3 Common Habits Holding You Back
The Amplified Impact Podcast
June 29th, 2023
In today’s episode, I want to dive into the life and work of one of my favorite creators, Michelangelo.
If he were alive today, imagine the incredible Instagram feed he’d have. But since we can’t experience that, we’re left with his timeless masterpieces.
I had the privilege of seeing his iconic statue of David in person years ago…and it was a truly profound experience.
The level of detail and mastery of human anatomy blew me away.
Michelangelo’s approach to his art holds an important lesson for our own lives: removing everything that doesn’t align with our greatness.
We often believe we need to add more to achieve our goals, but sometimes it’s about shedding the things that hold us back.
I’ll share three common habits I’ve struggled with.
These habits can act as roadblocks to our success and fulfillment.
By identifying and addressing them, we can create positive change and unlock our true potential.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“It’s simple, I just remove everything that is not [what I want].”- Anthony Vicino
LEAVE A REVIEW if you liked this episode!!
Let’s Connect On Social Media!
instagram.com/theanthonyvicino
Join an exclusive community of peak performers at Beyond the Apex University learning how to build a business, invest in real estate, and develop hyperfocus.
Learn More About Investing With Anthony
Invictus Capital: www.invictusmultifamily.com
Multifamily Investing Made Simple Podcast
Passive Investing Made Simple Book: www.thepassiveinvestingbook.com
Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to talk about one of my all time favorite creators, Michelangelo. You know, if Michelangelo was alive today, I bet he’d have one dope Instagram feed, but he’s not. And as a result, all we have are some amazing works that have stood the test of time draughts. And really the only way to fully appreciate them is to go to where they are being kept and observe them. And one of the most remarkable things that he’s ever created was the statue of David. And I remember back in 2007, 2008, I had the opportunity to see David in in real life. And it was a profound experience for a lot of reasons.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:38]:
One is it’s it’s so much bigger than you you would even imagine it could be. It’s massive. So that right there is interesting. But number two, it is the level of detail in understanding a mastery of human anatomy and how the joints and the muscles come together and flow. It’s absurdly realistic. And as a person who has no capacity for sculpting whatsoever, you sit there and you look at this thing and you’re hit with the question, how is such a thing possible? How does somebody even make that? And sure enough, I wasn’t the first person to ever wonder this. I wasn’t the first person to even ask Michelangelo this. But thankfully, somebody did.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:26]:
And Michelangelo, his answer, I think, is one of those lessons that we can take and apply to our lives. He said it’s simple, I just remove everything that is not David. And I love this idea of removing everything that David is not. And it’s the same with when we think about our personal development and growing into our greatness and we can feel that inside of us. We can feel this kernel of like, what’s that greatest version of ourselves look like? And how would we get to that? Well, we would just shred away everything around us that is not that greatness. And this is a concept that’s called addition through subtraction, which I’ve talked a lot about on the podcast before via Negativa, which comes from Naseem Tilleb. And this idea of studying the thing that is not is a really powerful way of moving forward in life. And often on our quest to unlock our inner greatness, I think we fall into a trap, which is to think that we need to add something into our lives that we’re currently not doing.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:23]:
And so we start to look at habits like Gratitude journaling or red light therapy, cold plunges. We start to try to find these habits that we’re not currently performing and stack them on top of everything. And you know what? Sometimes that is actually what we need to be doing. We actually do need to introduce some new habits into our life. But in my experience, the first place to start that is going to pay the biggest dividends and propel you towards your goals. The fastest is to not look at what do you need to start doing, but to start looking at what you need to stop doing. How do you get rid of those things that are holding you back or that block of stone? You don’t need to add more stone to get David. You take stone away to get to the core of who he is and where he is in that block.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:08]:
So I want you to imagine that you’re a car, and if you’re a car, then great habits are the accelerator. And yeah, we want to stack those on there because when you push on that gas, you’re going to go faster. But bad habits are the emergency brake. And if we stack great habits on top of bad habits, it’s like putting the pedal to the metal while having the emergency brake engaged. And that’s not going to do anything. All that’s going to do is it’s going to burn out the brakes, it’s going to burn you out because you’re going to be putting so much energy into this thing. And sure, you’re going to go a little bit faster, but there’s going to be so much resistance there the whole way that eventually it’s going to fry you out. So before stacking new habits onto things, I think it’s important that we look at what are we currently doing that is holding us back.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:55]:
When I look at my life, at the habits that I had that I really needed to reframe in my own life, I come to three, three common habits that I think held me back for a really long time. There are things that I still have to struggle against because are so ingrained deeply inside of me and hopefully these will resonate with you as well. So the first habit that we have to unlock or unwind or break is the scarcity mindset. The scarcity mindset is pervasive as you move through the levels of life, whether that’s in your job, your relationships and your personal health, there’s always this fear that maybe you could lose it all, you could go back, or maybe there’s just not enough for you to progress to that next level. And what’s really interesting about the scarcity mindset is that because we become fixated on the potential of loss, we start to become closed to the opportunities that actually do present themselves in our life. And so what ends up happening then is our reality begins to mirror our beliefs. And I think this is a really important thing to keep in mind, is that any belief held strongly enough will eventually become true. And so you have to be really, really careful about what it is that you choose to believe.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:20]:
And in my world, I believe that there are only two types of beliefs. There are limiting beliefs and there are empowering beliefs. There are two sides to every coin, to every situation, to every relationship. And it is your job to not focus on the limiting side, but to turn that coin and look at the empowering side. Always look for the empowering solution. So that’s number one is the scarcity mindset. Now, one of the things that I find to be the cure to scarcity mindset, and this isn’t like a one shot, one kill type thing. It’s an ongoing process.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:52]:
It’s to create a gratitude practice. Now, gratitude practices have been bastardized, I believe, in the last handful of years, and I’ve done this myself. I’ve created gratitude practices that became nothing more than to do list, to be checked off. And in that process, I never felt the gratitude. I was just going through the motions, checking the box. And it’s really important to realize that gratitude and the purpose of the gratitude practice isn’t just to think about the things that you’re grateful for, to acknowledge them, but to feel the gratitude. And I don’t have a solution to help you work through how exactly to tap into that. It’s different for everybody.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:35]:
For myself, it’s been a journey because I’m not typically one to spend time reflecting on gratitude or to feel a lot of gratitude in the day to day life. I tend to accomplish things and then just move on to the next. And so I don’t have a lot of time spent typically reflecting and absorbing that gratitude. So this is a personal journey that you’re going to have to go on to figure out for yourself, unfortunately. Okay? So habit number two is prioritizing the urgent over the important. And this is a hard one because there are so many tasks, so many things in our life that are vying for our attention on a day to day basis. And the things that tend to scream the loudest at us tend to be the most urgent. And in my experience, the urgent things often are not the most important.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:22]:
And we’ve talked about this so much in previous episodes that the goal isn’t to do more, isn’t to produce more, it’s to do less, but better. And the only way that we can do that is by focusing on the important things and not falling into this trap of just taking care of what’s urgent and putting out the fires day to day. And I know this is hard because urgent things, they crop up and they feel like suddenly because they’re urgent, that they have a timeline that is right now that therefore you must tackle them. But I would encourage you to consider this, is that not everything that demands your attention deserves your attention. Okay? Not everything that demands your attention deserves your attention. So be very, very intentional about where you place that. Because one of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Peter Drucker who said, there is no greater waste than to do with excellence that which shouldn’t be done at all. Now, I’m not saying the urgent things shouldn’t be done, but I’m saying that they should never come at the expense of the important, which I find is more often than not, the unfortunate truth of the reality is that we do end up sacrificing the important for the urgent.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:31]:
And in my experience, that is just a fast track to feeling perpetually busy, but never actually effective. All right, habit number three is collecting dots, not connecting dots. So this one’s really subtle, and a lot of people mistake it as a virtue. But when I say people are spending too much time collecting dots, what I’m really saying is that they’re in relentless pursuit of knowledge. They’re out there reading and consuming podcasts and watching videos, and they’re going to courses and seminars and networking events, and they’re consuming, consuming, consuming. They’re acquiring more and more information. But what they’re not doing is spending the same amount of time or equal or more on applying that information. And in my experience, it’s very, very hard to get paid for collecting dots, but it’s surprisingly easy to get paid for connecting them.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:30]:
And when I say connecting them, we’ve talked in the past about how creativity is one of the most important, maybe perhaps the most important skill set in the modern workforce. That it’s the ability to take pieces of information and connect them in new, novel, functional ways. That’s what really propels you forward in your career and in life and in business. And so with that in mind, yes, we do need to be going out there collecting dots, but more important is what we do with that information and connecting them in meaningful ways. And for me, the way that I make sure that I’m not falling too far into the trap of acquiring and not applying is I set time every morning for what I call my three to three. And during that time, I have a time blocked off specifically for doing, which is to say, consuming less and creating more. That’s my creation time. So making videos, writing blog articles or whatever, this is my time to take the dots that I’ve been collecting, because I do believe collecting dots is important, but then you have to do something with it.
Anthony Vicino [00:10:35]:
It’s not just about acquiring them, it’s about applying them. And so if you guys are interested in learning more on these three habits, I did an article for the Hyper Focused Entrepreneur a while ago. You can check it out@anthonyvacino.com. Bad Hyphenhabits and I break down these three habits in a little bit greater detail, share some stories and maybe some tips and tricks that you can use to maybe break these. Because in my experience, these are like the biggest emergency breaks that are currently being pulled in most people’s lives. And if you can disengage this and then you can start layering on the more beneficial, productive habits of your life, then you’re going to go into like, mach ten in no time. So hope you guys found this valuable. If you did, do me a favor.
Anthony Vicino [00:11:23]:
Share it with somebody that you think would get a little bit of value out of it. Somebody who is maybe out there collecting too many dots, or they’re prioritizing urgent things over the important things, or they’re just constantly deploying a scarcity mindset and looking through the lens of fear and everything. Share this with them. Hopefully they get a little bit of value out of it. And as always, guys, I appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Anthony Vicino [00:11:49]:
And I’ll see you back here tomorrow. But until then, stabber. Focus, my friend.
This Week On YouTube
These 3 Daily Habits Made Me A Millionaire in 3 Years
Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:
1. Unleash your hyperfocused mind to dominate life, business, and everything in between? Here’s how:
→ The Hyperfocused Masterclass: the exact system I used to overcome ADHD, write 12 books, build 4 businesses, and acquire $70M of real estate.
There are a handful of spaces left in The Hyperfocus Masterclass for those who want to snag the early bird preorder special discount of $49.
Email anthony@anthonyvicino.com to let me know you want on the waitlist.
2. Learn to passively invest in commercial real estate with better returns, less risk, and zeo hassle.
→ Invictus Capital: my real estate private equity firm.
→ Multifamily Investing Made Simple: Top Apple Podcast.
→ Passive Investing Made Simple: Amazon Best Selling Book with 100 5 star reviews.
3. Want more like this? Check out these 3 popular articles from the vault:
