This week on Acta Non Verba, I’m discussing the common practice of making New Year’s resolutions, citing that 80% of people fail within two weeks. Rather than repeating the cycle, I have four transformational questions to help leaders align their goals with their vision and purpose. This episode provides an insight into the philosophies, tactics, and strategies used by successful leaders to overcome adversity and lead extraordinary lives.
Episode Transcript:
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Acta Non Verba is a show that’s raw and real, featuring hard-hitting interviews with people that live by the ethos of actions, not words. Marcus Aurelius Anderson is a TEDx speaker, best-selling author, veteran, and leadership and mindset coach.
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With this show, you get to join Marcus as he goes inside the minds and experiences of the world’s most successful warriors, leaders, entrepreneurs, and experts. With each episode, you’re going to get the philosophies, concepts, tactics, and strategies these leaders use to turn adversity into victory. Live an extraordinary life based on actions, not words. Now here’s your host, Marcus Aurelius Anderson. The word resolution has multiple meanings.
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one of which is the action of solving a problem, dispute, or contentious matter. An example of this would be resolving a disagreement. And while many make New Year’s resolutions religiously year after year, statistically over 80% of those that do fail and completely quit within two weeks. This is a dangerous precedent to establish. Why? Because when it happens over and over, year after year, eventually they decide internally, you know what, forget it, I quit. And the danger in this
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is that they will eventually fail and quit for the last time. They will eventually give up completely. They may think they’ve quit temporarily, but deep down they lose the will to fight at all. This often makes them go off the rails and into a negative spiral that’s really difficult to recover from. For that reason, I offer these four transformational questions that are better than any bullshit resolution you could ever make. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and this is another installment of Octonon Verba’s Warrior Wisdom.
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In these shorter solo episodes, I’ll highlight lessons from warriors past and present from all kinds of settings, from the battlefields of Greece, Italy, and Japan, to the Middle East and more modern day warfare, including tactics seen in business, society, and culture today. I’ll also be sharing lessons based on my own teachings and experiences. The reality is this, the world is a battlefield, and to not master these lessons leaves you grossly unprepared for the adversity that you will inevitably face in the future.
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Today’s lesson is one that I give to my leaders, CEOs, and co-founders that I coach, and companies that I give keynotes to. These questions offer powerful insights to help leaders gain clarity around their vision. It’s also a great way to realign our goal with our purpose. Now on to the meat of this lesson. These four questions are great for the end of the year, which is when many will come up with their New Year’s resolutions. Doing these questions once a year is fine, but I recommend doing these questions at least twice a year.
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I myself do these questions once a quarter, and I’ll have my clients do them as well because it falls naturally in with other end of quarter evals and reviews. Now, these four questions are meant to be written down and journaled on, but just listening to the questions and giving them some deep consideration is also incredibly edifying. Even taking one of these four questions as a standalone meditation practice or thought exercise will give you clear and robust answers.
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I sometimes consider one of these questions before I go for a walk or a run just to let my subconscious chew on the question as a form of acting moving meditation. The answers that reveal themselves either in the moment or in the subsequent future are always profound. The four questions are as follow and again they are best used in a journaling capacity. Write the question out, then simply write whatever comes to mind to answer regardless of what it is and continue writing until you feel complete or start repeating yourself.
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There are no limits or minimum requirements. Just write. Here’s the first of the four questions. Number one, what have been the most significant events for you in the last 12 months? These can be any area of your life, any event, whether it be personal, physical, business, or spiritual. Just write whatever comes to mind. There are no wrong answers. Number two, after reflecting on your answers from number one, the second question is,
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What do you want more of in your life over the next 12 months? Number three, after careful reflection over your answers to questions one and two, the third question for you is, what would having those things do for you? Finally, number four, after reflecting on all the previous questions and answers, your final question is, how will I know when I have it? Now, question four is not a trick question, but it helps you see quickly.
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things that you desire that are specific and categorical, things like how much money you would like to have, how many properties, etc., compared to things that don’t have a specific metric. Things like, I’d like to have more peace, I’d like to have more happiness, or I’d like to have more quality time with my family, or a healthier exercise and diet regimen. And while the first things have a metric that are easily measurable, the second thing may not be something that you can easily put your finger on. Yet, if you ask yourself honestly
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If you do feel like you have more peace, or you do have more happiness, you can usually answer that with a yes or no. And those are the four questions. Please, do not underestimate them and don’t let their simplicity fool you into disrespecting the process. I’ve used these four questions with clients for the last seven years and they’ve all found powerful insights and breakthroughs each time they engage in the process. And it does the same thing for me as well.
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If you do the work to answer these questions as deeply and honestly as you can, you will not be disappointed with the results either. Keep in mind that you may answer these questions once and then reflect on them repeatedly, giving you even deeper depth and clarity each time that you reflect. And that’s the power of questions like this. The more we open ourselves to the process, the more the process opens itself to us. Again, the four questions. What have been the most significant events in your life over the last 12 months?
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Number two, what do you want more of in the next 12 months? Number three, what would having those things do for you? And number four, how will you know when you have them? Thus endeth the lesson. I know that there’s a lot to detail in this lesson, so go back and listen to it again and be sure to take notes. Remember, knowledge that is acquired but unutilized is the equivalent of ignorance. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this lesson, I recommend going back through the entire
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and checking out my other Warrior Wisdom episodes and lessons. I have other coaching lessons learned from Jaco Willink’s exclusive leadership event, The Council, which only allows 20 people to attend. I also have lessons from the RTA Syndicate events, lessons that I learned from Ed Mylett, Andy Versola, and David Goggins to name a few. If you like interviews, I have interviews with guests like the author of The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery, Robert Greene, the author of Objective Secure, the first green beret to lose his leg in combat,
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and return to active duty with a prosthetic, Nick Lavery, as well as interviews with former Navy SEALs Jason Gardner, Carlos Mendez, and Rob Jones, all of whom are instructors at Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s Echelon Front. All those episodes are free, so go download them now. While you’re there, hit subscribe and tell us what you think about this episode in a review on iTunes or wherever you listen, because this helps us attract more listeners and spread the OCTA non-verbal mentality.
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If you feel this information was valuable, share it on social media and with anyone that you think would benefit from this knowledge. To learn more, go to Marcus Aure Until next time, live a life of actions and not words. Live a life of Okta Non-Virba. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
