Welcome to our latest episode!
Join host Bronson Hill and co-host Nate Hambrick, author of The 18 Laws of Leverage, on the Mailbox Money Show for an inspiring June 2025 episode with Paul Levitin, a mindset and behavior change expert. Paul, a former personal trainer turned coach, shares his EASIER framework to make change sustainable: Enthusiasm, Availability, Straightforward, Imperfect, Exponential, and Repeatable.
Learn how to overcome resistance to change, prioritize high-leverage actions, and embrace imperfection to build lasting habits in fitness, finance, or entrepreneurship. Paul discusses balancing ambition with contentment using the “gap and gain” principle, holding expectations loosely like a scientist, and focusing on what you love to avoid burnout.
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Full Transcript:
Bronson Hill: All right, welcome to the Mailbox Money Show. I am your host, Bronson Hill. I’m super excited to be here today.
We’ve got in the studio Paul Levitin, which is an amazing guy. Talking about Change Made Easy mindset. And before we get started here, Nate, I know, I’ve known you a little while. I know you’re a mindset guy, but I know even change can be hard for you sometimes.
Why do you think change is hard in general for people?
Nate Hambrick: I’m my own worst enemy. Full disclosure, I make things far more challenging than they need to be. And honestly, in one of the laws of leverage is don’t do things you hate.
That’s my attempt at helping people navigate that because we make success so much harder than it needs to be. All it takes is meeting two or three, what I call lazy, successful people to realize, oh, there’s a smarter way. So anyway, I’m excited to chat with Paul.
This is going to be a great show.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. You just heard today I was with one of my team members and we, this sounds like the dumbest thing ever.
I’m just going to share. I guess it’s, but it happens. I had to change a password on Instagram.
We have two Instagram accounts and when we did, we somehow the password for us, we use a password manager. But like if you were trying to change a password on it, you have multiple accounts, it’ll like make you go into like another email or if you had another email, you got to verify from that email and then it was like a 20 minute thing and we still couldn’t even get it figured out. And it was like so frustrating.
But sometimes there’s a way to embrace change to realize that, okay, even though this process is taking a while, I’m still learning something. It’s still okay. It’s I’m going to get through this, but in the moment it can feel really painful.
So on that note, Paul, you’re here to help us make it, let it help us to this to become less painful. Change Made Easy, you’re a coach, you write, you help people write and a lot around mindset. Welcome to the show.
Paul, how you doing?
Paul Levitin: I’m doing amazing. Thank you for having me. I’m excited for talking to both you, Bronson and you as well, Nate.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. Well, I think you can help me based on my personal share there for my Instagram thing.
But so talk to us a little, tell us a little bit about your story and just kind of how, I mean, this is a very niche topic around mindset. But how did you get started in all this mindset work?
Paul Levitin: Yeah. So I started as a personal trainer and a nutrition coach. And this is going back almost 15 years now, working one-on-one with clients in a real gym here in New York City.
That’s where I live. And it kind of flowed naturally from there because right. So I started as a personal trainer, I’m helping people get fit.
So I was 22, 23, and it’s like, okay, I learned fitness. It’s like, all right, well, I understand fitness. So that’s it.
People want me to want to get fit. They pay me to help them get fit. I know how to get fit.
Problem solved. And yet probably anyone who has a brain understands that it doesn’t really work out like that because if it did, we would all be fit because Google exists and now chatGPT exists. So then I’m like, okay, well, then like nutrition is the missing piece.
So I get nutrition. It’s like, now I have to be able to help everyone because everyone knows, oh, well, it’s not just what you do in the gym. It’s what you do in the kitchen.
And yet I still kept coming into this thing of like, well, people still aren’t getting there. Like I’m, I have all of the information I can tell everyone what to do. And I, there’s a missing piece.
So that’s when I started to get really interested in psychology and behavior change, and we know why is it that we do what we do? And then more importantly for me, why is it that we don’t do what we say that we often want to do? And that became the thing I became incredibly interested in and eventually kind of stepped away from the fitness and nutrition aspects specifically and got really into just the literal science of change, because if you peel back the layers, the onion, so to speak, enough times, whatever you want, whether it’s being fit, whether it’s being more wealthy, whether it’s having a better relationship with your partner lies at the other end of change, right?
Because if you want something that you don’t have something about who you are, what you’re doing, what your actions are, or something about your life is going to have to change. So once you understand change, as I understand it, you can then plug in whatever the other thing is. So plug in fitness, plug in nutrition, plug in business, plug in entrepreneurship, and that thing can then happen to what I would hope I help people with easier.
Nate Hambrick: Makes a ton of sense. And actually I was going to ask it because I learned a fun fact this last week that in the Hebrew language, the word belief or belief has a slightly different connotation. Because in English, when we say I believe something, it means that we intellectually understand that if I eat chocolate cake every single day, probably not going to be healthy. And yet we still do it, right?
Versus in the Hebrew language, belief only applies whenever you know something here and then apply it, right? Which it’s a big difference, right? And so I’m curious, since you work with lots of people that you coach, you also work with yourself, which, I mean, it’s a blessing that you get to coach other people through that because then you have to coach yourself, what are some of the changes that you feel like most people, including yourself, need to make to cross that gap?
Paul Levitin: Yeah. So it’s, it’s funny. I don’t know who first said this, but it’s something I’ve stolen.
It’s just like the best research is me search, right? And, all of this stuff that I know, I only know what a, because I’ve practiced it first in myself. Then to your point, Nate, I’ve had the good fortune of being a coach.
So I’m able to see this stuff play out at a grander scale, right? Like most people, they’re like, well, I tried this and it didn’t work. And then I tried this and it didn’t work.
And by the time they try the third thing, they’re kind of burnt out. But for me, it’s like, I’m seeing, I’m like, okay, I have a thousand people to play with. And it’s like, I’ve gotten to see what happens and like how I can actually, what actually works and what actually doesn’t.
So to your point, Nate, like the, or to your question about like, what actually is the thing? I think that if you want to get a strip it all down, it’s the simple fact is that change is hard, right? I just said everything that you want lies on the other end of their end of change.
And yet we have at our base level, we are all animals, right? We’re all a human animal and every animal has in their DNA, the need to move away from pain and move towards pleasure and anything that expends energy is by definition painful in the sense that it takes us farther away from survival, everything that we do is we want to survive, right? Survive long enough to reproduce is that what’s embedded in our genetic code, right?
So now anything that expends energy to my survival brain, my lizard brain, my monkey brain, whatever you want to call it, it’s taking me farther from survival. Anything that saves energy is taking me closer to survival. And in the immediate sense, when I’m running from a tiger, that might be the case, but in the year 2025, when what saves me energy is watching more Netflix and what expends more energy is staying up until 3 AM to work on my five to nine after my nine to five, so that I can achieve financial freedom.
Those two things don’t jive, but everything that I want is in a direct opposition to my literal biological imperative, which just says, chill, stop, don’t stay safe.
Bronson Hill: It’s so interesting you say that because I think, yeah, it’s so true. I mean, there’s a lot of books. There’s a book called Dopamine Nation, which talks about this.
There’s a lot of the stuff coming out that like amusing ourselves to death kind of thing that we’re, we’re just simply like medicating. We’re doing things that are comfortable, but that’s where I like now, like for mindset, like I do cold plunging. I have a cold plunge in my house.
I cold plunge regularly. It helps. I go on big runs and I do like, I compete and I try to do something.
Well, why do you do it? Why do you get paid to like go to these races and be punished? It’s like, well, it’s because it actually makes me a better person.
And I actually, now I feel like it creates more willpower and other things. Nate, I want to ask you real quick. And when it comes to leverage, how do people, how do you see this?
And then we’ll get from Paul as well, but how do you see this really impacting people that are looking to scale and grow when they feel that resistance or they only want to stay comfortable?
Nate Hambrick: Well, from a mindset standpoint, there are several laws that kind of tie into the mindset portion of things. Law nine is master your strengths, ignore the rest. And so one of my biggest pieces of advice for a lot of people who are procrastinating or, or having trouble overcoming that next block is to figure out what they actually need to overcome and then ignore the rest for a while.
And I know that’s countercultural, right? Most self help books, especially from the eighties are on fixing every single one of your problems. But the reality is, is the most successful people I’ve ever met are really, really good at two to 10 things.
And then they outsource everything else. And so from a leverage perspective, right? Yes, we need to move away from, we need to choose our hard.
We need to face that I’m a big fan of creating a hard, right? So if there’s something I don’t want to do, I tell myself, I’m going to do this by Thursday or else I have to donate 500 bucks to the homeless guy on the corner or something like that. Yeah, I know to Bronson.
But I think an easy form of leverage is to really focus on the one thing that would move the needle, the furthest go all in on that. Cause if you can, if you can move the needles, that’ll move the furthest, you’ll get so much dopamine. You’ll have so much more results and success from that.
And now guess what? You have more time to knock out the other challenges. And so they’ll do everything at once, figure out the highest leverage points go all in and then, come up for air and figure out the next leverage point.
And so actually that brings me a good question for you, Paul. You know, now that I just shared that, do you have a similar philosophy on how to prioritize what to change, how to procrastinate on certain things? What are your thought processes on that?
Paul Levitin: Yeah, definitely. So I have my own framework that I use with people or with my clients, with anyone, if anyone wants it, I have a little PDF that I’ll send to any of your, your listeners. I can check out, it’s literally called Easier, right?
My whole thing is change made easy. My thing is easier. I’m trying to make things as easy as possible, right?
How do I make people not forget this? And again, all of this hinges on, right? Just going back to what I was just saying before about everything is like, okay, survival is this, is this more challenging?
So the only thing that I found that makes things work is to make it easier. And so like, this goes against our, like, we have to choose your hard. You have to do hard all these things, right?
It’s like, for sure. Right? Like, but that’s the thing.
It’s like, life is hard already, right? We have to do, we have to do hard things. If you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur, it’s going to be hard.
There’s going to be hard things that you have to do over and over and over. So my thing is like, how do we make the tasks that you choose easier? Right?
That’s a framework and E I’m not going to, I could go through the whole thing if you want, but the E is the most important thing to me is E starts with enthusiasm, right? Are you enthusiastic about this, about the task that you’re taking on? Not specifically, are you enthusiastic about the result?
Right? Are you enthusiastic about the action steps that it takes to get you the result? Because everyone’s enthusiastic about losing 20 pounds, being rich, being a, what is it, a, a laptop warrior on the beach, whatever you want to call it.
Right? It’s like, of course you’re enthusiastic about the end goal, but are you enthusiastic about the steps that it actually takes to get there? Because if not, you become the person who’s trying to white knuckle it, who’s trying to grind it out, like, I can do this until, and that’s fine for certain things, for short term tasks, right?
You have a project due at the end of the month. Yeah. Sometimes you just got to nut up and you just got to put in late nights and early mornings and grind it out.
But if you’re talking about life change, the stuff that I work with people on is changing your habits, changing your routines, you cannot white knuckle your, your way through something that you have to do for the rest of your life, having a happier relationship, having a better body, these are not things that get to switch off. There is no, there is no end date for health where you just get to go, okay, that project is done and I move on to the next one. So for these bigger goals, we start with enthusiasm because so many people are trying to force themselves to do something.
They’re like, yeah, like I’ve just been going to the gym, but I really hate it, but I got to keep going. It’s like, I don’t think you do. I think that you could find something that you are more enthusiastic about.
Wait, is going to the gym good for you? Yes. But if you’re fighting against yourself every time to get to do it, eventually what you’re already telling me is that you’re going to quit.
I don’t know if it’s going to be six days from now or six weeks from now, but it’s coming.
Bronson Hill: So almost like picking something like, okay, maybe I hate going to the gym, but like I love playing pickleball or I love going for walks or I love like, like switch it to find something that you, and you do find enthusiasm for.
Paul Levitin: Right. Exactly. And then now, so the pushback is to this is go like, well, you have to go to the gym because the gym is better than going for walks and you won’t get as much results if you just go for walks.
It’s like, yeah, but you aren’t going to the gym because you hate it. So there’s something I say to my clients all the time is like, don’t optimize yourself out of doing the thing at all. People try to try to get so much juice out of it.
They’re like, well, I have to do this better. And if I do this better, I can do this more than I do this. But it’s like, but now it’s so perfect that you don’t want to do the thing.
So what’s better a walk that you actually go on or the perfect gym routine that you never want to do.
Bronson Hill: Let me ask you a question on that. Do you think that like things like our desire to do something changes over time as like, I mean, I guess it was my question on this, I used to like not like to work, I was about 30 pounds heavier and then just made a decision when I’m going to lose, I’m going to lose the weight. I’m going to get in shape and like I kind of made it a habit.
I say it takes so many days for things to become a habit. Maybe this is part of your later letters, but like after a while, then it just becomes like, oh, I do it. And it’s weird.
Like I also tell myself I enjoy it. So like, and like over time, I really look forward to it because then I realize like it’s, it’s become this like not escape, but like a way to like, okay, I work hard and then I go get my gut. Like today I’m going to do my, you know, hour or two kind of, you know, zone two workout and I’m looking forward to that, right?
But I wouldn’t have said that when I was younger, I was like, oh, I just want to sit around and not do it. So can that also change over time? If you just kind of sometimes you white knuckle and it becomes that way or something you change, you shift your attitude or like, is that maybe that’s the second step here.
Paul Levitin: No, that’s a great question. And it is exactly like that, right? Where with time things switch, but this is the paradox.
It switches when you get the result, right? So to your point, it’s like, well, I didn’t like working out, but then eventually again, it might be the outward success, but it’s also, there’s, you start to feel a little better, you start to have a little bit more energy, either consciously or subconsciously, you start to see the benefit in the beginning. You don’t have that.
All you have is the squeeze and no juice. And that’s when it’s the worst, right? You’re, you’re in that there’s, there’s a lot of inertia getting started with something like this holding you down.
Right? So I use the analogy a lot of like a rocket taking off into space. When a space rocket takes off, it needs a lot.
It needs so much energy. It needs those thrusters to break out of earth’s gravitational pull. Once it’s out of an orbit, those big thrusters drop off and just uses these little and it can blast across the whole solar system, just like that.
But most people never make it past takeoff because that initial friction, that initial inertia is so heavy. It’s the same thing as someone who in the personal finance world, it’s just like they’re a millionaire and they’re like, well, I just saved a lot. And I, I only, I lived on 20% of my income and saved 80%.
And it’s like, at that point, when you got the pay off, now you’re rich and you’re retired at 50, it’s like hindsight is 20 20. But when you’re telling the person who’s 25 years old to save 20% of their income and all they’re getting is potentially 30 years from now, some big payoff, it’s a very different thing that we’re talking about.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it reminds me of that rocket ship.
We’ve said, I think it was something like 50% of the fuel is using the first mile or a few miles of like takeoff and then for the whole journey. And so it’s crazy. So Nate, talk about leverage when it comes to like the laws of leverage.
Also, when it comes to this principle of like, I think Mark Twain said, like the, the hardest part is getting started with the first step or, you know, like the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step or things like that, but like, what are you seeing? And I know you probably have some questions as well for Paul on this, but can you talk about the leverage when it comes to getting yourself in motion?
Nate Hambrick: Yeah. I mean, I kind of already started to talk about this, you know, law 15 of the laws of leverages, don’t do things you hate. That is a game changer for so many people because we have told ourselves for so many years, we have to do the things that nobody wants to do.
And to a point you have to, right? If you’re 22 years old, buckle up. You’re going to have to do all the jobs nobody else wants to do.
But then once you have a little bit of credibility, once you have some success on your belt, once you’re trustworthy, don’t do things that you hate, focus on, make it easy. In your words, Paul, make it easy on yourself. Go get some easy wins and going back to the, to the workout thing.
So most of you probably don’t know this, but I was powerlifting champion in college.
Bronson Hill: You were not a powerlifting champion?
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, I won. So, I am a much smaller man today, although I still do go to the gym, I made it this morning, uh, at 6 a.m. And, uh, what I’ve realized in, in coaching people with health is if you can get them those early victories, they’ll keep going. And so my, my cheeky little hack for this is the very first thing I have somebody do that’s never worked out in their life is bicep curls.
It’s cheap. They get a pump, they look in the mirror and they think, Oh, I can keep doing this. And it’s so, it’s so, that’s not where we want to focus our whole time.
But if we can just get them some quick victories, it’s amazing how much more enthusiasm they bring to the table. And then from a business perspective, you know, outsourced everything, right? Everything that you can possibly outsource outsourced, right?
I’ll use myself as an example. I was a sound engineer in a, in a previous life and, uh, I just finished my audio book, the 18 laws of leverage. I was going to do all the work myself and I realized, oh wait, I hate this.
So I just hired it out. I just hired it out. It’s so much easier.
I make so much more money doing the things that I love. And so, I think we’re all kind of talking about the same thing, make it really, really easy, build some enthusiasm, and then just keep going. So, back to you, Paul, I wanted to hear the rest of your easy.
We just got the E leave us hanging.
Bronson Hill: I’m already feeling like it’s easier just by saying.
Paul Levitin: Well, I mean, so it’s funny cause I say about enthusiasm. I’m like, if I had to, I could make it that much easier. And that’s the whole thing because enthusiasm, if you want to do the thing, you’ll do it.
And if you don’t, you don’t, it pretty much starts and ends with that, right? People will say like motivation will powers. Like again, all of that, you, you only need motivation.
You only need willpower. You only need discipline when you’re trying to get yourself to do something you don’t really want to do, right? To use your exact law 15.
Nate is, it’s pretty much the exact same thing, right? Don’t, don’t get yourself to do stuff that you hate. It’s like you’re fighting an uphill battle at that point, but to quickly, I’ll go through the whole framework and then you can let me know if you want to double tap on anything.
So the E is enthusiasm. A is available. So, is the thing available to you with your current restraints and restrictions?
So again, the example of using the gym as a just a running example through this, people say, well, I know I need to go to the gym five days a week for an hour. It’s like, well, do you have five hours a week to give to the gym? Well, no, well, then you’ve already set yourself up for failure before you started.
It’s going to be very hard to get into that habit. And again, you’re going to want to quit because you’re trying to force a square peg into a rain, a round hole. So just inherently in that it’s like, this is not available.
Same thing with, you know, like you just said, Nate, it’s like, well, I could do all my audio stuff myself, or I could outsource it. Well, do you have the money to outsource it? No.
Well, then you’re going to be doing that. You’re like, don’t try to grind yourself out with something that literally isn’t available. So that’s E, A, S is straightforward.
Can you tell me in simple, straightforward language, how you’re going to get from A to B to Z. So you have a start point. We have a destination.
Can you tell me in simple steps what it looks like exactly? What are the action steps that you have to take to get there? Right?
They say, right. If you can’t explain it to a 10 year old or something like that, then it’s probably too complex for you. I is imperfect.
Take imperfect action. So something that gets thrown a lot in the self-development space. You guys have probably heard, maybe even talked about.
It’s like perfection is impossible, right? Perfectionism is this, the thing that the dragon that we can’t slay or whatever, but Ray, we understand that, right? So it’s like, okay, if perfection is impossible, what’s the opposite of that imperfection and imperfection is guaranteed.
So I want to lean into imperfection and start to actually chase it. Because I know that if I’m doing something and I’m messing up, that means I’m doing something that’s challenging and worthwhile. And if I expect those imperfections, now they don’t get me down so much, as opposed to what most people do is like, they try to be perfect.
As soon as they’re imperfect, they go, welI messed up. I must not be, I’m not cut out for this, right.
Exactly. So it’s like, instead we look for imperfection and then we go, okay, this is that time, right.
I tell all my clients whenever they call me, it always happens. They’re struggling with this, that whatever I go, this is that thing. Remember when we first talked and I told you there was going to be a time when things sucked and you wanted to quit and everything was going wrong and the world was burning, this is it.
All right. So now we power all we power through. That’s E-A-S-I-E, E is exponential.
This goes back to where I started with the saving energy versus expending energy. Your brain is always looking for ways to save energy and it does not like to expend energy. So if I’m going to expend energy, I need a 10 X return, right?
We talked about Dr. Benjamin Hardy before, before we got on the call, I needed 10 X or a hundred X return, right? So here’s like a common cliche now, right? People will go, Oh, going to the gym is so good.
It’s good for your physical health and it’s good for your mental health. That’s a win-win. It’s like, okay, everyone knows that.
Why isn’t everyone at the gym? Why? Because win-win isn’t enough because we have win good for my mental health, good for my physical health, win-win, but it’s hard.
It sucks. It’s painful. It takes a lot of time.
I don’t know what I’m doing, I feel embarrassed. But I can stack a hundred reasons that I don’t want to do it.
So now I have these two little wins over here against 10 potential negatives. I need on the wind side, I need 20, 30 potential wins. So I can stack that in my brain so that when I think about it, it’s like, there’s no reason, like I would be crazy not to go to the gym because of all of these potential benefits and I can outweigh the negatives in my head.
And then the last piece is R stands for repeatable. Can you do this thing forever? Not just today, not for six months, not for six years forever.
Because if you can’t again, what you’ve already told me, if you’re like, well, I’m doing this diet and I don’t really like it, but I can do it for a while. What you just said to me is I’m going to quit. Eventually, if you’re going to quit eventually, might as well save yourself energy and quit today.
And if you say, no, I like this. I’m enthusiastic about it. Everything’s available.
It’s straightforward. I understand it. I’m okay with the imperfection.
It gives me exponential returns. There’s no reason I would ever stop doing this thing. Well, then congratulations.
You found a habit that you’re going to keep doing to keep doing it. You’re going to get the result. You get the result you live happily ever after.
Nate Hambrick: So good. It reminds me when you were talking about the A for available, Gary Vaynerchuk has a hilarious line where he says something to the effect of. There’s no 16 step formula for becoming Beyonce.
And what he means by that is, I’m never going to be an NBA player wife and try, you know, I’m never going to be Beyonce. Sorry, Bronson. I know you were just waiting for me to bust down my chops, but the reality is, is there are things that I can be really good at.
And so knowing that and being honest with yourself, I think it feeds into everything, everything you just talked about. And so actually Bronson, I’ll turn it over to you. I’m curious, what are, if you don’t mind me putting me on the spot, what are some things that you’ve dropped in favor of other, like what are some things that you have deprioritized or that you’re procrastinating on currently to focus on more impactful things?
Bronson Hill: Yeah, I just, I love this framework that Paul shared here. I think it’s awesome. Um, and yeah, I think that, you know, sometimes good is the enemy of great, right?
It’s, there’s so many things that are worthwhile out there that I realize I have to everything that I do. I want to pick up and pick up new things. I’ve got to let go of old things or delegate them, right?
Because you can’t do everything. And so I think that, yeah, I love what resonated me most from what you shared, Paul, from the easier acronym. There was the exponential and it’s just like, I’ve got to build all these reasons why I want to work out, right?
I’m going to look good. I’m going to feel good about myself. It’s, I feel better.
I make better decisions, have more energy. It’s my superpower.
I’m good at it. Like, I’ll, I just, I bring all these things cause there’s all these reasons why I’m not going to do it. So many things I could do.
And so I think, in general, I think when it comes to, I think the question really needs more priorities, how do we prioritize? And I think, just from, even from this framework too, is, is, is just getting a real clear vision of what you want, you know, getting a real clear vision. Paul, I guess the question from that too is how do you, with this, it’s like, this kind of takes you on a path of, you know, am I enthusiastic is, you know, am I available to have the time?
Is it straightforward enough? Do I lean in? I love that leaning in imperfections.
So a lot of people writing books or doing a task, they don’t, they want to be perfect and it’s like, well, I’ve got to lean in and do it. And then the, is it exponential and repeatable? Um, how do you determine like, what’s the right, what, what’s the right thing to do?
Right? Cause I think in this is like, Hey, I know I should do these things. And here’s how I kind of, my framework to do it.
But how do you know if something’s the right thing to do for you or not?
Paul Levitin: Yeah. So I think that I use this as the way I use this framework is as a checklist for something that I’m considering doing. So you take a goal or a habit that you’re trying to, that you’re thinking about implementing and you run it through this checklist of like, as am I, am I enthusiastic about it?
Is it, do I have the available resources? Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And I challenge anyone listening to think anything that you’ve tried to implement that hasn’t worked, I guarantee you, if you run it through this checklist, there will be a place that it, that you hit a snare or a snag.
And if you find something that you’ve done in the past, like you just said, Bronson, like the fitness that you’ve done, like you weren’t thinking of it as exponential, but you did already in your head, you had, you stacked up all of these wins over and over and over. So again, like it starts with enthusiasm. That’s the first place because the, the, but people always come back to me.
They’re just like, well, like, but I have to do this stuff. I have to go, I have to go to work. It’s like, no, you choose to go to work because you don’t want to be hopeless.
That’s okay. But like, you don’t have to do anything. You can, you’re, you’re making choices every day.
Like there’s nothing like short of breathing, eating and drinking water. There’s nothing that you have to do in this life. Everything is a choice and that’s fine.
And again, so I also have to draw a distinction between, short-term and long-term goals and things that you have to do and things that you like to have to do in the sense of like, okay, like I could be homeless, but like, or I have kids, I have a family. I’m not going to let myself, all right. Well, then you might not have to do a job that you’re not enthusiastic about because like you’re now prioritizing something else beyond just yourself.
But if you’re just talking about how do I know where to spend my time? How do I know I have 18 different things, right? Like, I could be doing real estate investing.
I could be doing podcasting. Could be a TikTok influencer. Be doing, it’s like, where do I spend my finite time?
We start with enthusiasm. What do you actually want to do? Because that will be the path of least resistance.
If you start with what you actually want to do, rather what most people do is they try, they pick a, they pick a result that they want and then they try to reverse engineer it and build this thing because they want the results, but they don’t actually care about the inputs, right? So podcasting is a perfect example. My podcast, Bronson, you’re going to be a guest as well.
And I would definitely love to have you on my podcast too. Oh, I’m close to 400 episodes now. It’s like, if I didn’t like podcasting, right?
I can sit and yap here for hours. Clearly, if I didn’t like podcasting and talking to people, getting to 400 episodes would have been impossible, no matter how good it would be for my business, no matter how good of a networking thing it is. It’s like, I like the medium of podcasting.
And that’s why I’m not on TikTok because TikTok makes no sense to me. So I’ve found something that I’m enthusiastic about doing. And that leads me in the path that I need to go in.
Bronson Hill: And this is why too, I just really love nuggets here. Uh, why I invited Nate to be a co-host a while ago. It was just, it’s been so much more fun as we’ve started doing this together.
But going back to your system here, you can take any decision. And put it through this five step process. I’m wondering, does this work in dating as well?
Like you ask yourself, can I be enthusiastic about this person? Am I available for them? I’m sure like, but it sounds like you can use this for a lot of things and you can kind of find out whether it is a relationship or it is a goal or something that you have.
And so this is a framework you use for people. What step would you say is the hardest for most people?
Paul Levitin: So there’s, I think two sides of it, right? Like I would call like technical and tactical, right? So like availability and straightforward.
Those are more like tactical. Like, okay, like you can write, like, do I have the resource? Do I have the money to do this?
Do I have the time to do this? But something like leaning into imperfection, that’s a personality trait. Some people are more inclined to do that as people, right?
And those are the people who tend to be entrepreneurs. Those are the people who tend to be artists and musicians because in somewhere in their body, they don’t feel as bad with rejection. So this is a big thing that people like, this is like a huge caveat or that I think people get mixed up is like, they’re like, Oh, like you need to be, be okay with imperfection.
So I can just teach someone that and then they can be okay with imperfection, but it’s like, I’m here because I’m probably on that spectrum of how much I care about looking like a fool. I’m pretty low. Whereas someone else who just got a nine to five and they sit at a desk all day and they don’t like, they, they never put, raise their hand in a meeting and they never, like, they’re probably very high on that scale.
So it’s like, we have to understand that there’s different personality traits for people. So on the side, so what’s easier is we, we play with those other side things, right? The availability, the straight forward, have a plan, right?
Like, that’s what I’m saying. That’s what a coach is for. Like step by step plan, make sure that we’re working within the boundaries of what’s available to you with your time constraints, with your money constraints or other things like that.
And then the, the, the more internal stuff, the dealing with imperfection and stuff like that. It’s like, that’s what we work on in a longer period of time. So I would say that kind of stuff.
And also just knowing what you’re enthusiastic about where so, so many people are so caught up in the perfectly fine, the race of life that it’s like as adults, when’s the last time you sat and think about, do you do something? Cause you actually want to, it’s like, no, I do what I do because I have to do it. And cause like, this is life just starts going and it never stops.
So it’s like to get people to say like, for me to be like, no, it’s okay for you to say like, I don’t want to lift weights and I want to dance salsa in my living room as my exercise three times a week. It’s like, that’s, that’s okay.
Nate Hambrick: And with that, and I was going to ask on this, Paul, cause both Bronson and I are avid readers. We read a lot of books. I think I’ve probably read over a thousand self help books.
Bronson is…
Bronson Hill: You need a lot of help, Nate, you need a lot of help.
Nate Hambrick: I got problems, folks. I’m sure Bronson has read many hundreds of books.
Bronson’s actually given me some really good recommendations. So, it would be a huge miss if I didn’t ask you some of your, your favorite books for mindset, favorite books for business finance. Like if you were to think through top two or three books that would change my life, hit me with the list.
Paul Levitin: Yeah. So that’s, that’s hard. I read a lot too.
And a lot of self help as well. I don’t even like, I don’t even like the term self help. I prefer personal development, personal, personal growth.
But I mean, we, I just mentioned briefly, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, who was a guest. You guys just told me, I don’t know if that episode is out yet, but it is an amazing interview.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it’s The science of scaling.
Paul Levitin: So I’ve listened to every podcast that he’s ever been on. And I’ve read most of his books, not the science of scaling. Cause that’s new, but his book, specifically, I’m like, yeah, the gap in the game, the gap in the game.
So specifically the gap in the game, because the gap in the game, the prince, and I teach this to all my clients now, the principle, the whole thing that you can read the whole book, but the principle I’ll lay out for you right now is so impactful that it’s, it changed my life. And it changed every person I worked with life when the gap in the game is simply that we so often look at goals as where we want to be. But inherent in that looking at a goal is looking forward towards something that we don’t have.
I want to be rich, I want to be fit, I want to have this business. And I want to have this relationship.
That brings up a discrepancy because it’s something that I don’t have. And that’s the gap versus the gain is looking backwards on how far I’ve come.
So rather than saying, I want to be rich. It’s looking backwards at where was I five years ago and seeing that, although I might not be where I want to be yet, I’m still much farther than I am there. And that changes everything about how we look at life.
Because if you’re always chasing like people like, well, you’ve got to have these big goals and it’s true. But if you, if that’s all you have, all you’re saying is that like, I’m never enough, I don’t have what I need. I don’t have what I want versus just looking back.
You can always see I no matter who’s listening to this. If you look back five or 10 years, you, you have accomplished something that you can be proud of. So that concept like just kind of changed my whole perspective on life for sure.
Bronson Hill: I love it. I love it. Well, I think those, those little things are, are big reframes, right?
So I think a lot of mindset work and just life in general is just reframing, you know, and, and I think one of the things I love, one of the best mindset books, one of the first mindset books, I think it was even out there was thinking grow rich by Napoleon Hill. And he has this quote that says, you know, spend 30 minutes a day thinking about the person that you intend to become, like creating this clear mental picture, right? And it’s just amazing when you sit there and you create, right?
You look back and you see, okay, this is what I’ve done, but like imagining what’s possible, right? And I think The Gap and the Game, and actually that was my big question I had for him on the show is how do you balance out? I’m going to ask you this as well.
How do you balance out being a goals, an exponential person, right? Cause the exponential person is like, I want to, I want more. I want to grow more, Iwant to be 10 X, a hundred X. To do all these things.
But like you just inherent in that is a dissatisfaction with the present.
Like with the gain, it’s looking back and saying, but look at all this stuff that I’ve done. And I asked him and he didn’t really have like, and it’s interesting because when he wrote that book, if somebody’s a nerd, we’re nerd out here for a second, but Dan Sullivan, that’s really Dan Sullivan’s principal who was with a strategic coach was a part of for a couple of years. And so he, Ben Hardy took that principle.
It kind of meant in there. I think the 10 X stuff, that’s also a Dan Hardy principle as well. But he kind of like mesh these, but what he said, Ben Hardy said was it was more, and I encourage everybody to listen to the interview.
You’ve said it like, well, yes, you do celebrate the things that have happened, but you continue to look forward, right? You continue to like be this because if you, if you stuck in looking back, you can kind of, you just kind of, you don’t really move forward. So I guess, how do you, how do you balance that out?
How do you balance that out with the clients? There’s a lot in that question, but like, how would you kind of walk somebody through that?
Paul Levitin: No, I mean, there’s a lot in that question, but this is the whole thing, right? This is, this is why I have my podcast. This is why conversations like this is, I mean, this is, we’re peeled back the onions, enough layers and like you get to the root of it.
Like if I have, if you have the answer to this question, like, I mean, you have a lot of life and this is, well, first of all, I just want to say also that I’m Thinking Grow Rich was the first book that I read, the first self help book that changed my mind to all of it. That’s what got me on this, this whole thing. It was like the first book I ever read that like opened my brain up to like, oh, okay.
Like, wait, you can learn from books and like change your life. So like that was, that one was hugely impactful for me too. But the, the way I look at this, again, like The Gap and the Game is it’s also just, this is Buddhism, right?
The root of all suffering is inherent in our expectation or, uh, you know, with the, the want wanting things to be one way is an automatic way to find suffering, right? That’s what they teach in Buddhism, because when you want it to be some way, it can only be that one way and there’s infinite possibilities and only one way that you can ever be happy. So it’s anytime we hold on to an expectation, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.
Unless again, the, the, you know, and then all the billions of Dr. Strangers multiverses, it plays out in the one way that you want it to play out. But now again, the question is well, like, but I do want to have expectations, right? I go to the gym because I expect to get fit.
I started business because I expect to have money. So the solution that I found for this is expectations held loosely. Right.
We need those expectations because they are what drive us forward. Without expectation, we have no capitalism. We have no businesses.
We have no one driving the society forward because they want something, something bigger than what they have, but the difference is, and this goes back to imperfection, right? From being okay with imperfection. The difference between those who find success and those don’t are the people who can have that expectation, have it not work out and go, Hmm, interesting.
Onto the next one, right? There are people who look at things like scientists. Scientists look at everything as an experiment. I had a hypothesis, a scientist does not get emotional when their experiment or a good scientist, at least does not, should not get emotional when their experiment doesn’t play out.
Like they thought, it’s like, I hypothesize that when I mix this chemical with this chemical, this will happen. The whole thing explodes. They go interesting.
Write it down onto the next experiment. If you can go through life like that, all of those expectations become just things for you to iterate on. They become things for you to learn from, and they become things for you to grow from.
But if you’re the other person who gets emotional about things, the person who, when the thing goes wrong, it means a flaw with you. It means that something that you did wrong, you’re a bad person or just that you can never try again, right? Like, well, I tried it, it didn’t work.
So that means it doesn’t work. If you’re that person who holds onto your expectations and keeps them so close, that’s something that is only going to set you up for failure and disappointment in the long and short term.
Nate Hambrick: That’s really good. I’m curious on that note, with the expectations, with The Gap and The Gain, what are your thoughts on work-life balance? And the reason I’m asking this last weekend, I was actually in Las Vegas in Ryan Pineda’s studio.
He’s a famous real estate guy and his thought process for really successful people like us is that idle hands, God doesn’t bless idle hands. And so for a lot of people who were in that room, they don’t have to work because they have been so successful. But at the same time, if you don’t want to work yourself into the ground, you don’t want to grind yourself to death.
But if you don’t work at all, bad things happen. And so I’m curious with all of these that you’re talking about expectations, the gap and the gain, prioritizing this, progressing on this. What are your thoughts on how much effort to put into your work goals?
How much effort to put in your family life? How much effort to how to divvy up the energy that you do have?
Paul Levitin: Yeah, I mean, I’m different on the in this world of like that thought process, because you just said it right. All the people in that room don’t have to work anymore. This goes back to enthusiasm.
You’re doing something because you choose to. What you want to do is what you’re going to do. I believe that this is like the people who said like the fire movement.
Right. They’re like, they’re like, if you retire early, what are you going to do? It’s like, I’ll read. I’ll exercise. I’ll spend time with my family.
It’s like there’s plenty of things to do that aren’t work. If you have enough money. Now, if you want to work, because that’s what lights you up.
That’s what brings you joy. You want to be you want to be a formational person on this planet. And you want to leave a legacy. You want all that other stuff. It’s like, God bless you. Go ahead and do it.
But don’t fool yourself into thinking that that’s a necessary piece of the pie. You can have a very fulfilling full life where you just go to church, go to temple, go surfing, wake up, read, walk your dogs, cook a nice meal, dance with your husband or wife, go to sleep early, wake up, play with your kids, do it all over again like that. There’s nothing wrong with that.
It’s just that some people can’t live like that. Like there are some people who would go literally crazy because like they have a need to to give more or to to build more. So it’s like, again, that goes back to personality traits.
I think that work life balance. If you have something that you’re you know, this goes to the people who are like, well, I didn’t have I never slept while I was building my business. Again, we go right back to enthusiasm.
You found a thing. If you if you’re lucky enough to find the thing that you’re enthusiastic about that you can both this is Ikigai, right? That you can both make money at.
It’s good for the world. It’s good for you. And you can you’re you enjoy it’s like then you pour all of yourself into it because that that thing gives you more energy back than you put in.
So now we’re not we’re now we’re getting out of survival mode, right? If I can pour in 10 and get back 100, that’s exponential.
But most people are not doing that. They’re have a work life balance that’s off with a job that they hate and they’re coming home stressed and they’re angry about it. That’s a very different thing.
So this is you know, there’s no one answer to this. It’s all about knowledge of self. This is knowledge of self.
I talk about a lot of people. If anyone listens to my podcast, they’ll hear pretty much every episode. I talk about this.
It’s like it’s a meta skill. You have to know yourself. And if you can know yourself, a lot of the answers to these questions.
Bronson Hill: You know, it’s amazing. A lot of this, I’m going to say it revolves around. I mean, Tony Robbins talks about 80 percent of success in life is is getting the right psychology.
Right. So I’m a big Tony Robbins fan. And and just all this personal work, because what happens when we when we actually invest in it, we start to get to know ourselves better.
And I always am shocked when I meet people that like, oh, I’ve never done any of the personality tests. I’ve never really read, like, it means just surprising. Like, why would you not want to learn about yourself?
Not to like, oh, I’m not that way. And some people will use it to be like, oh, I’m not that kind of person because, oh, I’m an Enneagram number, whatever. Or they’ll say like, oh, it feels really limiting.
I’m in a box. And it’s like, oh, it gives you information about yourself. I guess kind of the last question I have is, if you had one message to leave people with that are like, yeah, I’m in this grind.
I’m in a job that’s really hard. I’m in a situation that’s really hard. What what should I do to kind of figure out what the right thing is to do?
Obviously, you have your framework, but like, what’s like the first step someone should do when it comes to like, I need to make a change, but I don’t know what change I need to do.
Paul Levitin: So I mean, the first thing is what I get. I have to draw a distinction between people who are struggling to survive and everyone else, right? Because all of this only serve only applies when the boot is off your neck.
Right. Like people hear me talk about this stuff like, oh, do what’s available. Do what’s easy.
It’s like all that is nice. Again, when you have that when you’re a single mom of three struggling to put food on the table, yes, then you do what you got to do. Right.
Like so like there is a level of like privilege just in talking about this stuff. But now assuming that you have that right. Like it’s like once you have a certain amount of money or you’re a certain amount of I don’t even mean financial freedom in the sense that you can retire, but financial freedom in the sense that like you could look for other jobs, you can do it, right?
It’s like now you use that capital, right? You look for something that you that you actually want to do because we live in the world. You live in the most abundant time in human history and all history that we know of where, again, you can make a not even a living, you can become rich dancing on your phone.
Like you can become rich writing and putting it on the Internet. You can become rich doing literally anything. Pick anything in the world.
And there’s someone who is rich doing it. So that means if someone else is doing it, you can do it. Now, is it hard? One hundred percent. Do a lot of people get rich doing it? No.
But if you hate what you’re doing and it’s ruining your life anyway. It’s like, what if you tried to find something where you actually enjoyed it? And again, then we get into like, is it worth making a little bit less money to have a little bit more time freedom?
Is it worth that? Is it worth it to make a little bit less money to have a little bit less stress or a little bit a little bit more time with your kids and things like that? So, again, there’s no one answer for these things.
But going back to what I just said about knowledge of self, start thinking about what you actually enjoy or what you would do if you had the option and then realize that you do have those options. I think a lot of people stay stuck because they’re like, again, like that would be. Oh, that’s so nice for you to say, but I could never do that.
Like there’s no way I could I’ve been in this job for 15 years. I can’t just leave. It’s like, well, you can like you might start at a lower pay rate.
You might be at a lower pay grade. Might have to make new friends. You might have to move.
But you could do it, right? So just start opening up to possibilities of what things could look like and realize that there are a lot more options on the table and you can find something that’s that you are enthusiastic about. But you do have to search for it.
Bronson Hill: Right. There’s there’s so many options out there often more than what we see. And I love what you shared to you.
Sometimes we just we do what we got to do. And I’ve had moments of that in my business and in my work and different just in life where it’s like, OK, I’ve just got to get it done. I’ve got it hard work and just sweat it out and maybe not make a lot of money, but just get through whatever it is.
And then you build that kind of white space where you have that time to think. Right. Where you’ve got the ability to invest some extra funds.
You’ve got the people, the events. You can go to the conferences, you can read all that stuff. You can create for yourself.
Well, Paul, I just want to say I really enjoy this conversation. I’m looking forward to being on your show as well. It looks like you’ve got a great set up there in your garage or your house, which is awesome.
So which is love it. But I love the EASIER framework. I think there’s going to be a lot of people getting a lot of benefit out of this.
So grateful for you being here. How can people follow you? Hear about your show, be in touch with you.
And you mentioned a resource. Maybe you just give whatever you want to hand out to our audience here.
Paul Levitin: Yeah, for sure. So I would love for just people to check out. It’s Change Made Easy on any platform that podcasts exist.
It exists. That’s the first place I recommend people to go to before coaching with me, before hiring me, like, oh, listen, there’s hundreds, if not thousands of hours of free resources, free information that can probably solve 90 percent of people’s problems right there. Dig into that.
If at that point you still have questions or are interested in coaching or learning about what I do, reach out to me on social media or my email or anything like that. And yeah, I have the easier framework as like a checklist. So like I said, the way I use this as I’m thinking about a habit that I want to I want to build into my life.
Is this going to be a habit I can stick to? I run it through the framework. So I have that as a PDF checklist that I can send to you guys.
You can put it in the show notes or whatever that anyone can download.
Bronson Hill: OK, awesome. Well, thanks so much, Paul. Appreciate you and look forward to being in your show and talking again soon.
Paul Levitin: Thank you so much.
Bronson Hill: All right, so we got some mindset fireworks. I love that easier framework.
If I can’t have enthusiasm for it, I’m not available. Straight, it’s not straightforward. Leaning in imperfection, being exponential as far as the growth and being repeatable.
Those are all awesome ways to figure out and filter whether it’s dating, as I mentioned, or it’s anything in life that you should be doing. This should be this to be the right thing. So,
Nate, what about you? What did you what did you get from that?
Nate Hambrick: One of my my favorite takeaways from Paul was that whether you realize it or not, whether you verbalize it or not, you have a running list. And we’re talking about a giant list of reasons to not do the thing you need to do. Whether that’s working out or a business goal. And so if you’ve got 10 or 20 reasons to not double your income or 10 or 20 reasons to not go to the gym in the morning, you better create a bigger list of reasons to do it.
And so I’m usually pretty good about listing, motivations for things. But just chatting with Paul has made me realize I need to literally take out a giant sticky note or piece of paper and just list them all out and put it on my door or on my desk, because he’s right. I’ve got a running list of reasons not to do the things I need to do.
I better make a bigger list to do it.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, and it’s sometimes I just think I can do more and more stuff. But I think that like actually really prioritizing, right? What are the things that really need to get done?
And you get to a point that you just can’t do more. So you’ve got to cut things out, too. You’ve got to say like, hey, does the is this going to produce?
And what we talked from Dr. Benjamin Hardy, right? The floor has to go up, right? I used to do all these things, but I don’t now because I’m only doing things that are helping me in this specific way.
And they’re giving me those kind of results. We think it’s great.
Awesome. Well, I appreciate you being here Nate. It was great.
Thanks for our audience as well. Appreciate you guys being here. You make this awesome community and we’re able to do the Mailbox Money Show.
Bring it to you. I’ve had some we’ve had some amazing interviews lately. And I feel like this is just getting better and better.
I keep talking about how much we’re enjoying, how much fun we’re having. And I didn’t know you were a power lifter champion. Maybe you told me that at some point in your life.
But that’s just awesome, Nate. But anyway, I hope that you as an individual and as an audience listener, that you’re taking time and you are powerlifting when it comes to your personal development, because that is really the thing that is going to lift you to the next level. No pun intended, but it will lift you to the next level.
So anyway, thanks for taking time to educate yourself. We’ll look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Mailbox Money Show.
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