Hello, hello, you chasers of excellence Patrick here with a quick introduction to this week's episode. I'm calling it a benchmark.

We are Ben and I are quickly encroaching upon 200 episodes of chasing excellence.

Huge thank you to those folks out there who have been listening from the start.

And I thought it'd be fun every once in a while as we get closer to that number to revisit some of the big episodes from the early days of the podcast.

Some of the episodes that still get good download numbers that people still talk to us about that I still think about as kind of big keystone episodes or keystone ideas throughout the history of this podcast.

And so that's what we're going to do today. We're going to do our first benchmark. We're going to go all the way back to January 10, 2017 with an episode that we called daily discipline.

So we're going to get into it. We're even going to start with the old school intro. I hope you enjoy it.

Again, thank you to those who may be listening to this the first time around and Ben and I will be back next week for a brand new episode of chasing excellence until then.

Enjoy this benchmark.

There's a whole lot of things that are outside of your control. Let them go. Let them go. Just focus on what is the best thing I can do the best thing I can do to maximize my potential.

My potential.

All right, Ben, it is January 3rd. So a time when a lot of people are thinking about the year ahead, maybe the year behind and obviously very common to set us at some time to think about goals or or New Year's resolution.

I thought this would be a good time to talk to you about that, especially in light of the fact that I know you hate New Year's resolutions.

So I wanted to begin first with why do you hate New Year's resolutions?

I don't hate New Year's resolutions. I was very news resolutions.

You could say we're responsible in large part for changing much of my life. So they were effective for a part of my development as a person as a coach as a businessman as a person that likes to live with some sort of self discipline.

So when I was very young, I would do New Year's resolutions and it would be things like I'm not going to eat chocolate for this year or I'm not going to whatever it was.

As I got into health, I made some really drastic New Year's resolutions where every single year I literally give something up starting my junior college. I gave up red meat and then that went away. I came back for a meat.

But another year I gave up sweets didn't do sweets all night. I gave up baked goods and didn't do any baked goods and those things stuck like I didn't eat a sweet or a baked good for 14 years.

So they have their place and they can be powerful. So for people that they work for, I love them. Right. So if they work for you and you're doing them and it's changing your life, awesome.

That's not the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people make New Year's resolutions and then everyone knows the story by Valentine's Day. They're long forgotten. If not, I mean, it's already January 3rd.

I'd be impressed if a lot of people are holding onto him today. Right. So for the very small population of people that are incredibly self-disciplined, that are incredibly goal oriented, that have that will power to stick to something. Awesome.

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