These Are My Rules For Life
The Amplified Impact Podcast
December 8th, 2023
So, gearing up for a big speech in February with Tom Biliu…it’s a huge deal for me. Tom’s a mentor and an incredible speaker. Been prepping a 40-min speech, already rehearsed it six times, aiming for a hundred reps by showtime.
Got me thinking about a gem from Tom: having personal rules.
Here are five I live by daily: work out, create something, write 1000 words, stop when work’s done, and spend an hour with Jamie.
Rules like these make decisions simpler and keep me in line with who I strive to be.
What about you? Any life rules you swear by?
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“There will come a day when you look back and you just can’t do the things anymore. And on that day, you’re going to hopefully not look back on your life and think, man, I wasted a lot of time not using this body and wish I could just go back and use it now. I want to use my body up.”
– Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
So I’ve mentioned it a few times on the podcast already, but I’m preparing to give a speech in February on stage with Tom Biliu. And that is a very big deal for me for a number of reasons. Number one is I look to Tom as being one of the preeminent, orators I think he’s a great speaker. So to have the opportunity to share a stage with him is something I don’t take lightly, and I’m very, very excited. The second reason is Tom is a bit of a mentor. I was in a mastermind with him a number of years ago, and I learned a great deal from him. And a couple of things that he’s said over the years, a couple of practices that he employs have really stuck with me and helped me on my journey. And so this opportunity to speak right before him, I don’t know, it’s like a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Anthony Vicino:
It’s really cool. And so been working on the speech. Actually, if you’re watching this on YouTube on the Amplified Impact Channel, you can see this is my speech. It’s about 50 note cards, roughly 40 minutes. And so far we have on the back. What I like to do is every time I rehearse the speech is I just make another hash mark on the back. And so far we’ve rehearsed it six times. This is a 40 minutes speech.
Anthony Vicino:
So that’s what, like four and a half hours, maybe 4 hours of rehearsal time so far. And by the time we get on stage in February to deliver this thing, the goal is to have rehearsed it a hundred times. That’s a hundred reps. So that’ll be a lot more hash marks. We got a long ways to go. But I was working on that this afternoon and thinking about Tom and thinking about some of the things that I had learned from him. And I wanted to share one of the most impactful lessons that I had taken away from my time with him, which is just that you need to have rules. You need to have rules that you live by.
Anthony Vicino:
He does this a lot through the lens of values and saying like, what do I value? What kind of person do I want to be? And then he creates rules around those things, and he’s very rule oriented. Now, I’m not so rule oriented in the sense that I’m kind of anti authority, even the authority of myself. And so framing something as a rule, I don’t know, it wouldn’t be the preferred way that I would language it. But there is something very, very useful in identifying what are the non negotiables, the standards by which you live your life. And by getting clear on those, you can start to make decision making in the moment much easier. So instead of deciding, do I eat that cupcake or do I go for the run? If one of your rules is I work out every day. And I don’t eat sugar. Then you don’t do it.
Anthony Vicino:
You don’t eat the cupcake, and you do go for the run, right? So you can just make decision making so much easier because you’re living in alignment with your rules. And so I just wanted to share five of my rules, and you could create as many as you want. Create two rules, ten rules. I think Tom has like 1020 rules. He has a lot of rules. I don’t have nearly as many, but I just have some things that I tried to live up to every single day. And I’ve talked about this previously, but three of my core values are discipline, creativity, and curiosity. So did I learn something every day? Did I create something every day? Did I show up and do the work today? Regardless of how I felt? Those are things that I guide myself by to try and live in alignment with the person that I want to be.
Anthony Vicino:
And so here are five of my rules. Number one, work out daily. It’s non negotiable every day. Move your body. Get over 5500 steps. Go lift something. Go for a run. Do something that makes your body sweat.
Anthony Vicino:
Make your heart rate go up. Use this beautiful body that you’ve been given. It is a gift. It is amazing. It can do so many incredible things. And there will come a day there will come a day when you look back and you just can’t do the things anymore. And on that day, you’re going to hopefully not look back on your life and think, man, I wasted a lot of time not using this body and wish I could just go back and use it now. I want to use my body up.
Anthony Vicino:
I want to get to the end of this ride and be like, you know what? I did everything I could with that thing. So rule number one, work out daily. Rule number two is create something every single day. And this one’s really important for me because creativity is one of my highest values. And yet creating things is hard. It is very hard. And my internal procrastinator doesn’t want to create things. It wants to sit and gets distracted and not do the work.
Anthony Vicino:
And on those days when I fail to live up to my standard and my rule of creating something, I always, always feel worse for it. I always regret it, I always feel less than. And so showing up and creating something is just one of the highest expressions for me, at least. This doesn’t have to be for you. But I do believe that fulfillment can only be created. And that’s why one of my core rules is to create something every single day. Rule number three is to write 1000 words every day. And this is kind of in the vein of creating something, but this is more just about clarifying my thoughts and taking the time to hone this craft and being very much more specific with creating something every day that could be this video.
Anthony Vicino:
This is a great example. I’m creating something right now that could not exist without me. But the writing that’s sitting down, putting pen to paper, finger to keyboard, and that’s hard, it’s laborious, and it’s a process that continually requires discipline on my side to show up and do the work. But literally every time I do it, I walk away having learned something new about myself or the world or coming to some new insight. And it’s a process that, more so than any other skill that I’ve acquired in my life, has had the biggest impact. Writing every single day. Thousand words. Maybe it’s a lot of words for a lot for most people, but for me, at this point, it’s actually very doable.
Anthony Vicino:
I can do that in like 40 minutes and 30 minutes if I’m really cranking. So it doesn’t take a ton of time. But it’s a foundational habit that trickles down and affects everything else in my life positively. Rule number four is to stop when the work is done. And there’s two sides to this. There’s two sides. One is don’t stop doing the work until you finish. Keep doing it.
Anthony Vicino:
Don’t quit just because you’re tired. Don’t quit when you lose motivation. You’re done when the job is done. But the other side of this is that as an entrepreneur or as a high achiever, you can have a very hard time leaving things behind, leaving work at work and not taking it everywhere with you. And so the other part of this is to know that when you have stopped, you need to have stopped. You need to put it away and be okay with that. And that’s something that I’m still working on these days. That’s the harder part of this one.
Anthony Vicino:
Stop when the work is done. I don’t need to be told to keep working until it’s done. I will work well past that point, and that’s the problem. So having this as a rule, you stop when the work is done. And again, that’s really hard because the work is never done. Technically, especially as an entrepreneur, there’s always more to do. But this is where getting clear about what’s it mean to win the day, defining the parameters of success early and then holding yourself to that and giving yourself permission or at least requiring it of yourself to stop when the work is done the rest of your life will thank you. The last rule is to spend 1 hour every day with Jamie.
Anthony Vicino:
And so that is make time for love and companionship, partnership. And it’s hard sometimes in the sense that we’re both very busy people with very ambitious goals in life. And getting that fourth rule, stopping when the work is done, is critical to being able to have that hour to spend uninterrupted. Not on the phone, not on the computer with that. It’s not always, like, the most high quality time in terms of like, oh, we’re just watching a Netflix show, or something like that. But the important thing is to put in the reps, put in the time, and making time for that, to make it a priority. So those are five of my rules. I don’t know what your rules are, but I’d love to learn about them.
Anthony Vicino:
I’d love to hear about them. So shoot me a DM, find me on Twitter at anthony Vasino, find me on Instagram at the Anthony Vasino, or find me on LinkedIn at anthony. Vasino or shoot me an email, shoot me a comment, let me know what are the rules that guide your life that you have found value in? So I’d love to hear from you guys. Until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.
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