From the archive: This episode was originally recorded and published in 2020. Our interviews on Entrepreneurs On Fire are meant to be evergreen, and we do our best to confirm that all offers and URL’s in these archive episodes are still relevant.
Jimmy Rex is an adventurer, entrepreneur, networker, and author of a new book “You End Up Where You’re Heading: the hidden dangers of living a safe life.”
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Resources
Jimmy’s Instagram – Connect with Jimmy!
You End Up Where You’re Heading – Check out Jimmy’s site to stay up-to-date on his book launch date and pre-order availability!
3 Value Bombs
1) People choose to have a safe life because they feel comfortable with it; but you can expand your horizons and see the bigger world.
2) Human brains are wired to sense what is comfortable or what is uncomfortable; unfortunately, your brain does not know that society is safer now.
3) The true beauty of life is looking at yourself and going forward without expectations. Do whatever you want to do; you only get one life and it is your life. Take that unsafe path and explore your journey.
Sponsors
BELAY: If you’re looking for highly vetted, US-based fractional virtual contractors, then check out BELAY! Learn how to reclaim your time and save 15 hours per week by mastering the powerful tool of delegation. Text FIRE to 55123 to get started!
HubSpot: HubSpot’s all-in-one CRM helps you automate tedious tasks, keep track of all your deals in one place, and make sure your whole team has access to the same data. Get started for free at HubSpot.com!
Show Notes
**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.
Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: The Hidden Dangers of Living a Safe Life with Jimmy Rex
[1:47] – Jimmy shares something interesting about himself that most people do not know.
- He has diplomat status in Mexico.
[3:26] – What does “The hidden dangers of living a safe life” mean?
- In the past, when civilizations were just forming, the explorers had all the dangers and the settlers were safe .
- Nowadays, with social and technological advances, most of the dangers of the frontier were wiped out, but the danger is if you are the one who is staying in a safe place
- Addiction, Obesity, Heart Disease, Anxiety, Depression…
- The idea of the book is to show that you think living a safe life is building yourself in the small world – but the real beauty of life is getting out and exploring what is out there.
[6:09] – Why do people choose what they perceive to be the “safe” life?
- People choose to be in a safe life because they feel comfortable with it; but you can expand your horizons and see the bigger world.
- Jimmy shares his experience traveling the world. During his travels he saw the beauty in the other worlds that existed. He got to see different parts of life and culture.
- He realizes that once he got to know the things that he used to be uncomfortable with, discomfort vanished and was replaced with love.
[7:56] – JLD shares the travel experiences that brought him a new perspective.
[9:28] – In the book – Heroes’ Journey, where do most people get stuck?
- Human brains are wired to sense what is comfortable or what is uncomfortable; unfortunately, your brain does not know that society is safer now.
- Most people tend to focus on the wrong rather than the right.
- Your family and friends want you to be safe. It makes it harder for you to explore your path.
[12:05] – A timeout to thank our sponsor!
- BELAY: If you’re looking for highly vetted, US-based fractional virtual contractors, then check out BELAY! Learn how to reclaim your time and save 15 hours per week by mastering the powerful tool of delegation. Text FIRE to 55123 to get started!
- HubSpot: HubSpot’s all-in-one CRM helps you automate tedious tasks, keep track of all your deals in one place, and make sure your whole team has access to the same data. Get started for free at HubSpot.com!
[15:05] – How can one find their mentor?
- Part of the Hero’s Journey is finding the people who will guide you on the path.
- A few keys to finding a good mentor:
- Be specific about what you are looking for in a mentor.
- Find somebody that you look up to.
- Find somebody who has similar traits and qualities as you
- Your perfect mentor is somebody who is currently where you want to be.
[20:15] – How do we know if we are on the wrong path?
- A lot of times you can be on the wrong path.
- You need to take a look at your entire life and feel whether you are in alignment with your true self.
- Meditation
- Exploration
- Sometimes you have to give up the good to get to the great.
[23:48] – Jimmy talks about “The Cave”.
- Eventually, you will have to face your inner battle. The Cave is a dark place where only you can enter. As an explorer, it is the hardest test you will face.
- “The saddest thing is having all the achievements without fulfillment.”
[29:44] – Jimmy’s parting piece of guidance.
- Too often in life you have expectations of what your life is supposed to be. And usually, those expectations are not your own. The true beauty of life is looking at yourself and going without expectations. Do whatever you want to do, you only get one life and it is your life. Take that unsafe path and explore your journey.
- Jimmy’s Instagram – Connect with Jimmy!
- You End Up Where You’re Heading – Check out Jimmy’s site to stay up-to-date on his book launch date and pre-order availability!
[32:26] – Thank you to our Sponsors!
- BELAY: If you’re looking for highly vetted, US-based fractional virtual contractors, then check out BELAY! Learn how to reclaim your time and save 15 hours per week by mastering the powerful tool of delegation. Text FIRE to 55123 to get started!
- HubSpot: HubSpot’s all-in-one CRM helps you automate tedious tasks, keep track of all your deals in one place, and make sure your whole team has access to the same data. Get started for free at HubSpot.com!
Transcript
John: Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here with an audio master class on the hidden dangers of living a safe life. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Jimmy Rex on the mic. He’s an adventure entrepreneur, networker, and author of the new book, You End Up Where You’re Heading: The Hidden Dangers of Living a Safe Life. So, we’re gonna talk about the dangers of living a safe life. Why most people choose what they perceive to be a safe life and why that’s actually not the case. We’re gonna talk about the cave. You’re gonna have to tune in to hear about that part and so much more, Fire Nation, as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.
Jimmy, say what’s up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know.
Jimmy: What’s up, John? Well, one thing that’s super interesting about myself, and what’s up Fire Nation, is I actually have diplomat status in Mexico.
John: Whoa!
Jimmy: Yeah. That’s something. I also have an honorary doctorate degree from 11 universities in Mexico. So, I guess that’s pretty interesting.
John: Now, does Mexico have non-extradition with the Untied States? Is that what you’re getting to?
Jimmy: No. It’s nothing to do with that. Me and a couple of buddies worked with a group for a while called Operation Underground Railroad. We’d go undercover in Mexico and help rescue kids that were being sex trafficked.
John: Right. Yeah.
Jimmy: And so, they wanted to honor us and so we got this diplomat status. It only works when we go to the airports in Mexico, but we get to skip the lines and stuff like that.
John: That is pretty cool.
Jimmy: Yeah. I like to say I’m a big deal down there. Not so much up here.
John: I’m not trying to push it, though, but don’t diplomats have non-extradition to the United States?
Jimmy: I believe so. I’ve said before to some people, I’m like, “Look, if we ever need to take care of somebody, we’ve just got to get them to Mexico.”
John: That’s what I’m saying, right?
Jimmy: Yeah.
John: That’s good to know, man because it’s not that hard to cross that border. That Rio Grande is not a formidable obstacle. But, love the Underground Railroad. I know Russell Brunson talks about that all the time at ClickFunnels and Funnel Hacking live events and he’s doing a lot of great stuff with that. It’s an amazing cause, so thank you for what you do there. And, Fire Nation, as you know, I’m going to be talking about the hidden dangers of living a safe life because Jimmy’s written a great new book called You End Up Where You’re Heading: The Hidden Dangers of Living That Safe Life.
And, let’s just kick it right off, Jimmy because what do you mean exactly when you say there are hidden dangers of living a safe life? I mean, don’t we just want to minimize our risk? What’s the deal with this?
Jimmy: And, that’s what’s kind of funny is, in the past when civilizations were forming and everything else, the whole purpose was the explorers had all the danger, the people that went out and did those things. They left the settlers behind. The settlers’ job was to build walls around those places that were already mapped out to kind of help make it predictable, eliminate surprises, destroy diversity, build walls, forts, till the fields, reproduce all those things. And, that was the safe life was to be the settler. All the explorers, even the good ones the we know about, Marco Polo and others, they ended up getting killed on their explorations, but these settlers had kind of this safe life.
And, unfortunately, it’s all kind of changed. Now, with social and technological advances, we’ve wiped most of the dangers of the frontier. Calories are cheap. Transportation’s safe, it’s fast. Plagues, minus the coronavirus, has pretty much been eradicated. But, modern day explorers, they’re the ones that get to venture out with the high degree. They have a lot of uncertainty, but they kind of know they’re gonna return in one piece. You’re not worried about having to sail the seas with unsmooth waters. You’re not having to worry about people thinking that you’re doing witchcraft or heresy or things like that.
And so, where the danger come in now, the reality is, if you’re the person that’s sitting and settling and you’re just kind of staying in your safe place you’re gonna have a lot of harsh conditions coming out of that. You’re gonna have forms of addiction, obesity, burnout, heart disease, anxiety, depression. And, for what? So, you can maybe get a little bit bigger house, you can have a mediocre relationship, comfort. So, for the whole idea of the book, the whole idea of the title and everything else is, we think that living a safe life is kind of camping in and kind of building ourselves into this small world, but the real value, the real beauty of life is getting out and exploring what’s out there.
John: It is really interesting because when you think about it and you hear all those stories from the olden days, you hear that phrase over and over again that you can see who the pioneers are because they have the arrows in their back.
Jimmy: Yeah, yeah.
John: They’re the people that went like, “We’re going west!” Like, “We’re going to the Pacific!” And, you never heard from them again because they went out, they went into Native American country where they just had exposure because of the Rocky winters and all those different things. So, it’s really interesting to hear that things have flipped because most people, they choose what they perceive to be this “safe life.” So, beyond what you’ve already shared because you’ve already kind of shared a little overview of what that happens. Let’s get into a couple of specifics on why we as human beings do this and why maybe we shouldn’t.
Jimmy: If you picture there’s a map on a table and somebody’s got their head over the map and they’re looking at this map and they see that as their entire world and they think, “Okay, this is what I know, this is what I’m comfortable with. This is where I feel safe.” And, most people live their whole lives with that map zoomed in. But, somebody were to come up and go, “Hey, pull the map back. Pull your head back,” and you notice the map is 100 times bigger than you ever thought. And, this happened to me in my own life. I was born to believe one thing and I lived that way for over 30 years and then all of a sudden, I had a couple of life experiences and I started traveling the world and I’ve been to over 68 countries now.
John: Wow.
Jimmy: And, with my travels, every single time I went there was so much reward and there was so much joy. There was so much beauty in these other worlds that existed. It was like I got to see so many different parts of life and so many different cultures and every time I went, I learned other things. And, I started to realize that all these things I was uncomfortable with, once I got to know them the discomfort went away and it actually became a much stronger love. So, I’ll give one example. I was in Egypt a couple of years ago and a good friend of mine had invited me to go with him visiting his family in Egypt.
And, I always had this fear, just being honest, of Islamic people. And, his family was there and they had this beautiful Islamic family, about 30 of them, and when I first got there, I was so uncomfortable. And then, all of a sudden, I saw the love and the way that they took me in. His mom came up to me and she said, “I’ve been worried about my son in the United States for 20 years and having met one of his best friends, all my fear is gone away. I can see he has these beautiful friends.”
John: Wow.
Jimmy: And, it creates these atmospheres. It creates these experiences, these life experiences, where you just truly get to step out of your old map and look at this new forma and it’s so much more bigger and so much more beautiful.
John: Now, I had a very similar experiences. I grew up in a very small town in Maine. I went to Providence College in Rhode Island, which is in New England. So, I spent basically the first 22 years of my life in this very tiny corner of the United States, let alone the world. And then, yes, I did go into the army. So, for four years I traveled a decent amount. But, when you’re in Iraq you’re not necessarily seeing the country like I’m mostly behind the wires except for these little forays we’re going out during my time in the army.
But then, I can remember so clearly is that while I was in law school and I made the decision to drop out, I was like, “You know what? It’s really time for me to get out and really spread these wings and really zoom my map out.” And, that’s when I went to India for the first time and I did a four-month backpacking trip through India, through Nepal. And, it brought this whole new perspective. And, I’ll tell you, when I came back it set the foundation of me eventually launching Entrepreneurs on Fire a couple of years later, which of course has now been rocking for eight years.
So, Fire Nation, if you get just trapped in that small map, you’re gonna have small expectations. You’re gonna have small opportunities. You’re gonna have small sights of what can actually happen to you in this world. When you zoom that map out, suddenly a lot more things become possible. It’s not always gonna come from the areas and directions that you think, but that’s the point of zooming that map out.
Jimmy: Yeah.
John: Now, Jimmy, in your book you talk about the hero’s journey. Where exactly do most people get stuck on this part of their journey?
Jimmy: For example, most people, it’s not that they’re not explorers, most people, they’re just human, right? When an untraveled path shows up, fear and discomfort make appearances to stop you in your tracks. And so, you’ve kind of got this one-two punch of survival that has worked for thousands of years. Our brains are literally wired to look for what is going wrong or what’s uncomfortable because that’s how it kept us alive. But, our brain unfortunately doesn’t know that we’ve evolved into a much safer society in so many ways and so it’s always looking.
That’s why negative news catches the attention so much quicker than positive news. That’s why most people tend to focus on what’s going wrong in their life and not right. Every guru or every motivational speaker will talk about gratitude because it’s the only way you can retrain your brain to look for what’s going right as opposed to what’s going wrong because it naturally wants to see what’s going wrong. And so, just thinking about something unpleasant can induce physiological feelings of pain and sadness. It’s like why you say you die 100 deaths or die 1,000 deaths or whatever. It’s because anytime you feel that pain of what you think could happen to you, actually your body experiences it as if it actually happened.
And so, I don’t know. So, for me, that chapter, that Facing the Frontier … And, a lot of times what happens unfortunately is, our family and friends want us to be safe as well and they don’t know that when they’re trying to keep us safe, they’re actually kind of screwing us over. Because, they’re gonna tell you to do the safe thing. They’re gonna tell you to do the thing that makes them fee safe towards you and everything else. And so, you see that all the time. You hear people, everybody that’s accomplished something, the biggest naysayers are usually the ones closest to them and that’s why it’s so much harder to actually break out of that frontier and go and explore your own path.
John: Fire Nation, the key word I just want to go back to is, exploring your own path. This is your world and I’m telling you, over and over again I’ve heard from so many of my past guests and from books that I’ve read of people that are looking back over their journeys. The regrets that they have, the ones that let other people influence their path. So, it wasn’t their own path, it was their mother who wanted to just brag to all of her friends that her son was in law school or that her daughter was in med school or that the brother or the grandmothers or the family or the friend, whatever it was. It was them pushing their map, their path, on other individuals that leads to nothing but regret.
Draw your own map. Draw your own path. Make that happen. And, if you think Jimmy is even close to being done dropping value bombs, you have to wait until we get back from thanking our sponsors.
So, Jimmy, we’re back and I have literally been pounding the drum for years now for people to invest in mentors. Finding my mentor was a huge massive part of my journey and a big reason why I was successful. My mentor was key, fundamentally key, in me having a successful launch of the podcast and the first few months running an actual entrepreneurial business. Talk to us, share with Fire Nation how we can find our mentor.
Jimmy: Yeah. And so, this is one of the most important parts of the entire explorer’s journey, the hero’s journey, is you have to find people to guide you on the path. So, for me in my own life, for example, I’ve had seven or eight key mentors along the way. I’m a real estate guy is where my background came from. Even, every single part of my life I would search for these people that had been there before because they’ve been through the mountains. They’ve been down the valleys. They’ve been into the cave. They know how to go through these things.
And so, there’s a couple of keys to find mentors. No. 1.) I think one of the most important things because I get asked this a lot. I’ll have people send me a message on Instagram or something like, “Hey, I heard you speak about mentors and I want you to mentor me.” And, it’s like, okay, well, there’s a couple of keys to having a good mentor. No. 1 is, you want to be very specific of what you’re looking for in a mentor. You want to find somebody you look up to not just because of what they’re doing or where they’re at, but because of the struggles they’ve been through, their trials, how they overcame them.
You also want to find somebody that has similar traits and qualities to yourself. Figure out … This is the key to the whole thing is. I always say, if you want to find a mentor, you’ve got to figure out how to provide massive value for that person. And, everybody needs something in their life, but people are busy. So, a lot of these guys that are mentors, so many people want to be mentors, but what you don’t want is, you want to know that your time spent with that person that you’re mentoring is going to be of value. And so, you want to see somebody that has enough desire, that has enough heart, that’s going to go out of their way to do the things you teach them in order to get there.
So, one of my mentors is a guy by the name of Paul Hutchinson. And, when I first met this guy, he kind of tried to blow me off. I met him, it was a networking group, and this guy was just different than everyone else. And I just said, “I don’t know why. I don’t know how. But, I have to know this guy. I want to be friends with this guy and I want to learn from this guy.” And, sure enough, he was the one that ultimately led me to Tim Ballard and that group to work with them for a while. But, when I first met Paul, he tried to blow me off and I knew I had to provide value for him. And so, when he first tried to blow me off, I just refused to go away.
He ended up inviting me to this sponsored dinner that was like quite a bit of money and I did it. And then, I brought my most amazing friends that I could find and we created a fun atmosphere. And then, all of a sudden, he’s like, “All right, let’s go to lunch.” And then, he explained, he said, “Well, here’s a couple of things that other people are doing.” I did them all and I just kept going back. And he came back later, we ended up becoming … he’s one of my closest friends in the world now and he’s mentored me for years. And, I’ve literally met more people and had more experiences of life through this human than probably any other two, three people I’ve met in my life.
And, he said to me later, he said, “Jimmy, the reason why I finally … you basically got in a me and you became so close,” he said, “Every single time I asked you to do something you overdid it. You did whatever I asked and then some.” He goes, “You have no idea how unique it is to just show up and do what you say you’re going to do.” He said, “In my life I’m so busy and I need people all the time for different things.” And, he goes, “The value of having somebody that I can 100% count on, that was the biggest difference for me and I knew I wanted to be friends with you as well.”
And so, anyway, that’s just one example. But, too often you see people, they want to be mentored they want to do things, but they’re trying to get from that person right away and the mentor, the whole fun of being a mentor, is to be able to share with that person and know that you’re making a difference and knowing that you really appreciate it. And so, you just want to show appreciation to whoever that mentor is and it’s not sufficient … I mean, I’ll have people that hit me up on Instagram. They go, “Dude, I want you to mentor me.” They’re not even following me yet. You’re like, “Dude, you’re not actually putting any effort into doing this.”
And so, it should be, you want to pick those key people in your life because if you have the right mentor it truly will change everything for you. I know in real estate when I first got in it did the same thing. I was lucky enough, my second year in real estate I was only 24 years old and I ended up selling 98 homes.
John: Wow.
Jimmy: And so, I kind of got the opportunity to be on some stages and talk about a lot of things what I was doing. Well, I got taken under the wing of the three top real estate coaches in the entire industry, Mike Ferry, Tom Ferry, and a guy named Bill Pike and they personally coached me. And, the opportunity that that gave me, I honored that so much. Nobody worked harder and nobody was more grateful for that. And so, by working with those amazing mentors I was able to soak up 20 years of information in less than two and that is kind of what exploded my entire career.
John: One thing I’ve always said, Fire Nation is, you’re perfect mentor is somebody who is currently where you want to be. So, think about those words. Your perfect mentor is somebody who’s currently where you want to be. Now, what do I mean by that? Listen, so many people are saying, “Hey, Richard Branson would be my perfect mentor. If he would just mentor me, life would be perfect.” Well, do you want to run a record company or do you want to actually run an airline? If the answer is no then believe me, Richard Branson is not the perfect mentor.
If you want to launch a podcast, guess what? That dude is not gonna be able to help you launch a podcast. He doesn’t have the knowledge, the skills, the experience and he shouldn’t. Because, if you ever want to launch a podcast, he would just turn a microphone on and he’d let a team do the rest of the stuff and that’s fine and that’s cool. He’s Richard Branson. You need to find somebody who is currently where you want to be. They’re gonna be able to guide you on that journey. Now, let’s call a spade a spade, Jimmy. I mean, sometimes we take a wrong turn in life. How do we know if we’re on the wrong path?
Jimmy: One of my favorite questions is, how do you know where you’re at on the path or if you’re on the wrong path completely? I think it’s a little bit trickier than people think because a lot of times you can be on the wrong path, but you kind of feel like you still have some things going on. You can be happy and be on the wrong path. You can be successful in areas of your life and be on the wrong path. You can be in love and still be on the wrong path. What you’ve got to do is kind of take a look of your entire life and just really try to feel if you’re in alignment with your true self.
If we stop, and this is why it’s so important to take time. We talk about meditation and exploration by yourself and really spending that time with yourself. We live in a world that’s so busy now. That’s one of the gifts of the coronavirus is that it gives us this opportunity to slow down and actually look at our lives and go, “What are we doing that is truly in alignment and where do I feel a little bit off?” And, it’s the first time that I can ever remember, I know I’m a high achiever and so for me, it’s the first time in my life I can literally take time and do nothing to think about these things and not feel like I’m being left behind, not have any fear that I’m missing out on stuff.
And so, it’s been a real gift for me. Even myself as this book’s gonna be coming out in a couple of months and I’m the one that wrote it and I still was on the wrong path in a part of my life. I started doing a lot of real estate coaching and I realized, I’ve never wanted to be a real estate coach. That’s not something I desire to do. And, I’ve got all these courses that I’ve done all these things. And, I’m like, but it wasn’t truly authentic to where I wanted to be. And, it took this slowdown just the last couple of weeks for me to realize, oh my gosh, this is not fulfilling me. This is not … I just was really good at real estate, so I figured that was the most obvious thing to start coaching other people on.
But, I actually have all these other areas of life that light me up. The true stuff is like what my book is all about. Truly getting your inner path and going into the cave and doing these things. And so, for me I just had to drop it all. I told my marketing guy, I was like, “Hey, we’re done with all the real estate coaching.” He’s like, “What are you talking about? It’s everything we’ve been pushing.” I said, “Doesn’t matter because it’s not my true path.” But, it takes that strength to really go, okay, even though I’ve got all this effort over here, if that’s not authentic then what am I doing?
So many people in their life they feel stuck because they’ve put so much effort into something. We do this a lot with romantic relationships, right? It’s very difficult to leave it because you’ve built so much up. You have all these memories. You have all these experiences. But, so many people realize they’re in the wrong relationship, but yet they’re like, “Oh, this is the safe path. This is the safer play.” And, it’s truly not, but it feels like it is. You’re really keeping yourself from a lot of passion, joy, and happiness that are waiting for you on the other side if you actually are willing to go down the scarier trail.
John: So, if I just sum up what Jimmy just shared, Fire Nation, sometimes you have to give up the good to get to the great. Because, listen, a lot of you are really good at things. You’re comfortable. Jimmy was good at real estate. He sold 98 homes in his rookie year. He’s been good at it for a long time. It’s in his comfort zone. People look up and they respect him in that area. And, there’s things that you probably do, Fire Nation, that’s the exact same thing. But, guess what? That good is holding you back from the great. All the magic in your world happens outside of your comfort zone. So, if you’re not getting outside of that comfort zone, Fire Nation, you’re not getting to that true magic.
So, we have to really end on a very serious note, Jimmy, because there is a part of this journey that we have to do alone. And, I love how you go into your description of the cave. So, tell us about the cave. How do we survive the cave?
Jimmy: Essentially, the best way to look at it is, eventually you’re gonna have to come face-to-face with your own inner battle. And, this is a dark place that only you can enter. That’s the cave, right? No guide can go in there with you. No ally can stand up there or take your place. Every person has to go in their own way and go into the depths of what is the cave. And so, a lot of people are just never willing to go there to be honest. But, if you’re willing to go in, it is the hardest test we face as an explorer because you’re gonna go up against a foe who knows all your weaknesses, knows all your fears, knows all your secret shame, the things you’ve never spoken about.
You’re gonna be groping around in the darkness and everything and guess what? It’s all you. You are the person you have to face in that moment. And so, you kind of realize that the real you isn’t strong enough, isn’t smart enough, you’re not deserving enough. But then, you go into the cave and you have to figure that all out. You take the mask off and you just start staring back at yourself and the whole person that you are.
And so, it’s a beautiful example of really going in and going after the thing that we’re most afraid of, which is facing our self. And, when you go in there, you’re gonna be packed with anger and shame and judgment and all that, but as you come out … You can’t go over the cave, you can’t go under the cave, that’s kind of the allegory of the cave is you have to go into it. And, when you go in there and you face those things, you face those demons, you face your shame, you face your insecurities, it’s really a beautiful thing. I started doing that a couple of years ago and I can’t tell you the things that came up for me that I didn’t even realize were there.
But, you touch these parts of yourself where these insecurities or these things that happened to you in your youth. I’ll give one quick example for me.
John: Yeah.
Jimmy: Tony Robbins talks about the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment, right? And, he says that the saddest thing is somebody who has all the achievements without any of the fulfillment. And, for myself I was achiever always. Like, boom, hit this goal, go to the next one. Hit this goal, go to the next one. I’ve got to go to every country. I’ve got to do this. And, I’ve always been an achiever and all this stuff. And, people all the time that loved me, would try to come up to me like, “Hey, are you taking the time to really appreciate this? Are you taking the time to really enjoy all this?”
And, I had an experienced just in December. So, one of my life goals, I had these 10 huge life goals and one of them was to take my entire family on a dream vacation. And, my entire family’s big. I have six siblings and 25 nieces and nephews. And so, there’s 38 of us just in my immediately family including in-laws, my brother and sister-in-laws. And, my big goal was to take everybody on a dream vacation. Well, I had done very well on an investment that I made, cashed a little bit of money out. So, I took all 38 of us, paid for everybody to go, on this Disney Cruise to the Bahamas in December. Good timing it turns out.
But, when I was there … and I loved it. Everybody had the best time, but I didn’t truly get to soak it all in. I was worried about what I was gonna do next and what it meant after this and all these different things. And, it hit me about a month later I was like, man, I didn’t really soak that in. That was a lifetime award. That was a lifetime goal I had and everybody else had the time of their lives, but I didn’t truly get to enjoy it as much as I wanted to. And so, I started really looking, and my life coach asked me questions. And, this was kind of me going into the cave for the last few months. I’ve had to figure this out.
She said, “Jimmy, why do you feel like you always have to be achieving? Why do you have to be exceptional?” And, I was like, “Well, what do you mean, why do I have to be exceptional? Of course, I have to be exceptional. Everybody has to be exceptional.” And she’s like, “No, a lot of people don’t feel that way. They’re just fulfilled just living their life in beauty.” And, I was like, wow, that’s something to consider. I never even thought of the idea. And, what it comes down to is, I was able to really dig into this and work on this. And, when I was a little kid, I was 14 years old, baseball was my life and everything I did was baseball oriented.
My brother was the State MVP. My other brother played college at the university. Everybody was … that was our family. And, I remember when I was 14 years old, I had been on the All Stars every year, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. When I was 14 years old, we were having this year-end ceremony and there was like an amphitheater with all the families there and all of our buddies were sitting together on like the second row, the 15 of us that were always All Stars. And, one by one they would call the All Stars up to get their trophy and come on the field. And what I realized, there was about four of us left, there was only three trophies and the other three guys were definitely gonna make the team.
I end up sitting there by myself as one by one my friends all got called up. They were gonna be hanging out all summer and I got left by myself sitting there. And, I remember I was so sad I just started to cry and I was like, I’ve never felt so bad in my entire life. And, in that moment I said to myself, I said, “Jimmy, you didn’t work hard enough.” And, I said, “I will never be outworked again because I didn’t work hard enough. I will never be left out again.” And, I became in that moment this weird achiever that had to accomplish things. It’s not bad to be an achiever, but it is if you’re doing it out of a place of fear of being left.
And so, what I had to do is go back and find that little boy and let him know that he was okay and kind of work through that. And, that was me going into the cave where now I’m trying to step back from all these things that I have to do or I have to achieve. Again, a blessing that’s come from the coronavirus because there’s nothing to go do right now basically. And, long story short, it’s really helped me to try to get to a place where I can achieve from a place of love or want as opposed to fear or anxiety of being left behind. And so, that’s allowing me to have a much more fulfilled life just in the last couple of months.
That’s an example of me … because, it’s not like you go in the cave once and you figure out your life. But, that is a moment where I had to go in the cave, feel that fear, figure it out, and then come back out of that to go – And, that’s the beauty of the hero’s journey is, once you get all the way done, you just go on another journey and you keep up leveling your life in every single way.
John: Fire Nation, embrace the cave, embrace the journey. And, Jimmy, you have shared so many value bombs today. Give us one key takeaway, the one value bomb you really want to make sure that we walk away with. And then, give us a call-to-action for how we can follow you, learn more about you, and then we’ll say goodbye.
Jimmy: Absolutely. So, if I could encourage people to do one thing because, again, the book itself, I cover all these different stories of people that I’ve had on my podcast. You’ve been on my podcast.
John: Yeah.
Jimmy: All these different people that have experienced in one way or another the hero’s journey or living the unsafe, the “hidden dangers” of the safe life, going the other route. But, what I would tell people is, too often in life we have expectations of what our life is supposed to be and usually those expectations aren’t even our own expectations. They’re expectations, and you kind of touch on this a little bit, of our family or our parents or of people that know us. But, truly the honor of life, the most beautiful part of life is truly looking at yourself and going, “Without expectations of what this is supposed to be, what do I truly want to do with myself if everything else was taken aside?”
I was talking to a 19-year-old kid just the other day and he was talking about his dad wanting him to do all these things, but he doesn’t want and he told me what he wanted to do. I said, “Dude, for what it’s worth, permission to just do whatever you want to do. Whatever feels authentic, you need to go that route. Because, you don’t want to look back on your life and have regret because you did what your church told you or what your parents told you. You get to decide. Ultimately, you only get one life. It’s your life or at least one to do this way. And, your life is yours to live, so you have the courage to truly take what feels like that unsafe path and explore your own journey.”
And then, also you can find me on Instagram as Mr. Jimmy Rex, J-I-M-M-Y, R-E-X or just Google me, Jimmy Rex and I’m on YouTube, all the different platforms. But, Mr. Jimmy Rex on Instagram and I try to get back to everybody. The book’ll be out in about two months, but until then I’d love to share a lot of information and things like that –
John: Well, what’s the date the book’s coming out?
Jimmy: We finalize the date probably within the next week or two, but it’ll be before the end of June it’ll be out for sure. Again, it’s called You End Up Where You’re Heading: The Hidden Dangers of Living a Safe Life.
John: Awesome. Well, this is going live June 29th.
Jimmy: Oh, it’ll probably be exactly right there.
John: I mean, this is gonna be perfect. So, Fire Nation, go check it out. See if you can find that book and where can they go specifically, Jimmy, if they want to see if this book is available?
Jimmy: Yeah. We’re gonna be on Amazon. We also have the website TheHiddenDangersofLivingaSafeLife and we also have the website YouEndUpWhereYoureHeading. So, they can go to either of those two websites or to Amazon and just put in my name, Jimmy Rex.
John: Awesome. Well, Fire Nation, good timing. Hopefully that book is ready and you know this. You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You’ve been hanging out with JR and JLD today. So, keep up the heat. If you head over to EOFire.com and type Jimmy in the search bar, the show notes page will pop up with everything that we’ve been talking about today. Best show notes in the biz, time stamped, links galore. And, of course make sure you’re following Jimmy on Instagram, Mr. Jimmy Rex. So, Jimmy, thank you so much for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side.
Jimmy: Thanks, John. Appreciate you so much.
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