3 Degrees of Freedom

Ep 182 - Turning Stress into Strength: Lessons on Mental Toughness with Chris Schwagerl

• Derek Clifford • Season 3 • Episode 182

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Looking to upgrade your mindset and productivity? Accomplished performance psychologist Chris Schwagerl shares research-backed tactics on the show today.

With 18 years in mental health and 10 as an entrepreneur, Chris developed the internationally bestselling STARS method which integrates 11 theories into a productivity system.

In this interview, Chris and host Derek dive deep into powerful strategies to help you thrive, including:

👉Avoiding burnout and finding your optimal workload
👉Transforming stress into mental toughness
👉Uncovering and reprogramming limiting beliefs
👉Achieving flow state through intrinsic motivation
👉Creating authentic goals aligned with your priorities

Chris delivers practical tips with empathy and wisdom. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, business leader, or anyone seeking growth, this episode will leave you feeling inspired and equipped with mindset techniques to unlock your potential.

Connect with Chris thru the social link below and learn more about his business:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-schwagerl/


Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Welcome to the three degrees of freedom podcast, where we explore lifestyle engineering with our expert guests to bring you in alignment with your own three degrees of freedom, location, time, and financial independence.

Derek:

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today. We've got Mr. Chris Schweiger, who's joining us on the show. Chris blends 18 years in mental health with a decade of entrepreneurship as a performance psychologist who uses curiosity and compassion to help people thrive. His internationally bestselling stars method integrates 11 psychological theories into a productive system. And as a devoted family man and a dog trainer, which is super interesting, Chris roots for people to overcome their limitations discusses with them, the sacrifices and stresses of entrepreneurship and helps everyone with a sense of empathy. So it's a very interesting bio, Chris, welcome to the show. And I'm glad to have you here. How are you

Chris:

today? Yeah. Thank you, Derek. I'm pleased to be here, but I got to say that was quite an introduction. I don't know if I can match up with that here live in person. I hope to. You're being too humble,

Derek:

man. You'd be amazed what you can do with first of all, you provided me a bio and then you'd be amazed what you can do with a really well worded prompt in chat GPT or Claude. Anyway, if we'll go ahead and get started here, I like to start with the same question I ask every one of my guests, which is which of the three degrees of freedom, which is location, time and financial, do you feel that you're the strongest in right now? And which one do you feel like you want to develop further in the future?

Chris:

Since I just got back from Costa Rica a few days ago, I'm going to go with location freedom. And this was a fun trip. It was my wife's folks 50th anniversary. And they said, we're going to take the whole family on a trip. And it was awesome. And I brought my laptop along, part of me wanted to just unwind, but I love my work. I gotta be honest. Like I, I love my work. And I know you do too, cause you guys work remotely. all the time. And it was really fun to have my laptop out while a monkey hopped down and said hi for a little bit. And then the kids went crazy and we got to swim and all that kind of stuff. So I'm going to go with location freedom because I'm still feeling the Pura Vida vibes.

Derek:

That's pretty awesome. And which one of the three degrees of freedom do you want to develop further right now?

Chris:

My big quarter one goal is financial and so with my business that I'm in now I'm taking on new clients and this is something that I've been developing over the past Year, we're in 2023. I'm really proud to announce that my clients have raised their revenue by 35 percent And so I'm just really excited to double down on that and offer more value in 2024. So that's my Q1 big rock that I just announced to my accountability group. Shout out to Kendall and the guys. And so that's what I'm going to be working on here in, in quarter one.

Derek:

Awesome. That makes a lot of sense to me. So I'd love to hear that as well. So let's talk in general about, I don't know, a really good a good topic to approach is burnout. Burnout happens with a lot of folks who are mostly listening to this podcast who are maybe. Working a full time job or maybe have got some sort of 1099 commitment or some contract work or something. And then they're also trying to stand something up on their own, or maybe they're full time entrepreneurs and just trying to, basically burning the candles at both ends. What are some of the basic things that you tell people when they first come to you for advice based on your experience and all your

Chris:

credentials? Yeah, I think that's a really great question and really important question, Derek, so thanks for bringing that up. Also, this is something that I've experienced personally. I think all of us who have a drive and ambition, we all want to drive 200 miles an hour. And we never want to take pit stops. And we know that we have to take pit stops. But we will next lap or next lap. And so burnout is really not one big thing. It's a series of breaking tiny promises with ourselves. It's a series of letting go of non negotiables in our life. So one of the first things I do when I meet with clients regarding burnout, Is defining what is your optimal, like capacity? What's your optimal work day, week, month look like? Because most people are revving their engines because they're afraid they're either going to lose their creativity or they're going to lose their creative edge. So step one is to define what's enough for you. Really, most people are there. And step two, what we do is we define your non negotiables. It can't be any more than three. So these are things that you do every single day without fail, and it's not a to do list. I call this a to be list. So these are things that make you feel like you. For instance, my daily non negotiables are I write an email to my daughter, she's eight. She doesn't know she's getting these emails. One day she will. When some dude breaks her heart or something. But anyway, I write her an email every single day. Every day. Also write in a gratitude journal just three things that are. Silly. And if you've kept a gratitude journal for 12 years, like I have, it gets ridiculous, like you, you've found gratitude in so many things that you got to narrow it down that it gets like really quite silly. So I always do that. And then the third thing I always do is I always do some sort of exercise. And you mentioned before I'm a dog trainer. We have a therapy dog living with us. And so getting outside, walking the dog is always helpful, but it's a little bit more than that. It's for me, the non negotiable is sweat. So every day I sweat. Just to wrap that up then. So it's talking about what's enough. Number two is talking about the non negotiables. And then the third thing is what can we subtract from your day? Most people want to add everything. Hey, I'm going to get a coach so that I can do more in business. Hey, I'm going to get this performance psychologist so I can do more. This is subtraction and you'll find more flow state when you subtract. And so it's really this elimination thing, and so back to your, three degrees of freedom, we're not focusing on 10 degrees of freedom. We're focusing on the top three and everything else comes in and falls into place after that. So that's what I do with clients who come with me with burnout. And we've all been there, right? We've all, I've been there. I don't know if you have or not, but I would imagine you have just because You're an entrepreneur doing a lot of stuff.

Derek:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the things you touched on that at the end there was super important was learning, basically what not to do. Everyone as an entrepreneur and people who are hungry and listening to this podcast, trying to like chase down. Some of their things while working a full time job or, working multiple different directions at one time is that we have to learn to say no. And it's okay to choose multiple things to work on. It's just got to come from the right intention and from the right space. At least that's what I've learned over the years. What would you say to that? Do you think that this conversation of someone doing the hard work and finding the underlying emotion behind the things that we do. That's why it's called motion, like emotion. And so this might be like some of the, NLP and things like that. Neuro linguistic programming stuff that that I've also been pretty curious about as well. But can you talk about how someone might be able to use some of these techniques to help improve their performance or help them avoid? Or just become a more well rounded, more higher performing person as in general. I don't know if anything pops to

Chris:

mind, but yeah, a ton of stuff pops to mind. So I think, cause I think it's an excellent question and we could take it on any sort of number of layers here in terms of tactical, what do you do every single day? You can make a chart and make sure that you're sticking with your non negotiables and then that's. Everything else is bonus. You can have your quarterly rock, like what I'm working on, where you work on your non negotiables. Plus that's it. And and what's funny is people feel like everything's going to fall apart, but it really doesn't. Other things enhance because we're just simply living, which is. Ironic, but there's a lot of brain science. That's really ironic. And the last thing I'll say about this with burnout and with, trying to be more productive. It's interesting from, for me anyway, like my therapist ears in terms of burnout is what made you make those decisions or me, what made me make those decisions? Why did I choose work over other things? Most of the time it's because work is easier. Than the other things in our life. Wow. Interesting. I know when I was burned out, it was because I developed a persona that my therapist calls Hammer Chris. So in three months of my life, I had a newborn. I had a wife with postpartum depression, and I was diagnosed with kidney disease all in three months. And so the like type B. skateboarding surfer kind of guy that I was not going to cut it. I was just starting off in real estate investing. So if you told me Derek, in this moment about a real estate investing endeavor, I would be in, and I would be all in. And so I got burned out because working on work. Was much easier than facing my mortality than being a new dad then trying to Partner with wife who was going through a lot of difficulties herself And so like thankfully we're better now, but I feel like I'm still trying to recover from that moment in my life and choose things that are actively more difficult, but more important to me, if that makes any sense to you.

Derek:

So most people, from what I hear, are waiting for external factors for them to make choices on what's important to them. Do you have any tip? Because I can tell that's what was happening in your with your situation. Do you have anything that may be able to help people understand that they can take control of this? And do you have any tools that can help people prioritize what it is those things are to say yes to, and those things to say no to help, hopefully prevent, prevent burnout, but also to thrive, and to become tap into the full potential of the individual.

Chris:

Yeah, absolutely. I've got two, I've got one that's just personal that I don't know if I've shared with anyone and another that's professional first professionally. It's what I do, man, so you mentioned before I created the stars method. That's my work from the past 18 years of doing performance psychology. So it's 11 different psychological theories. And what we do is we look at your current identities. We look at How you created those identities, who is important in your life in the big events that help shape you because most of the time who you feel like you were when you were age 12 or 13, 14 is pretty much how you think about yourself now. And so if you were feeling. You're fearing getting rejected from, a potential lover or boyfriend, girlfriend. Then you may also feel like you're not worthy now. And so we go back and we look at that and then we go into the future in terms of what do you want to do before your head hits the pillow for the last time? What's your legacy going to be? Do we have a chat with God to see what. He's got to say about it and then I'll bring it back to be like, okay, now that we've gone through this entire journey together, who are you and who are you going to be? Because you can just make it up. You're playing with house money here, and so that's what I do professionally for people is to really dissect, like how you're made out of. Or what you're made out of, what kind of core beliefs are there. And then we look to see I'll keep this one, but I'll let go of that one. I'll keep this one, but I don't feel like Mrs. Knutson is going to send me to detention if I'm collaborating with my friend David anymore. No business is about collaboration. So let's let that one go. So that's what I do professionally. Personally, though, this is something that my wife and I started doing during the pandemic. We get together maybe every three or four months and we write down all the things that are happening in our lives. Usually it's 20 things. Like for us, it's like mental health support or my job, her job real estate endeavors being a part of this, syndication mentoring club our daughter's extracurriculars, all that kind of stuff. And I rank them like in priority, like one to 20, she does the same. And then we come together and I correct her sheet, Derek. But really what happens is we do get out for what we think is going to be the most the priorities. And we went to a coffee shop last time and we learned that we can't do this in a coffee shop because like people were looking at us because we're like having this like heated discussion because it's important to us. And I'm like, no, your work is number 14. She's no, it's number eight. And I'm like cleaning the houses at the bottom. She's I want to clean it. So all that kind of stuff. And then what we do is we. Make choices based off those priorities. And what we found is it makes it way easier to say no to stuff. If having friends over is higher than cleaning the house, then we're just going to invite friends over and be like, Hey, the house is messy, but we want to be over and just be okay with it. And so that's something that we've. And it stuck with us and that's

Derek:

working. This is a power tip. This is gold right here for many married couples or people who are living with other people. I feel like your spouse it's such an interesting situation because there's usually Three or more entities when it's you and your significant other talking about your life together, there's the us component, which is one relationship, right? There's what's better for what's best for us. Then there's the individuals, right? There's you what's better for you. And then there's what's better for her. And then there's what you do, that's good for her. And then what she does, that's good for you, or, vice versa. And so you have all five of these dynamics at play. And there is no one else in the planet that knows you better than your spouse. Yes. So if you're talking about these things going back and forth and trying to come up with a plan, a joint plan, and I just like absolutely admire that you guys do this on a regular basis, these are really tough decisions, but the great thing about it that I love about this is that it comes, it helps you form a priority list so that you're having the tough discussions ahead of time so that you don't have to have the tough discussions later. You guys know exactly where you stand, what's important. And you can help prevent a lot of things from either spiraling out of control in a relationship or helping to make decision as to whether or not I should do this deal, even though we haven't done date nights in a long period of time, like all those little things that people don't think of, it's all a holistic piece of, it's all a holistic tapestry and you have to be able to weave all of them together and without having the priority there, it's not going to happen. Yeah. It, it just doesn't fall into line as easily as if you guys do it the way that you did it. So I absolutely love that. I don't know if you want to attack anything onto it, but I think what you guys do is brilliant and we're

Chris:

definitely going to use that. Awesome. Yeah. Appreciate that. And I have to say our poor host, Eric. I used to put a lot of effort into cleaning the house and now it's just, now it's just grubby, man. It sounds

Derek:

like one of those things that maybe just needs to be delegated, right? Like eventually you'll be able to find someone to come in and help take care of that for you.

Chris:

Exactly. Exactly. The flight back from Costa Rica, I'm talking to my sister and I'm like, so you got a new cleaner. So now we get a new cleaner, yeah, it's all that kind of stuff, but now we know, like in, in this started during the pandemic when there was like chaos, in what's going on with our daughter's school, are we going to meet with family members? We usually do a, every Friday night we do dinner together. Are we going to continue to do this? Cause there's grandparents involved and stuff like that. And so we, we just started prioritizing stuff because it seemed like the world was out of control a bit. And that really helped us go through and make some decisions easier. Yes, we're going to continue doing this. No, we don't need to continue doing that. And what we found is having friends over was important. Cleaning the house was not we don't really love going to restaurants. And so that's something that we've cut out. We'd much rather have you out. And I'd rather grill your stuff in the backyard and be like. Sorry about the yard,

Derek:

yeah, it's all good. And then it opens up into this whole discussion as to why the yards like that. And then that's more connections. And I just love it. It's really good stuff. Can you talk a little bit more about the stars methodology? I'm very curious to know a lot about this because I believe I, I probably did you a disservice a little bit on that intro, despite all the praise is that I failed to mention that you are licensed a practitioner, right? Like you have A degree and you've got like the credentials to be able to administer advice to people as a psychologist or a therapist, or I'm not sure. So apologies for that. Can you talk a little bit more about how you were able to combine all 11 of these methodologies and break it down into. An overview of what stars is for us. I'd love

Chris:

that. Yeah. Yeah, so I, I got my first degree in psychology. I always was interested in psychology in high school. The same kids got called down to the principal's office and I always thought to myself like, why? And I always thought like I could do something about it. Even though I was afraid of those kids. And so then I went to school and got a degree in psychology and you don't get paid much. So then I got another degree in child psychology and I got paid like 25 cents an hour more. So then I bartended for a number of years to make more money went back to grad school. I got my Graduate degree in social work because psychology is generally like what's wrong with you and social work is generally like we don't really care What's wrong with you? Let's just provide an environment where you can thrive and that's more me. And so then I got like a 35 cent pay raise. Awesome. So that's what got me into real estate actually was complaining about never having money and living in a friend's basement when I was 33 years old, way later than I should have lived in a friend's basement. But anyway, back to the stars method. Throughout all my work, I've done work with groups of men who have been perpetrators of domestic violence. I've worked I was the only man who worked in a school for pregnant and parenting teenagers for a couple years. Talk about some stories, Derek. There's some stories there. And then I worked, with kids who were on probation. I've worked with adults in therapy settings and all this kinda stuff, and pretty much everyone. Follows a typical arc where they come to me or to, to any sort of professional seeking help, but there's something underneath that's actually driving it. And so that's why you can't just work on one theoretical model. You got to put a whole bunch of them together and take people on a journey. And so that's where I've created the stars method. And it's an acronym actually. S stands for study your unique psychology, that process and journey that I was describing earlier where they were described or study your identities, go back in time, how were they formed? What do you want them to be? Let's put it together. T is for tearing apart limiting beliefs. So that's a process where we Essentially perform open heart surgery, but on your soul and say, which one of these do we want to keep? Which ones do we want to double down on? Which ones do we want to say no to? And then create some systems or habits in place that allow that to happen. A is for ask different questions. How can you train yourself? To be a different person. Here's what we're doing. We're playing on the brain heuristics. So our brains are incredibly smart, but like dumb and easily tricked at the same time. So by using visualizations, by using affirmations, by becoming someone that you are not, then suddenly you are that person. Fake it till you make it is psychologically proven. And R what we do is we re imagine your new identities. So what does that new person, the new Derek do? Okay. Let's have you do those things. And then before long, your brain will be like, Oh, I guess we're this new person. And then the last one S is sky's the limit, which is more symbolic of you can create whatever you want. You really are playing with house money, any sort of limits that you put on yourself. Myself included, they're all self imposed. You can do whatever you want. If Beyonce decides that she can sell out a world tour, she can. And if she's going to create a persona, Sasha fierce so that she can do that cause she has stage fright, she can do that and you can do the same thing.

Derek:

That's awesome, man. I love it. That's very cool. And so your job when someone comes to you is to be able to use this method that kind of is all encompassing because it's very hard, to be able to tease through all of this. And there's many layers to peel back the onion, lots of motivations, lots of things that these limiting beliefs, the operating system that someone has to maybe unlearn a little bit. What is where would you start when it comes to all of this? Just out of

Chris:

curiosity, where would I start? If it's for

Derek:

this one? Yeah. Yeah. Day one. I know we talked about a little bit for in the burnout context, but let's say someone wants to come to you for performance coaching or, do some sort of elevation of their mindset in some way or form, or they're struggling with a particular issue that prompts them to come see you.

Chris:

We start with a gingerbread man, which sounds funny, but I've created this gingerbread man outline. And I ask a series of questions based on this. When we start, I just say, tell me about yourself. I have yet to have anyone initially tell me about themselves. Usually what people say is my name's this, I'm this job. I'm this occupation. I have this much assets under management. These are some accomplishments. And I'm like, cool. Tell me about yourself. And people are like it's okay, I'm a dad. I like dogs and I'm like, sounds great. Those are things you have a responsibility. Tell me about yourself. So what we do is we go through this gingerbread man, which is you, you create silhouettes around the gingerbread man. Talk about your. exterior identities. These are things people see. I'm a podcast host. I'm, I like to have three degrees of freedom. I like real estate. I like cryptocurrency. I'm a dad. I'm on the PTA, all those kinds of things. And then we draw five on the inside. I still don't know what that's called. Silhouettes are on the outside. I don't know what it's called on the inside. Inuits. But anyways, we talk about your five, like beliefs. Things that you know to be true about yourself, five identities that you believe to be true. And what's funny is by the second or third time we meet Even those have dissolved. So when you first start off, it's always tell me about yourself and we redefine what yourself is.

Derek:

Yeah, I love this approach and I love the fact that you're leading off with questions, tons and tons of questions because that's where the real work is done. And we we had a performance coach as well and every once in a while we reach out to them still chris. But I think we may have to actually Start expanding into other people and maybe look into working with you as well. But we found that the right question, sometimes the other person say in your role, all they'll do is just ask really good questions and listen well. And that's the job is to listen and ask questions because the way that people answer things and the way that people are thinking through how to solve a problem, they have the answers in them. They know what the answer is. It's just got to be inferred and you have to, sometimes there's operating systems that need to be broken or something needs to be connected, right? There needs to be, someone needs to be shown a reason why they're operating in a certain way and being a real estate investor and being an entrepreneur in general, how do you, as someone who is in real estate and having your own business as well how do you coach people to transform stress? And turn adversity into assets or into skills. Because in the end, I think that's really what people are looking for is a tangible way to feel like they're making progress because mindset is everything in entrepreneurship, including real estate and especially in real estate investing. And so we'd love your take on how to take. Stress and adversity and turning it into a positive or an asset for the individual.

Chris:

Yeah, that's a really great question, Derek. And I was humbled and honored last week when I was working with a guy and he said, I had a coach before and he just told me stuff. He said, but with you, I'm talking most of the time. And I'm like, isn't that the point? But anyways, I work with mostly real estate syndicators and it's interesting. You go to any real estate syndication conference and they'll say it's 90 percent mindset, 10 percent skill. Here's three days on the skill. And so it's but everyone's craving this mindset. Like, how do I figure this out? Exactly your question. So here's exactly what I would tell you if we were working together, this is straight from sports psychology, every NFL team, every MLB team, every soccer team has a sports psychologist, not in some room somewhere, but right on the sidelines, because if you're not working on your mindset. If you're not gaining a mental edge, you're falling behind. It's, I think we know that now about in in sports, they call it being in the zone in business. We call it flow state. It's that hyper productivity where we've strategized, we have practiced, and now we're executing at a super high level. Things go wrong. How do you figure that out? We work on the four C's. Of mental toughness. So we work on mental toughness a lot. And the first C is going to be challenges. How do you see challenges as opportunities to grow? Challenges are going to happen all the time. Next C, confidence. How can you build your confidence off the field so that when you're stressed on the field, you have more confidence. Next we're talking about competence. How can you build your knowledge base? Of this is what happens when the lender decides that we can't refinance. Like you're just building your education about when things go wrong. And Michael Phelps was the best at this. He said, when he did a race, he would have already run that race a thousand times. He said a third of the time it went well in his mind, a third of the time it was neutral. A third of the time it went bad. So he's already swam every single race and knows exactly what to do. If things go good, medium or bad, we practice that. And then last, what we do is we talk about a social support. So it's C is connection. Who are the people out there that you can talk to about this kind of stuff? Cause one of the worst things you can do is not share mistakes as an entrepreneur, your job is to make mistakes. Your job is to fail fast, to fail frequently, and to fail forward. And so we better get you some connections and you better share them and practice sharing them with people who will still love you at the end of the day because, hey you're trying. You're going out there and you're creating something that's never been created before. Of course, we're going to celebrate effort. Of course, we're going to celebrate mistakes. Find people you can connect with and root for you no matter what.

Derek:

Yeah, and I think the very first part, I just love all that. The very first person that you need to have that with is yourself, right? You need to be able to look at yourself as, yes, there's setbacks or you can call it a failure, but it's never truly a failure unless you give up and stop. Because every time you don't succeed in something on the way towards your priority or your intention, which kind of talks back to the beginning of what we were talking about at the beginning of the podcast, right? As long as your intention and your priorities are there and you are making mistakes to get to that point. Point, whether it's a financial setback or relationship setback or mindset setback or any setback that's out there, it's always temporary. As long as you don't give up and you're making yourself towards that. That's why this mindset, the glue is the glue to bridging between where you are and where you want to be. And then beyond that, right? Like even beyond that goal, like once you reach it, what are you going to do then? And I. I see people that get so upset because they reach their goals. And I actually had a little bit of that to myself where I got all the things that I wanted. And then it was like, now what, and a lot of people are probably thinking, Oh, too bad for you. You know that's happening, but the truth is that will happen to anyone who really sets their mind. Towards it. And it happens to pro athletes where they get Olympic gold. And then after that they disappear because they have no more goals left. They don't have intention. And so that mindset piece is really the glue that holds it all together. So before we jump into the rapid round, I wanted to see if you wanted to ask. Or comment on any of that before we proceed into the final part of the

Chris:

show. Yeah, I'm just, the image in my mind and something we use, one of the theories we use is called ACT which is acceptance and commitment theory. It basically says that we put limits on ourselves and on our brain, what we can think of because of language. So we do have a lot of imagery. And so I've trained myself late but the imagery that came to my mind was like I, I live in Minnesota and I love baseball. So I go to a lot of Minnesota twins games and I see old players and they're always like big and out of shape. And I always feel bad for them. Cause I'm like, isn't there something else that you've wanted to do? And I'm not trying to rag on them. These guys are all great guys and funny and contribute or whatever. And they're very nice if you go up and approach them, but I'm thinking like, isn't there something else that like fills you up with some juice. And I think what happens if I was working for them, I would encourage them to spend a lot of quiet time with themselves. Because I think what we fear, and why we keep going, is because we fear sitting alone with our thoughts. And so if you can learn to get like really good with talking to yourself to responding to just being open to whatever thoughts pop into your mind, I think that's really a superpower in life for when you do achieve your goals. I worked with a guy last year, it was probably around this time last year, very successful guy. He's out in San Fran. He owns we works and things like that. And he had achieved all sorts of financial freedom times 10 and he was bored. And so what he did was he just locked himself in a room every day for a week and just sat and meditated. And when he came out, he probably had a big beard or something. I don't know. I imagine he spent a lot of time with his dog, down by the Bay Bridge. And what he realizes he wanted to mentor other people. And so now what he's doing is just like mentoring people and offering his connections that he's built to other people who have this kind of fire or juice in them that he admires. And he can pick and choose whoever he works with because he doesn't collect any money from them. And that's what's giving him juice right now. And I don't think he would have got that if he would have kept going. He needed a pit stop a little bit to figure this out. And so I, just in general, being able to spend quiet time with yourself is so key in, at first it'll feel weird and you'll feel like you need to think of the time and have a post it note next to you and remember all your thoughts. They'll come back. Yeah. If they're important, they'll come back. The universe will talk to

Derek:

you. They'll come back. Yeah. And it'll always if it's really that important and that you'll to remember that, it's going to keep reoccurring. And it's something that you'll need to hear at that time. So Chris, awesome story. Thank you for that very much. So we have one last segment of the show left. Man, the time has flown by. It's crazy. But let's talk, let's get into our rapid round. If you're ready, we're just going to rapidly ask these questions and they're going to be hopefully answered in 30 seconds or less. Are you ready? Ready, man. Ready. All right. Number one, name any resource that was or is essential in your own journey to pursuing

Chris:

freedom. Ooh. Okay. This is weird, but the first thing that came to mind, I'm just going first thing. is a book from terror management theory called the denial of death. Wow. Which is something that I studied a lot with my therapist years ago. Where we just basically contemplated my demise for a couple of years. And so sorry for all your podcast listeners for taking it there, but that was the first thing I thought of. And I just think it's really important to be able to consider and think about. Mortality, and I know it's morbid. No one wants to talk about it, but it really does give you some juice to keep

Derek:

going. Yeah, for sure. I love that. Last thing I'll say about this is that my wife did a I think it's one year to live or one year to live. A lot of people don't anticipate like when their last year to live will be, but you can proactively do that and say, okay. Just starting now, I want to make decisions based on the fact that I'm going to be passing away in one year from today. And then it's amazing what kind of priorities shake out of that. I saw a complete change in her life, so I think that's really cool to think about the fact that everyone will eventually meet an end. Okay, absolutely. Number two, if you woke up and your business was gone and all you had was 500 bucks, a laptop, a place to live in some food. What do you think you would do first to rebuild?

Chris:

I've been there before, except I didn't have a laptop. So I went to the library, but I read rich dad, poor dad. But the answer is people. The answer is people get around people who can help get around people who are farther along, ask them really good, exciting questions, see how you can help them out, learn what you can. It's odd, but it's one of the cool privileges about getting old, losing all your hair like I have, is that you're just not worried about crap like that because You know that, the answer is easy. It's people and getting around people who love you, support you, want to be around you. And I also think it's really good. I read a four hour work week. Tim Ferriss has a question in there about rate your worst case scenario in your life on a scale of one to 10, I vividly remember mine would be a four out of 10 and I would have to live with my in laws, but then Derek, we bought the house that I'm in right now and renovated for six months. And we lived with my in laws. And so it wasn't all that bad.

Derek:

That's so cool. I love it, man. Amazing. Number three, what does your self reflection and goal setting look like on a practice basis every day? Oh, every day? Yeah. Or every day or periodically.

Chris:

Yeah. I think every day what we do is my non-negotiables, right? Yeah. So I have to be there for my daughter and I ha I, the best parenting advice I've ever heard was to never wish for time to go by 'cause it will anyway. And that's why part of the reason why I sent her an email every day is to just recollect what we were doing, that day to to do that. But in terms of my goals, I'm switching it up a little bit. This year. So I'm doing just quarterly goals. So I do 12 weeks on and then one week off and hopefully I'll have a refreshing week off to set new goals. But I, what I'm thinking is going to happen because I know me is I'm just going to try to rush to wrap up the last 12 weeks, so I'm working on that. I'm also developing with my friend Mirta, who lives in Switzerland, we're working on creating goals based on your subconscious. So if you think about your goal for longer than 45 milliseconds, it's already gone through the filter of your prefrontal cortex. So we're working on sharing with the world. We're not there yet, but we're working on sharing with the world a way that you can create really authentic goals using your subconscious. And I'm into that and I went through the thing myself and it blew me away because I, you choose a picture first and then you make a phrase out of it. And I, my picture that I chose was a like a beach scene. And ironically enough, two weeks later I'm on a beach. But then my phrase I have was like, I just want to float on the wind like me. I just want to be myself and float with the wind because I had this sense that I'm good enough. And so I'm getting away from a to do list and more into a motto for goals. That's just next time you have me on the podcast, it would have changed. Okay.

Derek:

Sounds good. Yeah. I love it. All right. Number four, what are the core work habits or personality traits that you attribute most to your success? I think asking

Chris:

questions, I think being I think being, being available is really important to offering up services. Being helpful, I think is really important and also making mistakes. That's something we talk about at the dinner table. What mistake did you make today? Celebrated awesome. I fell on my face, did this. My daughter was in the talent show. She did a misstep, which was a big deal for her. So we talk about the mistakes that we make. And so I think it's just like having the connection around us of knowing that we're always going to love each other. And we're always going to be there for each other and just being helpful to people in the world. We created a Schweigel family, like motto of who we are. And one of the things is that we always have empathy towards others and we're always helpful.

Derek:

Love it, man. I love the humanity. The humanness, the openness and the communication that brings about, that's pretty, pretty amazing. All right. Number five, what tool or process has become one of your most important time, money or energy saving ninja magic tricks that you use every day?

Chris:

The first thing came to mind was the do not disturb button on my iPhone. Yeah, of course. Like turning that off. I tried to go one farther and do the gray scale, but I just, I couldn't find the apps that I wanted. And so I'm a total space cadet with operations, so I've got a lot to learn with this. So I need to manually. Shut things off. I watched a biography with Rick Rubin, the producer, and he was talking about talking to Kanye West about how they both live in big white houses with nothing in them. And I was thinking, that's what I want. I want a big white house with nothing in it because then I'm not disturbed. I'm a really big believer in intrinsic motivation. Not extrinsic, intrinsic, meaning this is the stuff that just naturally drives me. Like when you say I nerded out with stuff, that's what you do. And so for me, it's the do not disturb button on my iPhone, the door that you see right behind us and just like getting to it.

Derek:

Wonderful, man. I love it. So Chris, it's been awesome to have you on the show, but before you go I want to thank you for all of your insights and also allow you a little bit of time for you to share with the audience how they can get in touch with you or learn more about anything that you talked

Chris:

about today. Yeah, I appreciate that, Derek. This is awesome. I've always enjoyed our conversations whenever we get a chance to chat. It's so fun. And I love what you're doing in the three degrees of freedom is really cool. And thank you for having me on. I'd like to share a couple things if audience members are into it. One is a free resource and it's a mental edge masterclass that I created. So this is a daily email you'll get from me for free. Three weeks, 21 in total. And what you'll get is a little topic that combines mental health and business productivity. And it's all curated by me. I did all the science there and all the research behind it. So you get an email from me every day and I made some videos. I had some fun making videos that kind of go go along with the the curation there and some homework involved. So that's totally free. That's at infinite skies dot life backslash masterclass. Also, it's not released yet. I don't know when this podcast is coming out, but it's going to be February 13th. I'm releasing the stars course. So I've had some people ask, Hey, can I do this async? Can I do this process that you take people through on my own? And so I spent some time creating a course and it's going to be at infinite skies dot life. Backslash stars. And if anyone wants to get it, that's listening here, type in three degrees. I'm gonna give you half off that. So I'm gonna have a promo code three, the number three in degrees. You get half off it. So it's 11 videos. It'll take you a few hours, but you'll destroy your limiting beliefs. You'll get print offs of all my stuff. You'll get the gingerbread man. And you will be a new person. Give yourself a weekend. You'll be a completely. Different person playing with house

Derek:

money. Absolutely, man. I love it. Absolutely. And I think I'm going to be taking advantage of that for sure. Thank you so much, Chris. It was a pleasure having you on the show, man. It's so great to have you here to talk about all of these very important mindset things that really roots under everything that we do as an entrepreneur and as a human being walking around this planet, trying to do the best that we can. So for the listeners out there, I want to also thank you all. For listening to this point in the podcast and wherever you can, please interact with us. Please leave a a comment anything you can do, subscribe with us. So that way we can get exposure to more individuals and then grab incredible guests like Chris on the show, appease those algorithm gods. So Chris, thanks again so much for coming on the show. It was awesome to have you,

Chris:

man. It is a pleasure, Derek. Thanks so much, man. You ask great questions.

Derek:

Thank you. I appreciate that, man. Looking forward to the next time. And for you audience listeners, we'll see you guys next week. Take care.

Chris:

All right. Take care Yeah.