He says this: "Our newfound knowledge leads to faster economic, social, and political changes. In an attempt to understand what's happening, we accelerate the accumulation of knowledge, which leads only to faster and greater upheavals. Consequently, we are less and less able to make sense of the present or forecast the future." How about that?
--:-- And then the last one I'll give you is Ray Kurzweil, who is the head of AI for Google. Some people don't know who he is, but you know his work because he did optical character recognition. That's one of his patents. He also has the Kurzweil synthesizer. He said, "From a strictly mathematical perspective, the growth rates will be finite but so extreme that the changes they bring about will appear to rupture the fabric of human history."
--:-- Okay, so this is where we are.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And you agree?
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yeah, yeah, this is where we are. It moves faster than we can keep up with it. And it isn't showing any signs of slowing down at all. So who would guess that we were going to have a hot war in Europe, a hot war in the Middle East, the highest inflation we've had in 40 years, interest rates of 8%, all of these things, this political divisiveness. All of these things are all combining together to make the environment very difficult for us. And what I'm trying to do is give people a way to process some of this stuff and say, "I can let go of some of these things because what other choice do you have? You can't focus on all of these things. We can't do anything about a whole bunch of them, but we still have to live our best life." So we have to do the very best we can to remove the negativity and spend more time being positive and pursuing our goals. And that's what I think most of us should be doing, even though I would tell you it's not that easy to do.
--:-- So my law professor, when he noticed I was angry, he said, "You should just let all these things go." That's not really good advice. How do you let it go? You have all these inputs that you're getting. How do you just go, "I'm going to let all of that go"?
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: It's harder than you think it is. So you have to do some work with yourself to be able to say, "I'm not going to pay attention to all of these things. I'll pay attention to some, but I can't just keep ingesting all this stuff." Which is why I've turned everything else off. Basically, I like *The Economist*. They're not trying to separate Americans from each other. So it's a little bit less biased. Let's put it that way.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Do you think it's possible to at one time both consume information on these topics and stay positive at the same time? Do you think it is possible for most people to be able to do that? Is there a construct or framework that allows you to do that?
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yeah. You have to go to sources that are not specifically trying to cause divisiveness. So I don't care what you watch or what you listen to. Fox News is only going to give you one half of the story. That's the narrative that they like. MSNBC's got the other narrative. That's the one that they like. Those are not good sources. And mostly because it's being done to agitate you and to force you to have a political bias in a certain way. If you go to sources where that bias isn't there, you're going to be a lot better.
--:-- There was a time when Walter Cronkite was the news person for every American. Everybody watched that. It was just the facts. And now it's none of the facts. It's just the bias of what we've done now in media. So I would tell you, choose your source as well. I like *The Economist*. I also like CNBC because if they ever have a politician on, they're on their best behavior because they know the money class is listening to them. So they try not to go too far in either direction just simply because they don't want to be perceived in a certain way. So anytime that you can get just the information without somebody trying to force a bias on you, that's a better way to find the content that you want. And I will tell you, you can leave a whole bunch of it behind and not miss it at all. I promise you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I think, yes, I struggle with this because I haven't watched MSNBC or Fox or any of that stuff in years. What I do consume is quite a bit of independent media. And I try to find former liberals who have now become just independents. Not necessarily, say Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Oh yeah, Taibbi's the best.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Gary Weiss. Because these people, from my opinion, were moderates who during the Bush years got pushed to the left, right? And just like what's happening now, right? They haven't actually moved their opinions. It's just the window that has moved right or left.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Taibbi and Barry, they are liberals. They've been liberals for a long time. But yeah, they feel like they got moved.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And if you watch Bill Maher, you'll find out—
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Yeah, Bill Maher's another one.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. They went past where he was. And I think he's the only one that can actually talk to them the way that he does. I mean, he's the only one that I think can talk directly to that group and still be accepted. Because unfortunately, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Barry Weiss are like, if I read the three of them, I feel like I get a really good feel for what's actually happening. On both sides. And what I love is that all three of them I would classify as classic liberals, which I think is most of Americans. I think the vast majority of Americans are what you would call a classic liberal, right? We believe in human rights. We care about each other, community, support, etc. We want to make sure that someone's in need, they get taken care of, all these good things. And then there's this slightly other side where, hey, maybe we should worry about home first instead of being world police. That's kind of like a classic liberal mindset.
--:-- And I find that these independent journalists who have to make their hay by telling good stories and telling the truth—if one of these individuals who writes independently and creates independently, if some people start to find out they're budging the stats or misdirecting or misinforming or outright lying, their income is gone tomorrow. All those people unsubscribe and move on to someone else. So to me, I love the incentives of independent journalism for consuming this type of information because I don't always agree with them, but I believe that what they are giving to us is the facts exactly as they see them, as they've found them, and as they believe them to be. And I find that when I read that, in those situations, when I don't agree, I don't get upset. Where when I hear someone from MSNBC who is literally just being fed what to say, and it is so wordsmithed and gobbledygooked and all this kind of nonsense, you're just like, I could agree with you and what you're saying is making me mad. That honesty factor or authenticity factor, even when you don't agree, if you believe the person is being authentic, it seems to not make you as upset as it does if you feel like the person is lying to you.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: But Taibbi is not trying to agitate you. He's not trying to divide anybody. I do think that you should pray for him though, because he seems to be a target for a whole bunch of people. And he is a liberal's liberal too, by the way.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I know. Like I said, the big three for me—and I know there's a ton—but the big three for me are Glenn Greenwald, Barry Weiss, and Matt Taibbi, who I just really like all three of them. And then I have other people that I follow too. But for me, I struggle with this dichotomy. I know that if I cut a lot of the world news stuff out of my life, if I focus just on community stuff that impacts my day-to-day and my work-related family stuff, life stuff, I will in general have less anxiety and stress. At the same time, I feel this odd responsibility to know what is happening in the world. Like I feel the difference between awareness.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Awareness is okay. It's just when you start having something that's more than just awareness, where it's starting to become part of you and you're spending too much time on it. So I would say awareness is okay, but when you're consumed by it and it consumes you, you're going to be negative.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's a good way of defining that. I know that the things are going on in the world, but I'm not going to spend a whole bunch of time being negative about it.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: These things—the world has been turning and burning for 4.8 billion years. It's going to keep burning and turning. So we're here for a short time. And I would say it's shorter than most people think. The average in the United States right now is 4,108 weeks. That's about 78.2. And the reason it keeps going down is because of suicide and fentanyl. Those are the two things that are keeping that number down. So you'll probably live longer than that. But when I tell people you have 4,108 weeks, they get upset. Some people are like, "That's just morbid that you know that number." And then I have something I call "Countdown." So I have a guess of where I'm going to leave the earth. And I think I have like a little 1,300 weeks. And people say that's morbid. No, you know what's morbid? Not knowing. Not knowing how short this is and then spending your time being negative and pessimistic and cynical and skeptical. You can do a lot better than that.
--:-- I think I try to give people the understanding—we complain all the time. And then I have to ask people, "Have you ever had ice cream? It's pretty good, right? Pizza, children, dogs, coffee. I mean, there's a whole bunch of things that are good here. I'd stay forever if I could." But you might as well start saying, "I should be grateful for all these things that I have here because at some point it goes away."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I couldn't agree with you more. One of the things that I've been writing a lot about in my newsletter and talking about on Instagram is this idea of preparation. And I don't mean prepping like building a bunker in the ground. What I mean is preparing your mind, your body, your mentality, your emotions, your relationships for bad things to happen. I'm 42, soon to be 43, and I have enough life experience and have seen enough shitty things happen. I don't know that I have more than other people, just enough to know that far too many of us go through life without intent, without properly preparing physically, mentally, etc. And then something bad happens. We lose a family member, an act of violence. We lose a job. Like I mentioned before we went live, the day before we recorded this, the company that I founded three years ago was shut down by the company that bought it. Shocking. I'll be honest with you. I've done so much emotional and mental preparation and physical preparation that it took me about an hour to let it sink in, let it marinate, went to the gym, did some deadlifting, and back to business. What are we doing next? Here we go.
--:-- My point in saying this is that if you are consumed by negativity and you are always thinking about the future and how negative it is and how all this bad stuff is going to happen, you're not preparing yourself for when that stuff actually does happen. You're living—that time could be spent reading a great book, fasting from negativity, going for a walk, building a deeper relationship with your spouse or a friend or a mentor or a partner, and getting yourself in a position that when those bad things happen, we can weather it. Instead, we let our life blow up when bad things happen. We fall to the floor and we're a complete mess. And then we go, "Anthony, what do I do? I need to pull my life together." And it's like, how about you get your life together before the bad thing happens?
--:-- I think that this idea of a negativity fast and negativity in general, and how we allow it to permeate our mental and even our spiritual and physical lives—to me, this is an incredibly important aspect of that preparation. And I love that you've written this book and that we're talking about this topic right now. It's a worthwhile topic.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: When you are deadlifting, it's impossible for you to be negative because you're breathing too hard. The reason that people sometimes feel bad is because they're holding their breath. Once you start—if you run or deadlift or do any kind of physical activity, gardening, anything—once you start taking the pressure off your diaphragm, you're going to feel better almost immediately. If you're ever really angry, go run and see how long it takes before you're not angry anymore. Once you start breathing again, it goes away really fast. Those are simple things that people could do. I want to start doing that when I'm doing speeches and just ask somebody to go ahead and start running. Go ahead and run around the—I like it. And let's see if you're angry after that, because you won't be. It's impossible.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I hate running. I know how important it is. I hate it. What I've picked up instead is boxing. I'm not sparring yet. Although there's this part of me, the competitive side, that wants to see how I can do. Although I don't know how many shots in the head I should be taking at my age.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Zero.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Zero is probably the correct answer. Although, having played football for so long, I'm sure there's enough damage in there that, you know, what could happen.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: What'd you play?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I was a middle linebacker. My career ended in a game that ended my senior year. We were in the sectional semifinal game against a school that was way bigger than us and had every right to dominate us, which they did. But I was an all-conference, first-team conference, all-middle linebacker. I loved football. It was my number one sport and what I was the best at. I ended up playing baseball in college, but football was my love. I loved defense and particularly the position I played. I loved the linebacking position.
--:-- Except in this moment, they ran a counter and I was all over it. I had it dead to rights. I saw the misdirection. I saw everything except I didn't see the fullback. I thought the fullback went with the play, went with the misdirection, right? Except he didn't. He took a step to the left and then he came back across the pulling guard. So people don't understand how this play works. Everything goes to defense right. So our right side, everything moves to that side. And the running back fakes that way. And then he comes back and it's kind of like a naked run. Usually that's how a counter works. Or maybe they pull a guard. They didn't in this case. So I see all this motion. I see the guy hesitate. And I know exactly what the play is. And I'm like, "I got this guy dead to rights." So I come around the line. And I'm just kind of strafing. And I'm going to light this guy up. Except I didn't also realize that the fullback was part of the counter as well as a lead blocker. I came around the corner. And it was just, boom, lights out. Woke up on the sidelines. Laying down on the bench. Giggling to myself because I'm high as hell after this concussion that I just got. And it was game over. Went to the doctor the next week and he's like, "Just so you know, every contact sport that exists from now on, you will no longer be playing." And I was like, "Yeah, that was it." That was the end of the career. So unfortunately, the sparring is probably out for me.
--:-- But that being said, to your point, an entire boxing training—I just don't do the sparring—but as soon as you elevate your heart rate to the point where your brain can't focus on anything else, it's like meditation. Literally, your brain can't focus on anything other than what you're doing. A light jog, maybe you still feel a little whatever, but as soon as you kick it up past that point where your brain just says, "I'm focusing on this thing" because you're breathing heavy and you're sweating and you're pushing. For those who are old enough to remember, for me, it's like remember how you used to play Contra on Nintendo and it would freeze every time you played and the only thing you could do was hit the reset button? That's what it is. Your brain locks up with all this negativity and anxiety. And these activities are like hitting that reset button and allowing everything to break free.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: That and even if people would hydrate, they'd feel a lot better. If they ate a little chicken and salad instead of going through Wendy's, they'd feel a lot better too. A whole bunch of factors that we could all look at.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, I want to be cognizant of your time and that of the audience. I'd love to hear, before we get to where everyone can get the book—and we'll have it linked up in the show notes—if someone's listening to this and they're like, "100%, I'm going to go get the book. I'm going to read it." Is it gratitude? Is it slowing down? Is it just turning off these things? If you just had one thing, you had 10 seconds at a conference, someone comes up to you, shakes your hand, says, "Anthony, I freaking love it. What's the one thing I should do?" What's the 5% activity that gets me the 95% result when it comes to negativity in my life?
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Gratitude's got to be number one. Gratitude. The other one I would give you is from my younger brother. He's a comedian. And if you go see him, I'm not responsible for any of your hurt feelings, just for you now. That's my disclaimer. He drives around from place to place and does comedy all over the world. And he's always unhappy with the way people drive. Then one day in Florida, some guy was just driving erratically and trying to jump in front of him. And he looked at this guy's face and he realized this guy was under some sort of duress. I said, "Well, how did you know that?" And he goes, "Because I knew what he was feeling at that moment. He needed to get to a bathroom." And I told him, "Go, you can go, go." And he's yelling at the guy with his window down in his Cadillac. And I'm like, "How do you know that the guy had to get to a bathroom?" And he goes, "Because it happens to me all the time."
--:-- Now what he did was he lied to himself. He made a lie up. And now he decided instead of believing this guy's got road rage, that he's just trying to get to a bathroom as fast as he can. And after that, he was over his difficulty with how people drive. He just lets everybody go in front of him and thinks, "Well, if they're going like this, there must be something wrong. So let them go." And I'm like, that's an amazing strategy. It comes from a guy named Albert Ellis who did cognitive behavioral therapy. And what he says is there's an activating event, and then there's your belief about it, and then there's the consequences on how you respond. All you have to do is change the belief. So if you go, "That person's got road rage," you can go, "Their kid is sick at home. He's trying to get home to get his kid so he can take him to the doctor." You can lie to yourself that way. It's a lot better than being angry.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love that. I don't know if you've heard of Chris Williamson. He does the Modern Wisdom podcast.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: No, I don't know it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Doesn't matter. Great podcast. Got a lot of great guests. He always talks about reframing. And what you just described, in my opinion, is a way of taking a situation. It could be, "Look at this jerk. He cut me off. He doesn't respect me. What's wrong with people today?" Or, "That dude's got to go take a dump. I'm going to let him go because why would I get in the way of that?"
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: I got a chapter on reframing, but it's not for the little things. It's for having two brain surgeries and having a piece of your brain cut off. And then instead of deciding that I had a trauma and that I was going to do something bad for me, I went to college, law school, and Harvard Business School for over nine years after that. The reframing for me was, "I'm a scarecrow. Like Dorothy's scarecrow. I needed brain." So I went and I worked on my brain and I'm a better person for doing that. I think if you look for what good thing happened out of that negative thing, you can get post-traumatic growth syndrome. There's only three significant papers on that, but people are looking into it now because we know it exists and we're going to start figuring out how to help people have that experience instead of post-traumatic stress disorder.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love that. So if you can find meaning in that suffering, then it can change how you feel about those events that happened to you. Perfect way to end it, my man. Dude, I appreciate the hell out of you. I love every chance that we get to talk. We have great conversations. The book—I'm assuming Amazon, all the major book publishers everywhere. I will have it linked up in the show notes for everybody. You can also go to thesalesblog.com. You'll find all the books that Anthony has, all his work, his training programs, all the great stuff. That's another awesome place. Which social media, where else should they connect with you?
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: LinkedIn is good. And if you buy the book, I've got a really nice workbook that I can give you. So if you just go out to LinkedIn and you say, "I bought your book, can you give me the workbook?" I'll make sure you get it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Awesome. Dude, I appreciate you. I wish you nothing but the best. Thanks for doing this work because this is an incredibly important topic in our time. I love the way you're putting it together. And I hope everyone listening goes out and gets a copy and starts to work on these things. I absolutely, positively, 100% recommend following Anthony's work. It's incredible. He was a speaker at Elevate 2018. And I've been an enormous fan of his work and a follower and reader of all his books for probably more than a decade now. My man, appreciate you. Thank you so much for being on the show.
--:-- Anthony Iannarino: Thanks for having me on. I'm going to Shampoo! Thank you.
--:-- [Outro music begins]
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