Gravel Racing, Not Taking Anything Personally & Wall Street Adopting Bitcoin

May 05, 2024

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Bigger Things in Life: Adventure Together

One of my core tenants in life is to “Adventure Together”. I love to adventure with family and also with friends. This weekend I was fortunate enough to complete an 80km gravel bike race called the Scrappy Badger with my buddy James. Being out on the course, pushing ourselves, riding rolling gravel fire roads and trails with view of Lake Ontario, getting way out of our comfort zone and also, doing it together was just the best. It’s a reminder to myself to keep pursuing bigger things. And makes me want to train harder, be better and do more races.

Bigger Things in Self: Don’t Take Anything Personally

I recently read “The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom” by Don Miguel Ruiz & Janet Mills and while all four agreements are important, the Second Agreement “Don’t Take Anything Personally” really struck a chord.

It’s amazing how many times I take things personally.

“Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally”.
“When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts. You make something big out of something so little, because you have the need to be right…”
“I don’t take it personally when people say, “Miguel, you are the best,” and I also don’t take it personally when they say, “Miguel, you are the worst.”… Either way, it does not affect me because I know what I am. I don’t need to be accepted.”
“No, I don’t take it personally. Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is nothing peronsal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me. Others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system, so nothing they think about me is really about me, but it is about them.”

No one can offend us, we can only CHOOSE to be offended.

“Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind”.
“Whatever people do, feel, think or say, don’t take it personally”.

It’s amazing to me how “Don’t Take Anything Personally” can help so much in business and in life. Even though I know this, it is hard and there were a couple of emails last week that I can’t help but take a little personally. And not taking it personally is really, really hard.

When I’m struggling with this, I do a few things that help:

Considering the mental battle this is, I need to start my day with my “bucket full and overflowing”. If I start the day depleted, when these difficult moments hit, I do take it personally and then end up regretting my response. And so, to “fill my bucket”, I start most days at 4:59am (it makes me feel badass that I get up in the 4s), read something inspirational, journal, pray and workout. Doing so gives me the mental fortitude and overflow to “not take things personally”.
I try to imagine what that person is dealing with and what they are going through. My clients are Executives and Business Owners with many significant pressures on them.
I think about and remember what I love about working with them. They are working on very complex and interesting business challenges and most have aligned values so they are awesome to support.
I shift the conversation to “how can I help them most, how can I serve them”. In doing so it totally shifts the focus off of me and into service.

Not taking things personally is difficult at times. Very difficult. But there is massive freedom to myself in not, as well I can serve at a much higher level. Most people deep down know it’s them, not me, and when I just constructively move forward to serve them, the company, the project, we continue to produce significant results.

Here is a link to my Servant Mindset worksheet for free download.

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Bigger Things in Money: Wall Street & Institutional Money is Running Toward Bitcoin

Wall Street and major Institutional investors are quickly moving into Bitcoin. The below tweet and video touch on the avalanche of institutional money about to move into the asset. Someone recently said to me “I thought Bitcoin was dead?”. Nope, it’s actually the opposite of dead, it’s the world’s best performing asset over the past 1, 5 and 10 years. Do yourself a favour and spend a minimum of 10 hours learning about it. Bitcoin today is like where the internet was at in 1994. Start with Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with $10 Trillion Assets Under Management. And for a quick start, watch this short video by Hunter Horsley, Bitwise CEO.