Brant Phillips Show 13: Slow Down

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Welcome my friends to be The Brant Phillips Show. Today we’re talking about slowing down. For those of you who know me or know about me may think that that’s a little bit strange that I’m talking about slowing down. I get it because I’m a very fast-paced kind of guy. I’m very type A. I’m a very just feed off the energy and motion. I love business. I love just staying active.

I’m going to share something with you. That sometimes slow is fast and fast is slow. I’m going to tie this back, I’m going to tie this lesson back to some insights that I had whenever I went through the Ironman experience a while back. For those of you who don’t know, I’m into, I don’t want to say extreme physical events or anything because I’m just like an average dude physically. I’m nothing special but I like to take part in some things like some MMA fights and some CrossFit games and Coeur d’Alene and Ironman and SealFit kind of stuff.

A lot of times it’s not simply, all the times, it’s not simply because I want to just get in better shape or experience some type of physical result. That’s part of it but a lot of the times the reason that I put myself through these challenges, these physical challenges is for some of the other insights that come to me, some of the deeper insights that I’ll get that I can apply to the other areas of my life.

A while back I got into the Ironman, competing in the Ironman. I did two half Ironmans and a full Ironman a while back when I was getting into that. For my first full Ironman, I actually flew up to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho because I had a couple of buddies who encouraged me to get into the Ironman from the beginning. I agreed to go up there and join them to do my first Ironman in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

A couple of a little backdrop of me going up there was one, it was in the middle of the summer. It was late June, early July. Coeur d’Alene, Idaho is typically very, very cool even in the summer time. From what I’ve been told, it’s like mid-70s, mid-80s maybe. They really don’t see the 90s even up there. It’s relatively cool compared to Texas where it’s a freaking sauna and heat waves and all this kind of stuff and you may die doing the Ironman during the heat of the summer.

When I went to Coeur d’Alene, it was a record heat wave. It got up to 108 degrees during the Ironman event. The very peak highest recorded temperature ever was the day of the Ironman race. A majority of this race was on blacktop roads which you know they reflect the heat.

Then another insight was that I trained in Texas. Where I trained in Texas in the Greater Houston area my friends, there are no hills much less mountains. For those of you familiar with Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, it ain’t nothing but mountains the entire way. I had not trained on one single mountain or hill the entire time. I go up to Coeur d’Alene, I had trained in the heat so I wasn’t too worried about that. Actually the heat didn’t really bother me that much. There was people like, a third of the people didn’t even finish the race and they contemplated reducing it down to a full Ironman to a half Ironman because of the heat which they did not do. I was really happy about that.

The heat didn’t bother me so much as the hills. The first time I hit the hills, it was tough. The heat in the mountains, I’m like, “Oh Good Lord. I had not trained for that.” I hit these mountains. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Ironman, it basically starts out on about a two and a half mile open water swim, 2.4 miles technically. Then you go on a bike ride. After that about 112, it was 112, 114 miles I can’t remember. Then after that, you basically run a marathon 26 miles. The season Ironman they say basically the swim and the bike are really the buy-in to where the real race begins is when you start the run, the 26 mile run after doing all that. Pros finish this thing like in eight hours but there’s like a 17-hour cutoff maybe it’s 19 hours, I really don’t know. I should really brush up on my Ironman facts here.

Anyways, the point is this. The point is this, after going through the swim and I was around the 45 mile mark, somewhere around there on this 112 mile bike ride and I’m going through these incredibly, incredibly steep mountains. At this point in time, I don’t know if it’s 104 degrees, 106 degrees, 108 degrees, I don’t know what it was. There wasn’t any shade out there either. There was no shade. At this point in time, just collectively I was beginning to hurt really bad. Just, I was hurting. After swimming a couple of miles and this 45 mile bike ride in this 100 degree heat through the mountains and I was hurting.

During this time, the thing about the Ironman is this, is that there’s really no one to talk to when you’re in an Ironman. There’s people around you but you’re swimming and you’re biking and you’re running so it’s not like you’re sitting there chit-chatting. You really have this opportunity to have a lot of time and space just to be alone with your thoughts especially when you get out on some of these long distances on the bike ride. You’re out in the middle of nowhere and you’re going for long periods of time and you don’t even see anybody else.

I’m going out on this bike ride and I heard these small still voices, not an audible voice or anything like that, just getting this thought in my head. It was just telling me to slow down. I just had this thought in my mind about slowing down. I kept hearing it over and over and over. It’d go away for a little bit and it’d come back.

Hey, this is Brant. I hope you’re enjoying today’s show. If you’re in a place in your life or your business where you just feel stuck or you just don’t know what actions to take to help you get unstuck or on to the path to creating the results you truly desire, please take a few minutes and go to my website, brantphillips.com. There are some really valuable resources and information that may be able to help you out. If you’re interested in really speeding up results with the help of a coach or mentor and adding true accountability and guidance to your life and business, please reach out to me from my website as well at brantphillips.com or going directly to www.brantphillips.com/coaching. Now, let’s get back to the show.

I just started thinking about the words slow down. What does this mean, slow down? I just really started thinking about this and like, “Why am I hearing these words slow down? I’m in the middle of a freaking Ironman race and I’m hearing the words slow down. It really had nothing to do with what I was doing in the Ironman but I started thinking about my life, my family, my business, travel, events that I do, the chaos. About just how fast my life moves and just how life in general moves. I’m sure it moves this way for you as well. This sounds familiar, just life moves fast.

While I enjoy the chaos most of the time and while things in my life and my business for me are really, really good even though it’s really, really hectic, collectively as a whole, on this Ironman I just started thinking about my life. I’m like, “It’s moving too fast.” My life, my business, sometimes they’re moving too fast, there’s too much on my plate.

I just really started taking this to heart thinking about who I am or why I’m this way because you see I love to create. At my core, at all of our core I believe that we are made in the image of God. I believe that we’re made in the image of a creator, God who created everything that we are and everything that we do and everything in this world. I believe that inside each and every one of us is this desire and this ability to create whatever that may be, new ideas, experiences, businesses, relationships, connections, whatever it may be is we’re born to create.

I love to create new things but I haven’t always done an adequate job of creating enough space to just slow down, rest and recuperate. It’s much like an automobile that drives and drives and drives without changing the oil. Eventually it’s going to overheat and break down. That’s a lot of times I push myself, I just, I don’t know why. Just I’m driven this way. I love my business. I love what I do. Just like I don’t take much downtime and I’m like driving this engine that at times it’s redlining.

Also sometimes I’m driving, not only am I driving this engine hard, but there’s times I’m looking back at some agreements that I made and commitments that I made that really aren’t in alignment completely with who I feel called to be with not only who I feel called to be but what I feel called to do. Some of you may have heard me reference this as my zone of greatness.

I believe that’s what this voice inside of me was telling me was just to slow down and create more time just to rest, recuperate and just get back focus to creating a life and a business built on true freedom and true space to be able to create things that are my zone of greatness. To be able to create the space to respond to this voice inside for whatever it may call me to do on any particular day and to be able to work with the people, the clients and businesses that I feel that just called to work with and inspired to work with.

My message for you on today’s podcast is just to encourage you just to slow down. Just in the midst of the chaos that may be going on in your life. Because if we fail to slow down, we’re going to certainly miss some of the finer things in life. In order to have it all in life, meaning to experience true spiritual connection, we have to slow down. In order to create deep loving relationships and connections and bonds with our loved ones, it requires slowing down and creating that space with them. Taking care of our health and fitness. We’ve got to slow down and give our bodies not only the focus and dedication during our workouts but also time to just slow down and rest and recuperate. Let yourself sleep in on the weekends. Give yourself a cheat meal. Just slow down a little bit.

Then also with our businesses, just creating our “Ideal” business, and I use the little air quotes for ideal because I know the ideal does not exist. It’s just like the horizon. It’s something that we pursue after and it’s always evolving and changing. We’re always pushing after it. Creating our ideal business and generating income through the ideal ways for us to spend our time requires slowing down. Slow is fast, fast is slow. Creating clarity, creating agreements, partnerships, businesses that we’re in integrity with 100%.

I just wanted to share this message about slowing down. I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt the times when I do slow down are when I experience my greatest connections. In general, it’s when I have my greatest ideas. Even when I began to contemplate competing in the Ironman, going to the Ironman it’s when I really began, actually when I think back on it, was during the time when I had also began to slow down in my life and create more space just to be able to experience new things and consider new possibilities. That is my message for you my friends today is just slow down.

We get it. Life moves fast. That’s going to happen no matter what. We all know this but we also know that amidst the chaos of life how incredibly important it is to create some space to just slow down. My friends that’s all I have. I just want to say that I love and appreciate each and every one of you. I thank you for listening to the show. Until next time, I look forward to helping you create results in your life and in your business.