Shownotes:
In a world where change and challenges are constant, how do we adapt and optimize our identity for peak performance? Anthony Trucks, former NFL, three-time American ninja warrior, author, and international keynote speaker, offers compelling insights into this question. In an empowering chat, Anthony offers his message of hope and tactical strategies for handling life's transitions, leading us to excellence in defining moments. As we dive into his teachings, let’s commit to looking for a microstep from Anthony that we can integrate into our life immediately that will compound over time.
About Our Guest:
Anthony Trucks is a former NFL Athlete, American Ninja Warrior on NBC, international speaker, host of the Aww Shift podcast, author of the Identity Shift book, and the founder of Identity Shift coaching. He uses cutting-edge research in science and psychology to upgrade how you operate so you can elevate your life and business to reach your full potential. After being given away into foster care at 3 years old, being adopted into an all white family at 14, losing his NFL career to injury and more he learned how to shift at a very young age, and now his life mission is teaching others how to do the Dark Work to Make Shift Happen in their lives.
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Anthony Trucks on Mastering Dark Work and Identity Shift to Achieve Excellence
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About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
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Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: Hello friends. I am so excited for today's guest. I mean, you're going to hear it in my voice. I'm going to try and play cool. We have today Anthony Trucks. Hi, Anthony. Thanks for being here.
Anthony Trucks: Thank you for having me. Excited to chat with you.
Lainie Rowell: I would love for you to just share a little bit of your story.
Anthony Trucks: Yeah, yeah, well I had somebody one time give me some good insights.
He said, it's not your story. It's your experience. It's the world's story and so with that It belongs to the world and my job to give it as a gift. So I never have a feeling of like, Oh, I've said it before. I go, man, I get to say it again. So I'm happy to share it and hopefully people can pull something from it.
But for me, I was given away as a kid into foster care at three years old and I kind of dealt with the whole really heinous foster care system. I was in for 11 years six houses got adopted at 14 by an all white, very poor family. So I had to kind of navigate the sense of who am I? Where do I fit in?
Tried my hand at something. Football wasn't very good. Decided after kind of checking out, I want to check back in. and leaned in and did some things that were uncomfortable. They didn't feel like it was who I was to do them, but it produced a stronger athlete, a more confident athlete. They got a scholarship to go play football at the University of Oregon, where I met my biological father on a kind of weird process.
Had my first son with my high school sweetheart at 20 years old, a sophomore in college. I don't recommend doing that. And then I navigated that, got a chance to play in the NFL for three years, tore my shoulder, came home, had to figure out who I was without football, had two more kids with my wife now, like that time with my wife, so we had twins, and just life blew up.
I didn't know who I was without the game and had to kind of find a way to go to the darkness really, really dark times, I'll call it, and got divorced, so it wasn't very good, and then after three years divorced I remarried my ex wife, we have an amazing marriage, and the things that I've learned from those periods of time have been really for me, the catalyst to finding some way to make use of it.
Did that make sense? Like it was the, because you go through dark times, it doesn't have to be a reason to do poorly, it could be a reason to do great. And so in my life now, I show up and I teach from my life experience in ways that people can apply to their own lives.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and there's this thing we talk about in psychology that people don't always know about, and it's post traumatic growth.
And a lot of people have heard of PTSD, but a lot of people have not heard of post traumatic growth. And when I have delved into your experiences that are now the world stories and thank you for that gift, I see how you have gone through the darkness and come to light. And. One of the things, I've read your book, Identity Shift, Upgrade How You Operate to Elevate Your Life.
One of the things that was really profound in there to me was when you said it was a commitment to doing what it took to be great without a promised return of actually being great.
Anthony Trucks: Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: That, wow, like that really took me back because it got me thinking about how sometimes it isn't even about you.
It's. trends and forces and just how things have come to be that were out of your control. And so I'd love for you to just share a little bit as you reflect on your experiences. You know, how has this commitment to just doing the great things without the promise of that return? How has that kind of helped you transition through challenges?
Anthony Trucks: Well, I'll start with this. I believe individuals need to fall in love with the day and not just the destination. There's this really good connection, like what's it gonna be when I win, when I have, when I get, when I attain, when I achieve, and it goes great, right? The problem is every day when that's your goal and you wake up and you have that as a goal and you go to sleep and don't have it as an achievement, you start to feel a certain way that's not positive always, you start judging and, you know, comparing why don't I have this so far, but for me, I realized a lot of individuals because of that having been an issue, they won't even start in the first place because the last time it was hard, so they quit too early, but if you fall in love with the day, which is I go, I'm going to start with great effort before I know I'm going to be great, what happens is you start loving the journey.
You love the day, you love the process, and you're going to spend more time on the journey. It's like you're going to spend more time climbing the mountain than at the peak of the mountain. If you hate the climb, you're not going to reach the peak. So what I've looked at like when I was a kid is this is when it actually took place.
I was 15 years old. I wanted to play football, tried it out. I was horrible at it. I wasn't very good for a couple years, in fact, and at one point I checked out and then a moment of kind of like waking up took place and they go, I want to try my hand at this. And I go, what do people that have this as a reality do?
And I looked at the things and they were not things I did. They didn't seem comfortable for me to even, you know, pursue these actions. But I realized that if I could fall in love with them, like, they would just get done. And if they get done, I get the outcome. But if I'm battling myself to do it every day, it sucks.
And it's just a bad journey. It's not fun. So what I did is I started kind of loving the dirty, dark, gritty part of the work, which is what I now call dark work. And it's interesting is that's the stuff that when you fall in love with that, and you commit to the great effort before you know you'll be great, well, you'll just give your all.
And no matter what it is, the price of success is your all and then some, just so we're clear. A lot of individuals, they go, well, I did everything, I did my best, your best sometimes isn't good enough. I'm sorry to tell you that, but it's a genuine truth, but you can get better. And so if you give your all, you have a better shot.
And you have a better opportunity to climb and you'll know what to do, but if you're always basing it on I don't know if I'm going to work out, I don't know if I'm going to get the outcome, you will never give your all, so you never have it. So for me at that age, I go, I'm going to give my all, and I did.
I showed up, lifted weights, ran routes, things that didn't feel comfortable, that were not my, you know, sense of self. And after seven months of doing this, I show up the next year to football, I'm an animal. I'm faster, I'm stronger, I'm bigger, I'm meaner though. I had this mentality of, I've done too much work in the dark to lose in the light.
I'd given this, this deposit of energy and my return was the sense of pride, self esteem, and actually skill set. And so when I went out there, like I shined differently. And so for individuals who are sitting there going like, I want to work towards something, I just don't know if it's going to be, you know, worthwhile.
The truth is, it's not going to be worthwhile. It's not. And it's going to say, it sounds weird to say this way. It's not going to be what you think it is. It's going to be better, way better, because you haven't realized what you have when you get there is something great, but you haven't realized who you feel like when you get there.
And you never touch that, you haven't tasted, but when you have that in your soul, it's a different sense of like, I could do this. And so for me, I started out, and that was my first foray into it, and over the years I learned to do it again and again, and now when I approach something and I go, this isn't going to be fun.
I hate doing this. This action is suck to go. How can I fall in love with these things? How can I get to a point of like joy, weirdly, around this thing that everybody else hates doing, because if I could find joy somewhere in it, and I don't do this only because it's gonna work out, and I just do it because I love to find a way to do these things.
I'm going to do them. So on day 72, when they stop, I'm going to day 772, I'm going to win eventually and win big. And I'm going to love the journey of it all because I started to become the person that does these things. And sure enough, I get that achievement. And then I get more and more and more and more.
So if you can let go of the, I got to make sure I'll get the outcome first. You let go of that and go just work every day and fall in love with that. The outcomes will come faster, they'll come more frequent, and you'll actually have a greater feel than you can imagine.
Lainie Rowell: One of the things that you said that stuck out to me was Well, you can find the joy in it, right? Even if it's something that you don't necessarily want to do, there are ways that you can bring joy into it and really fall in love with that process, even if it's maybe not in the beginning something that you're like, I can't wait to do these reps.
I can't wait to do this, right?
Anthony Trucks: Yeah. I mean, it's actually, there's psychology around this. When you have a clear plan of what you're going to get done and you know the steps, the milestones to get there. Even when they're hard fought, you get a little dopamine dump when you make a step. You actually feel good about doing the little thing that got you closer, but here's the other part about it.
The harder the thing is that you actually accomplish or get done that day, the prouder you are of yourself. It's like, I always talk about this cause it's true. And I didn't notice until recently, but people like the first rule of CrossFit is always talk about CrossFit, right? It's like what they talk.
It's like the unwritten rule. Oh,
Lainie Rowell: I think everyone's doing a good job on that.
Anthony Trucks: You know what I mean? And I go, why is that? And my wife, she's amazing. She's had three kids and like. When she's around ladies, it's like, how many kids you got? Three. What was it like in labor? They start talking about, and there's like, they, they sparkle, their eyes are lit up.
I'm like, what is so joyous about this thing that she hated in the moment, right? And, and what it is, it was hard. So hard, CrossFit's hard, birth deal's hard, business is hard, and when you've done something hard and you've overcome and you're on the other side of it, God, you have this chip on your shoulder that makes you feel so great.
Why rob yourself of that?
Why not lean into it? Why not embrace the suck of whatever it is, knowing that when you get through this thing, it's hard, because it was so hard, you'll have an amplified sense of confidence in self and you'll actually in time find a joy around it.
Lainie Rowell: And that gives us so much hope.
And actually, going back to, I referenced post traumatic growth earlier, and I don't think I explained it well, but just even knowing that it's possible after something is hard to grow and to be happy about something, or at least be grateful for something, that's, enough, actually, even just knowing that this is possible, and so you're giving us that gift of knowing, like, when you accomplish these things, you're going to feel better about it, even if you're not feeling great about it in the moment, so.
Anthony Trucks: Yeah, yeah, no one's ever done a hard workout and go, man, I hated that I got that hard thing done so well. Nobody, I mean, it's just, it's always something tied to that, like, it's really got to be something when you lean into that being the fun part of it.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, well, I think this is a good opportunity to talk about the key stages of operating, and you share this in your book, The Three Stages of Operating, how you plan for future moments. How you handle the planned moments when they arrive, and how you handle the unplanned moments. So could you tell us more about this? Because I think this is a really important tool to have to understand.
Anthony Trucks: Yeah, so we all have these ideas of what's going to happen, and they say life is what happens between your plans.
So, you got an idea of what's gonna take place, and, and on, you know, rare occasions, I'll genuinely say, it pans out the exact way you expected, right? It's like, I planned for this and it worked. And then you have these moments that, you know, that, that come across, and there's, there's a few, but the ones that I look at are like, here's the moment I planned for, here's the moment I didn't plan for.
And those are the two heavier ones to me, but what happens is, is we show up to moments that are unplanned, or something happened we didn't expect, and we have never thought about how we should react in that moment, we never process what, what we could do, or ways we could react, and so I like to tell people, like, when you have something coming up, you got something starting, What I'd recommend is going, hey, if this doesn't work out or something goes wrong, how am I going to stop at that moment of realization and process it?
Am I going to freak out? Am I going to yell at somebody? I just had a project that's coming to the back end on my, on my home here. And there's a lot of things that go wrong. Now, I knew from language and people that go, hey, it's going to go way over budget, which we went way over budget. They go, it's going to be, there's gonna be random headaches.
We had a guy drill a nail into a one inch. pipe that has a whole bunch of power cords in it. Killed the power in the house. I'm surprised the dude didn't hurt himself. Like it could have been very bad. And so it's these things where I go, in the moment of it happening, I'm not freaking out and yelling at the guy who's doing it, because I told myself early, hey, it's going to be a long project.
There's gonna be things that happen when something happens, not if, when something happens. Here's how you want to do it. Pause, breathe, ask yourself. Was it intentional? If he didn't do it intentionally, it's an accident. He probably feels just as bad. If he doesn't feel just as bad, you probably shouldn't have hired him.
And so, but he feels just as bad. How do we solve the problem? So I do that and I was actually to track me. And all of a sudden I get an alert from my ring alarm. It goes, hey, all the power in your house is off. And I told this guy, don't do this in this area. So when it happened, by deduction, the only thing that could have happened was that.
So I'm like sitting here going, I'm, I'm five hours from my home. I can't get there fast. I don't know what's going on. The cameras aren't working. I call the guy. He's not even there. His worker's here doing the work. And so I'm figuring out little by little like what's going on. I'm like, dude, get back to the house.
Make sure he's okay. I told him not to do this, and I think it happened. So lo and behold, he did it. We had to dig the concrete up, all this stuff. We had to go down the floor. I mean, it's a whole thing. And the dude was deaf. He wasn't answering my calls. Deafly afraid of it, talking to me. I finally got him on the phone.
I go, look, let me start by saying this. I know you didn't do it intentionally. I know it's purely an accident and they happened. All I want to know is how are we gonna solve this problem? And so we figured it out. He got, it was done by that night. He had, he had a guy come in, took care of fixing it. It cost him the money to deal with it, which was fine.
But imagine if I just like, what did you, and went off, he's, he's gonna get mad cause he's, and here they go, I didn't do it on purpose, right? These guys yelling at me. I'm a grown man. I'm going to be like, and all of a sudden it might not get done, right? But I pre planned in advance how I would respond to a situation like this.
So because of that, I navigated it better. Now this can happen while I was at my house. It could happen in your marriage. It could happen in your business. It could happen in your health. It could happen in some goal. If you want to launch a podcast, right, and something doesn't get done, if you look at what the goal is to have, the outcome isn't goal.
That's the goal to be. What's the best way to respond if and when something goes wrong? Well, when something goes wrong, it won't derail everything. Cuz all that could happen is more bad. If I yell at him, he doesn't do it. You know, I got to delay a part of the project, everything else gets spun out, right?
All because my emotion or my inability to plan what I want to do and let my emotions run the show. It happens and too many of us have that. We let the emotions take over and run as opposed to going to any kind of logic. And when emotions high, the functional intelligence gets low. I'm going in the directions of, of just seeing red, and that thing's running the show, and that shouldn't run the show, you know?
So that what happens is that I'm navigating things that were pre planned and I'm running into a wall that I knew I was going to run into and I go, here's the tool I brought to climb this wall, let's now apply that tool.
Lainie Rowell: Hope for the best, I expect things could go wrong.
Anthony Trucks: Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: And then,
Anthony Trucks: but plan for the worst though.
Yeah. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
Lainie Rowell: And so this intentional approach to how you're going to have this interaction with the person who made the mistake. Because the best possible outcome is that you work together. in a state not filled with anger, which of course is a very justifiable reaction.
You like, I told you don't do this. But I can say that in every aspect of my life, I can look back, whether it's with my kids or with my peers or whoever it is. And freaking out as a response has never gotten me the best results.
Anthony Trucks: No, and then I'm just mad that I didn't get the outcome I wanted and then I get frustrated.
I think I'm frustrated at the thing not getting completed and I'm more frustrated at the fact, probably subconsciously, that I hindered it getting done because of how I handled it. And I heard this thing one time recently, I might have been like last week, and I don't know where this has been all my life, but it says an individual is only as big as the smallest thing that can take them out of their pocket.
Like, whatever my pocket of excellence is, whatever thing can remove me from that, that's as big as I am. And so, when I have situations pop into my life, in the last, like, week, it was perfect timing when it came in. I'm having to deal with some craziness. Not bad, but it's just, you know, business stuff. It's part of the journey.
But as it comes in, I go, well, like this guy drilling a hole in this thing. I'm like, I told the team, don't nail or screw in this area. It's like a four inch space. Just not here. Of all the areas, that's where they went. And so I go, well, if this is a thing that can unrattle me, like it just shakes me a little bit, unravel who I am, then this is as big as I am and I'm bigger than this.
It's like, all right. I can handle this. So I'm, I'm bigger than this smaller problem, and that's been an active thing I can think about. I'm going to think about that a lot over the years from now on.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, I think one of the things I truly appreciate about your work is this sense of personal responsibility.
There are things that are out of our control, but what are the things when the time comes, what can I do to have a positive impact for me and for others? And I think that, yeah. That really shines through in all of your work.
Anthony Trucks: Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of it may not be my fault, but it's my responsibility.
I think that Mark Manson, the guy that, you know, subtle R of not giving a F. He goes, it may not be your fault, but it's your responsibility. Like, my foster care life, that wasn't my fault I was in foster care. I had a mom who couldn't handle it, but it was my responsibility to make something of myself from it, not to make it a reason to do, you know, criminal acts.
And so the truth is a lot of us, we, we feel like a leaf in the wind. And it's crazy because the only reason we feel like that's because we don't act. And I don't know if we don't act because we think we can't change anything, or think we're not at fault so we shouldn't have to, but the truth is, whether you cause it or somebody else did, no one's gonna come save your life for you.
You better act. And then in acting, you can solve things. Now, truth is, you know, we're the common denominator in all of our problems. Either we caused it or we're allowing it to happen.
Lainie Rowell: Right.
Anthony Trucks: And if we can step into that role of going, Alright, I allowed these people into my, my pocket of, of peace and, you know, I, I should have filtered it better.
Now I can take some ownership and go, You know what, alright, I need to filter people better. That's an action for me. And they, they made this issue arise. While they did it, it's their fault, they're not gonna fix it the way it needs to be fixed. It's my job to do it, so I step in and do it. But then also, there are things that are my fault, that I don't want to pay attention to, because having to chip away at my own ego is hard.
Like, for everybody, it's hard to accept that I'm not the greatest in the world. Although we'll tell people, I'm not perfect, right? But the moment something arises that goes, you're not perfect, you go, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, I didn't do that, it wasn't my fault. Like, no, chill, just accept the fact that you're not perfect, you already said you weren't.
And in that, you can go. Maybe it might be partially something you did and that's okay. So now that it is, guess what? Because you had the power to create the problem, you have the power to solve it. But it doesn't, it's gonna come with a little bit of a poke or like a little jolt of like, Oh, that was partially me.
Cool. Let that, let that ride, absorb it. Let's now move forward and fix this. So it becomes part of a great story. I watched a video yesterday by Alex Hormozan. He says his dad gave him one piece of advice, that winners write the history books, which genuinely is true. He goes, so all the crazy bad thing that's happening, when you get to the point of succeeding and you win, you can rewrite it for all of whatever purpose it needs to be.
Yeah, you stumbled over this and messed it all up, but look where you're at now. But if you let that thing drag you into the ground, history's already been written.
Lainie Rowell: I love that nuance of partially responsible, because it's not an all or nothing. It's not just, well, this happened to me and I had no control over it.
Or, oh my gosh, I'm such a failure, how could I have done this? It's, it's a subtle, like, Okay. I had some role in this, whether I meant to or not. This is where we're at, and now I'm gonna take responsibility and get where we need to get. So I think that's really empowering.
Anthony Trucks: Yeah. It, it doesn't feel good, but it is, like I, I write my book and you read like I, I had my wife had an affair and like our marriage fell apart, we're now remarried, have an amazing marriage.
But the truth is it took years to get to the point of realizing she made a choice. And it was a horrible choice. We take nothing from that. She'll accept it and embrace it. It was a crappy choice. But I had to realize that it took two people in that relationship to get her to a point where she even thought she had to make a choice like that.
And so I didn't take full, like there's definitely 50 50 in that aspect. I absorbed, like damn, I wasn't a present husband. I put her in a position to have to make a choice like that. Again, her choice, take nothing from it. I don't take still that choice, right? But I had to take my role in that. And so it wasn't full, but it was partial.
But that partial, here's what it does. Before that moment, In my head I go, I don't know if I can trust women ever again.
Lainie Rowell: Right.
Anthony Trucks: Because I had no control over the situation happening. I could have been the best, I was the best guy in the world. And I was, I was amazing. I never hurt her, I never did that to her, right?
So what's the, what if I get in another relationship and it happens again? I don't know if I want to give my heart, and you start walling your heart off. Because you wouldn't accept, I'm saying me, you wouldn't accept that maybe you had some role to play, boss. And then once you do go there, okay, dang, I had a role to play.
While it sucks that I did, I can empower myself to be a better person next time so I can ward this off in the future. Which is how my marriage works so well now. I'm aware of things that took place back then that, that had me away. Like, and what her, her, you know, needs are. Like, there's certain, I felt it, I understood it.
It's a responsibility. So that I could actually with that have trust and hope and make something better in the future.
Lainie Rowell: When I hear about your experiences, I see this through line of, obviously, resilience, perseverance, and when I say resilience, I don't mean just in the, like, bounce back to where you were before, I actually, as Tal Ben Shahar would say, Resilience 2.0, again, I keep coming back to that post traumatic growth, but I see that in you, as it might not happen day one, but, you know, after something like, what happened in your marriage, you took some time, figured things out, and then came back stronger. And now you're in this relationship that's better than it's ever been.
And that, I think that just gives people a lot of hope that it's not just a, okay, well, that's done. And I have to move on from that. It's like, well, what can we do to improve and make it better and make ourselves better.
Anthony Trucks: Yeah, you learn from it. You don't wall it off, you don't have so much pain around it, you won't revisit it, you actually dive into it full force and unpack it painfully, but it creates a promise for the future.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, that continuous improvement is not like a steady all up hill like it's that zigzag, right? It's messy.
Anthony Trucks: It'll eventually it keeps going up right but there's definitely shooting up and down if you look at the stock market same thing like it's up and what it was 20 years ago, but it goes down a lot, too
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, absolutely.
I want to make sure we talk about another tool that you share in the book, and that is the H.A.R.D. Approach, which is part of your shift method. Would you be cool with sharing a little bit about that? Because this is so, I really, I mean, I love the whole book, five star review already submitted to Amazon, but I really, yeah, please, I won't, I won't do justice, but habits, reactions, drivers.
Take it away. Yeah.
Anthony Trucks: Yeah. So it's funny, I was at Google two days ago and we actually unpacked this process 'cause change is hard. It is. Robin Sharma says that change is hard in the beginning, messy in the middle, beautiful at the end. And I love it 'cause it is the beginning of, it's all hard, but I wonder, you know, why is it hard?
I question that. I go, what's a process I can apply? And somebody, once I said, call it the easy method, and I go, I don't wanna lie to people. And I want you to embrace the hard stuff. That's why my brand is called Dark Work. It's that work you do in the dark that's difficult. It's supposed to be unsexy. You know, not, not appreciated, misunderstood at times, but that's what gives you that chip of like, I did that anyways.
Now what it means is if I, if I set my sights on something, I'm approach a change in my life in some manner and I call it an identity shift. It's going to be hard and it is. It's a collection of habits, actions, reactions, and drivers. The habits are the things that are going to be We'll call it active things you do little by little by little that compound.
And I'm a person that say, I don't think you should go big in life. You should go really small in a really big way. A small, simple thing you do that compounds over time. There's great books on this of habits, like Atomic Habits, and Mannerist Success Habits, and High Performance Habits. There's great books that talk about habits, right?
It's really the same thing, is do something small in a really big way. Stick to it. But you're also gonna have along the line some big actions that have to be taken. Those big asks, those, those big ends, those big stops, right? There's big actions, and those ones are gonna, they're gonna be scary. It, it just, it is.
It makes your butt pucker. It's like, ooh, I don't want to do this, right? But that's the natural part of your body going like, hey, I'm afraid of this. Why? Because it's probably important. So I fear it. And so there's gonna be big actions along the way. We then go to the R, which I kind of talked to earlier.
What's the reaction I'm gonna have if it goes well, or if it goes poorly? If it doesn't go as planned, what am I, am I gonna shut down and cry? And, and, you know, if something doesn't pan out perfectly? No, I'm telling myself now my reaction is to pause, cry for five minutes. Settle back in. Get back on the saddle and go.
Right? That's your process. Cool. We're gonna do that. So when it happens, go back to that. And also if it's great, what happens if it goes great? All right, I'm not gonna squander my money or my time or my newfound success. I'm gonna be smart with it. Great. I have a reaction to when something goes well. So plot that.
Plan that. So when things go as they go, because again, it's what happens between your plans, you got a reaction in place. It'll drive you in a direction because it's pre thought out. The D is a driver. Meaning what's the thing that drives you to do this? The sole reason, like the why, that underneath, like what's the desire we'll call it?
Because for a lot of people, they'll get in the middle of these things and go, this is hard, I don't even know why I'm doing this anymore. And you fall off track. But if you've written down, okay, I'm gonna put this group of habits in, it's going to be hard. I'm gonna make these big actions and asks. It's gonna be hard.
I'm gonna have this as reactions. Gosh, it's gonna be hard. Why am I doing this? The driver. Is it because you want to have an amazing marriage? Is it because you want to be a great parent? Do you want to have a successful business? Do you want to be able to employ great individuals? Do you want to change the world in some manner?
If that's what's underneath it, you know why. When faced with that moment that's like, why am I doing this? You can go back to that. And that's how you push through the hard moments to make, in time, life actually easier.
Lainie Rowell: Oh, I love it. I want to share something that towards the end of the book you say that I think ties to stuff we've been talking about throughout and just I find really profound. You say, "my identity is not tied to what I create, it's tied to my efforts to create." And I love this focus on process over product. And so if you want to expand on this, I'd love to hear more about it.
Anthony Trucks: So if I go back to the books called Identity Shifts, and there's a level at which we will do certain things that drain us.
It's all willpower, right? Because it's not who we are to do it. When it becomes who you are to do it, it's actually effortless effort. Right as a kid, it was like, oh, I gotta brush my teeth. Nah, right now. It's like I just brush my teeth It's it's who I brush my teeth. I don't want stanky breath, right?
Simple way to look at it But there's gonna be things like that for all of us. I don't want to do cold calling now I'm like, I'm a Cold Call King, right? Eventually become the person that does this thing and the reality is you have to focus on that in a stance of like it's It is hard and is energetic.
But if you're a person that goes into a stance and go, I don't know how to do this yet. What you'll typically do is go have that imposter syndrome and go, I don't feel like the person that does this it's going to be too hard. I'm never going to flip that. I mean, we actually shut down. We make really good excuses to tuck away from it.
It's because people identify with the outcomes. And what I found in my work is like my focus when I say lean into Dark Work, which the goal for you is to optimize your identity for peak performance, to perform at a high level and what I call a dominator's identity, a sense of I can govern and control in defining moments.
It's really what I want you to have. You step to a moment that's defining and have power inside of you. The way you get there, is that you look at this and go, all right, I may not do this thing, but I'm gonna try it. But if I wake up every day and go, I'm not the best singer in the world, and that's all you're measuring against, then after a while, you're never gonna, you're gonna stop.
'cause you're like, I, I can't keep feeling like I'm not the best singer. So I go, no, no, don't identify with the outcome. Identify with the effort. So what do the best singers do? They spend three hours a day doing whatever. Okay, cool. I'm gonna spend three hours a day doing that. What do the best athletes do?
They spend, you know, the first month doing this and the second day doing this, and they just, they do this. And whatever it is it's outlined. I'm going to identify with doing the actions. The thing is, is when you identify with doing the actions long enough, you do the actions, there's this moment in time that pops up and none of us know when it happens.
You usually will never, and honestly you'll never notice it, you'll notice that it happened, which is I wake up and go, I'm a damn good tuba player. I'm amazing out here on the soccer field. Like it's crazy how good I am. Because at some point it just became who you were to do it because you identified with the actions.
I'm the person who every day I get a hundred dribbles on the soccer ball, right? I'm the person who every single day I'm gonna, you know, spend three hours on a violin. That's who you are. And then when that's who you are to do those things, eventually become the person who does it. And now you can't go to bed without doing it.
It becomes effortless effort. What was hard to do is hard not to do now. And that's the catalyst for me. I look at everybody that makes people great. And so whenever you step into the world of what you do, that dark work I'm talking about, it's identifying with the efforts of what it takes to become that person, not the outcome and measuring yourself to a place you obviously are not at just yet.
Lainie Rowell: I just love that. I really appreciate that. And you mentioned for habits, James Clear and Atomic Habits.
And he says most people think what they need is intensity and what they really need is consistency and that's what you're talking about and that's what you really inspire people to do and I appreciate that. So, I'm going to ask if there's any other words of wisdom that you just really want to make sure, you've given us so much, so I feel selfish and, and greedy in asking this.
Anthony Trucks: There's so, I mean there's too many, that's the thing, there are too many things I could throw out there, I could talk like this for hours and hours and hours, I do, I talk about things like this all the time. I think the world that I live in is one where, I find we're all looking about, you know, creating, developing, accomplishing.
One I would say is set your own scale. I think that's the most critical part of all this is I think your scale needs to be something that you develop in private or with your loved ones that lets you know what success looks like, like when you've crossed that finish line, because without that, the finish line will never stay still.
It'll always move. And no matter what you accomplish, it'll never feel good enough. And if you borrow the world's scale, there's never enough. There are trillionaires who want more money. So what ends up happening is a lot of us step into a world where we're not realizing we're setting ourselves up for failure because we have failed to create an outcome that is what I desire.
And if somebody challenges it, I can go, great, but I still like what I got, you know? And so what I do is I set my scale. I have my client set their scale. I go, Hey, let's, let's fast forward a year from now. What is genuinely life look like in a way where you go, I love this. What does it look like? Are you, are you traveling a little bit?
Traveling a lot? You making more money? You making less money? Do you have more time with your family? Like, for example, in my world, I speak. I love speaking. I'm great at what I do, but I only want to do 24 speeches a year. I don't want to do more than that. There are some people that go, I'm gonna do 150 a year.
That makes me, I want to throw up at the thought of that. Not because it's a lot of speaking, because I'm gone from my house. More than half the year. I don't want to do that. I'm in season of dad. I want to be home. I want to wake my kids up and be here when they do wake up. I want to get them from school.
I want to be at their sports. That matters to me. So because of that I turn things down or I raise my rates and and I've had a lot of people to go But and you could be on so many stages. You're right I could but I would miss out in the stage of life of being a parent I want to be a father and that's my scale. So when somebody goes, but you could be doing this I go, I'm glad you see that. Awesome you feel that way I still feel great because last week I got to be at my daughter's thing My son's thing go see my wife do this That for me is way more important than speaking to 5, 000 people and having some good social media posts, but that's my scale. Doesn't diminish anybody else's. I'm not saying you should do what I want to do.
I'm just saying it fits for me. But if I didn't have that in place, I would feel FOMO, comparison, every single day, and I'd feel like empty at the accomplishments I have. So when I set my scale, it gives me a North Star to move towards it, and it helps me answer every hard question. Will it help me be in Season of Dad?
If not, it's a no. If yes, let's do it.
Lainie Rowell: I think that's really important to, I mean, anything to avoid the comparison hangover, nothing usually good comes from comparison it's good to have aspirations and to be inspired by people, but trying to compare your chapter 1 to someone else's chapter 20 is, I think, something people have said that's usually not great.
So I love that you're talking about set your own scale and, and not just what. the general public or other people in your field would think is the sign of success. What does it actually look like for you? And I can, as a speaker, I can really relate to that because I, I don't want to be on the road all the time.
That would, that would mean I don't get to be writing as much. Obviously I wouldn't get much time with my family. So that's not the order of priority, family first, then writing, but. Yeah, so I completely connect with that. And speaking of connecting, let's tell people how they can connect to your work.
Obviously, I'm going to put everything in the show notes, but I just, in your own words, what are the best ways for people to stay in touch with you and your brilliance?
Anthony Trucks: Yeah, yeah. So I'm not sure when it's going to come out, but we are finally launching the Dark Work website. So if you go to darkwork.com, there's an assessment on there that lets you determine or actually see what your Dark Work Identity is essentially what it is a whole assessment of what's called your dominator's identity.
I had a PhD helped me create this so it's a pretty awesome one So that'd be a good place or just go to my social media at dark work or at Anthony trucks Likely at Anthony trucks has a lot more traction where I'm personally located. But that's that's the place man go see what I do and see if it's engaging and fun And if it is I say apply something I've taught it's really all it is just snag one nugget, say I'm gonna do that and then go do that thing,
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and wherever you are and whatever type of work you're doing, really to be thinking about where do I want to be a year from now and trying to think about what are the habits, the actions, the reactions, and the drivers for all of that, right?
I guess that year from now is the driver, but you know, what are the habits, actions, reactions that you're going to need to get there? So, so much wisdom, Anthony, I feel all the happiness chemicals flooding my brain for this time with you. Thank you very much for being here and thank you all for listening.
Anthony Trucks: Welcome. Thank you for having me.
