This is a recording from a talk Sean DeLaney gave on what he’s learned after 5 years and over 3,000 hours spent interviewing world-class performers!

You Unleashed Course 

You Unleashed is an online personal development course created by Sean DeLaney after spending years working with an interviewing high achievers. It was designed to provide you clarity on what an extraordinary life looks like and who you need to become in order to achieve that life. It’s about uncovering what’s inside of you waiting to be tapped into and unleashed. It’s about creating a roadmap on how you go from where you are now to that fully unleashed version of yourself that you’re capable of.

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I believe, Before starting any lesson or a task,  YOU need be clear and intentional.  Be crystal clear on the ’WHY’ and what you’re going to ‘take away from it, get immersive and deeper on the by keeping-away from possible potential distractions. Everyone is here for a reason, you’re not taking time out of your day just to sit here, so explore the why behind why you’re here. Are you trying to learn something, do you want to become better in any area of your life? Know your WHY.

I story that has left an impact on me is this. Bill Gates’s mother used to throw dinners for investors, scientists, businessmen, etc. When she asked the question “What is the one trait that made you be here?” Warren Buffett and Bill Gates shouted out ‘Focus’. Focus is an essential trait for anyone seeking excellence in life.

“Who will you have to become to achieve all you want?”

All those who came on ‘What Got You there’ had this common trait of a Willingness to become the person they needed to become in order to achieve all that they wanted. If you want to achieve certain things, ask yourself if you’re willing to become the person you NEED to become in order to achieve those things?

Principles over techniques 

I prefer to look for principles that can be applied again and again to any situation as opposed to a technique that only works in one situation. 

Learn a principle you learn a thousand things but if you learn a technique you only learn one thing. In life look for the principles.

Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.

It would be easy to blindly follow the path of the people on the podcast but we need to make sure we’re aware of what mountain we’re climbing. The worst thing would be getting to the top of the mountain only to realize it’s the wrong mountain. Think deeply about your internal motives, rather than something that is external like success.

Success is getting what you want but fulfillment is doing what you’re made for. 

Nick Kokonas was someone who started as a Chicago’s derivative trader and investor but pushed his limits into the restaurant industry, book publishings, etc. He graduated from one of the best universities in the world and he was trying to pay someone to work for them. He didn’t listen to everyone else. He chose fulfillment over success and because of that he became massively successful.  The Distillery of Nick Kokonas. 

Kevin Kelly says don’t be the best, be the ONLY.  Kevin Kelly Episode 

Are you going after things in life that will bring you success but not fulfillment?  Society often tells us to go after success but scientific research has proven that doesn’t make us happy in long term.

Decoding Excellence

Since I can remember I’ve been obsessed with one thing: decoding the attributes of top performers and applying those skills, mindsets and behaviors to unleash the potential within myself and in others.

The question I haven’t stopped trying to answer is what makes the best be able to do what they do and how can I use that to get more out of my own life. 

My constant Quest  

I persistently look for what makes the best people do what they’re able to do, and how can I use it on myself and others, to be able to grow.

I look for persistent patterns of excellence, not one-offs.

Observe the high achievers, follow the persistent patterns of their behavior and actions in their path of excellence. The persistent patterns of failure can also be observed along with excellence. These are something that can be applied to everyone even in different contexts. 

Abraham Maslow said, ‘what humans can be, they must be’. this is about getting our best selves out there to the world.

“What human beings can be, they must be.” – Abraham Maslow

My Golden thread of success

Living with Arete 

The ancient Greek word Arete is one we directly translate as ‘virtue’ or ‘excellence’ but it has a deeper meaning. Something closer to ‘expressing the best version of yourself in each moment and everything you do.’

Each moment, the present moment, we have the ability to express the best version of ourselves. Not only for the big moments, but in every moment. 

Living with Arete is about bringing a level of excellence to everything you do. It could be doing the dishes with Arete. Showing up in our relationships. When I’m exhausted and it’s the end of the day and my two kids are screaming and something spills and I’m about to say something to my wife that I would regret I have the ability to catch myself. 

Arete can be brought into action in every small thing.

Between stimulus and response, you have the ability to decide. Now, this takes practice, but DECIDE TO LIVE WITH ARETE.

Eliminate the misconception that life is easy and that there is a hack or quick tip for infinite wealth and happiness.

If you want misery in life then stick with these beliefs. If you want a life of meaning and flourishing you need to realize that life is going to throw major challenges in your way and it’s about the relationship you form with these challenges that determine the quality of life. RESHAPE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH CHALLENGES 

If every failure is devastating then your life will be miserable but if every failure is a learning opportunity then things change. 

Framework of Excellence 

VISION- BELIEF- ACTION – ROUTINE- REVISE – CONSISTENT 

1. VISION

What are you truly going after in life, not what society deems you should be going after but what are you going after? Everyone I have interviewed had a compelling why that pulled them towards it not pushed them. If you are lacking motivation it’s because you don’t have something compelling enough to pull you towards the action you need. Has anyone had a thing in their life where they couldn’t describe it but they had this hunger, this thirst just to jump out of bed? When you know your Why you’ll figure out the how. 

Most people are trying to figure out the How… How do I learn? How do I start that business? How do I make that change with my diet? The reason you’re not making the how happen is that it’s not compelling enough. Think about it, if you wanted to lose weight, is there every resource out there that’s free that tells you how to do it? Yes of course there is so it’s not about the how. The same thing with a business, now I’m not saying there aren’t factors like luck that come into play but there is every free resource you would ever need to start a business. So you need a vision that whispers to your soul. If you don’t have a plan for your life someone else does. 

Brene Brown has an exceptional line where she originally asked herself “If you knew you couldn’t fail what would you do?” Which is a great question because it opens up our minds to more. But she followed that question up with one of the most powerful questions I’ve ever heard and if you want better answers in life you need to ask better questions. “WHAT’S WORTH DOING EVEN IF I FAIL?”When you can answer that question you know you’re onto the right track. 

2. BELIEF

Now you’ve got the most inspiring vision of all time but you don’t have the belief that you can’t accomplish it… Will you accomplish it? Absolutely not. This is such an important part but is often overlooked. If you want to change your life you have to change your beliefs. 

The greatest advice I ever received in life was from my lacrosse coach in the 7th grade Bob Turco. He said, “The only person who can stop Sean DeLaney is Sean DeLaney.”  It was empowering that I could take 100% responsibility and ownership of becoming the type of person that I wanted to become. The most important thing we have to win if we’re going to become who we can in life is we have to WIN THE INNER GAME. It’s about the mind.

Don’t ask CAN I CHANGE? ASK HOW CAN I CHANGE? – change all our CAN questions in life to HOW questions. 

If any time you want to start something and then internally tell yourself I’ll never be able to do that, do you think you’re going to be successful? 

Do you think Steve Jobs said that he wasn’t capable of doing that when he started Apple? No in his Stanford speech he said, “Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it and you can build your own things that other people can use.”

When did you decide to accept the limitations in your life? when did you decide that is who you are and you couldn’t change?

To change your limiting beliefs to empowering beliefs. Has anyone had a belief in life about something they would get done no matter what obstacles they faced and just pursued pursued pursued it? Those are the people who make changes in their lives. 

3. ACTION

Visions and Beliefs are great and excellent but they are not sufficient. You need them but they won’t get you there. What will, is TAKING ACTION! 

The secret of success for every person who has ever become successful—lies in the fact that he or she formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do. You can’t think your way to clarity, Clarity comes from action. 

Don’t let the expectation of perfection prevent you from taking action. You don’t need to know what perfect looks like but you do need to know what better looks like. We all know what better looks like. 

2005 study from the University of Pennsylvania testing kids with IQ and other factors-The GREATEST PREDICTOR OF SUCCESS WAS WILLPOWER. Everything is decided in a MOMENT. Every change you’ve ever made in life there was a specific moment you DECIDED to do something different. This is one of the most empowering things in the entire world to me. Right now at this very moment, you can DECIDE to be who you want to be and put in the work to become that person. 

Often we use SHOULD’S as an excuse in life. We should do that, we should do this but the people who achieve excellence turn should’s into action. They don’t walk around saying I should do this, they take massive action. It’s all a decision made in a moment. Each action you take strengthens your commitment and rewires your brain by carving stronger neural pathways. MOMENTUM BREEDS MOMENTUM. When you’re clear on where you want to go, we know the actions we need to take to get there. Make the DECISION to take that action. Live with ARETE.

4. ROUTINES 

Every outcome is preceded by a process. If you want a better outcome, design a better process. If you want to know who you’ll be in 5 or 10 years, just look at the habits and routines you have today. What you do today is who you become tomorrow. 

Success does not happen in a day. You have to chisel your statue daily. 

HABITS FORM FUTURES- We form habits and habits form futures. If you do not deliberately form good habits, then unconsciously you will form bad ones. You are the kind of person you are because you have formed the habit of being that kind of person, and the only way you can change that is through habit.

Your routines get created based on your identity, want better routines, get a better identity. This could be the single greatest predictor of your routines. One of the strongest forces in our personality is the drive to remain consistent with our identity. 

Someone was asking me how many days a week do you read. I read every day, a learner is who I am and I can’t picture a day where I’m not growing my mind. Same thing with my body. It’s not 3 days a week or even 5. Everyday I’m doing something physical to move my body. It’s not a choice it’s a decision I’ve made because it’s who I am. 

Want better routines- Raise your Standards and change your identity to who you want to become. Does someone who identifies with trying to become the best version of themselves oversleep their alarm everyday and spend two hours scrolling through Instagram? Of course not, they wouldn’t even imagine it because they don’t identify with that. 

One of the best ways to get better routines is based on who you surround yourself with. Besides your mental control or what I call the inner game, who you surround yourself with will have the biggest impact on who you become. Surround yourself with people and groups whose default behavior is your ideal behavior.  We’re all capable of so much more and if we want to discover what we’re capable of then we need to change those routines. 

5. REVISE

No plan is perfect and we need to KNOW THAT going in. Change is beautiful and inevitable. Because of this, get ready to revise your strategy based on new information and new learnings. Focus on what YOU CAN CONTROL and not what you can’t. 

You need feedback, you need truth-tellers, you need awareness. If you can’t shine a light on what’s not working you’ll never be able to change to something that is working. Most people don’t like doing this because it’s uncomfortable but you HAVE TO get in the habit of doing this. I want to bring into awareness what’s not working as quickly as POSSIBLE NO MATTER HOW PAINFUL IT IS because the longer we hide it the worse it gets. 

“Great changes come when we make small adjustments with great conviction.”

We often think when something isn’t going according to plan we need massive change but I’ve found more often than not its subtle changes that need to take place. All you have to do right now is make a slight change of course. Point yourself in a new direction and start walking. Once again we don’t have to know what perfect looks like but we do have to know what better looks like. Transformation happens through evolution and we must be willing to evolve with our process. 

6. CONSISTENT

You can not just show up occasionally. You have to consistently show up. Chisel your statue every day. Consistent action is 100% necessary. The mark of excellence is consistency.

Can you show up every day even when you don’t feel like it or when it’s hard? 

Consistency builds stronger neural pathways. Do something more often it becomes easier. Do it less often and it becomes harder. If we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.

If you want to achieve more in life and become what you’re capable of becoming then- 

1. Have a compelling vision
2. Believe you can achieve it
3. Take massive action
4. Cultivate the routines of the person you want to become
5. Revise as you learn and grow 
6. Consistency in action, patients with results 

Raise your standards. Demand more of yourself.

Who are you surrounding yourself with? Find the group whose default behavior is what you’re seeking. 

Read great books. Develop a round table of mentors, connect online to people you admire.

What habits are holding you back from the person you want to become? Easy enough to change those habits to habits that get you closer to being who you want.

In life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action. Knowledge is not Power, knowledge is only potential power. You need to take action.

What are the 3 habits you know would change your life if you started today? 

What 3 habits do you currently, if you continue won’t help you become the person you want to be? 

Comfort zone- fear wall

On the other side of fear is your infinite potential but you can’t find it unless you go towards what you fear. I was asked how I knew that making a podcast was the right thing to do? The answer is I didn’t know. If I did know then I wouldn’t have done it. It’s about the unknown that makes life fun. We need to try, experiment, fail, learn and adapt in order to evolve. You have to take action and commit to something with your whole heart and learn as you go. 

Change the meaning you give to challenges in your life, there are no failures, there are only opportunities to learn and grow. When something doesn’t go the way I intended and it rarely does, it allows me to become better and be able to navigate the situation the next time. Growth happens at our stretch point. It’s like a muscle in the gym. It’s not reps 1,2,3 and that helps us grow but when we’re going for 10 and we do 11. We get past our stretch point and the same thing is true for the rest of our lives. When challenges come on smile at them and get excited because YOU ARE ABOUT TO GROW. 

Accelerate your Learning

Compress your learning cycles – hot stoves teach you quick, full immersion. I didn’t truly start to learn until I started to synthesize and actively capture what I was learning.

Early in my career, I had a mentor who said so much wisdom, and I would hear something and think it was so insightful but I never wrote any of it down so I barely remember it. Now I capture it all and revisit. Someone recently asked me what my favorite book was and I can honestly say it’s my documents that capture all the ideas that have impacted me. 

Learning from guests

The amount of work and especially inner work that they’ve done. Introspection, knowing yourself is crucial. I’ve done an insane amount of inner work to uncover more about myself. I think it’s critical. 

1. 1. Getting clear on what you want and what’s most meaningful to you in life?
   2. What are your values and then construct your goals to be in alignment with those values? 
   3. Understanding more about my personality and how I work best – One of the biggest insights is how different we all are and it helped me develop empathy to try and understand the people around me better. 

Early on in my career and believe me, I still make this mistake today but it’s blindly following advice because it’s coming from someone you respect. You should learn from others but until you do what’s best for yourself you can’t ever reach inner excellence.

Morning routine 

• Coffee, reading/writing deep work, breath work, stretch, workout. 
• 3 work blocks 1.5-2 hours each. 
• Sleep is crucial. 
• Don’t compromise family time. 

In our own lives, the same lesson applies: When we encounter new information and want to learn from it, we should force ourselves to do something with the data.

Book Recommendation

1. Resilience by Eric Greitens 
2. The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge 
3. Principles by Ray Dalio
4. Awaken The Giant Within by Tony Robbins
5. Seeking Wisdom from Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin 

Questions to spark your inner-self and reach the pinnacle You!

1. What’s the vision of the life and person you’re trying to create and become?
2. What’s worth doing even if I fail?
3. What’s the one action step you could take immediately to get you closer to becoming that person?
4. Who do I have to become to achieve all that I want? 

Seek fulfillment over success.  Live with Arete. 

If you want to achieve more in life and become what you’re capable of becoming then- 

1. Have a compelling vision
2. Believe you can achieve it
3. Take massive action
4. Cultivate the routines of the person you want to become
5. Revise as you learn and grow 
6. Consistency in action, patients with results 

Now close the gap from where you are to who you want 

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