Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] We can do hard things.
[00:00:06] Let me. Let me get you that one more time.
[00:00:10] We. And that means you. And that means I can do hard things.
[00:00:18] I just moved to Utrecht. U T R E C H T. Sorry. I do a lot of dictating and I spell things, but I know it's also a difficult city to spell. I moved here two weeks ago.
[00:00:29] Actually, 17 days ago, because today is the 17th. I haven't done a video newsletter for a while. So here you go. I'm Bradley Charbonneau. But you probably know that because you're on my newsletter every 17th of the month that I've been doing for I don't know how many years. If you'd like to sign up and you're. You're reading. If you're watching this and you're not on my newsletter, it's repossible.com17repossible.com17 every single month. I bring it. I bring the energy. I bring the goodness. I bring the come on now. I bring the let's go. I bring the let it go.
[00:01:02] I bring the go time. I bring the be possible. I bring the we can do hard things.
[00:01:07] I'm gonna give you a little tour of my new little town. And we'll walk around for a few minutes here and remind you that we can do hard things. You want me to cut to the chase? You want me to tell you how we can do hard things? I got a schedule for you. I gotta. I got a roadmap for you. I've even got like a calendar and a framework for you. And it's pretty simple. It's. It's habits and rituals and routines.
[00:01:28] For example, I do something daily. I do something weekly. I do something monthly. That's it. That's pretty much my big secret.
[00:01:35] And that's it. It has been a tough move to Utrecht. I have been busy for months in the last weeks, full time. Just. I am a mover. That's what I do. I move.
[00:01:47] You ready to move a little bit? So check out my cool town. This is Utrecht in the center of the Netherlands. There's some duckies down there for you. This, by the way, used to be a highway right here. And the brilliant city of Utrecht. One thing the Dutch are so good at is taking care of their cities. This used to be. I'm not kidding. This. This canal. Well, it used to be a canal, then it was like a freeway and then it's back to a canal again. So here we go. Give a little tour.
[00:02:17] Hey, so did you catch that? That we can do hard things.
[00:02:21] Have you. Have you. Have you thought about that lately? And you that you can things.
[00:02:26] I wanted to move to Utrecht. Has it been easy? No. Has it been simple? No. Has it been difficult? Yes. Has it been worth it? Yes.
[00:02:34] Is it painful? Yes. Is it worth my while? Yes. Worth the money? Yes. Worth the time? Yes.
[00:02:41] Worth the investment? Yes. Worth the future that it might bring? Yes.
[00:02:46] Worth the risk? Yes.
[00:02:48] Who's deciding? Go is deciding who's deciding. Martijn is deciding who's deciding. Henri is deciding. My mind hard and Gut. I gotta say, we were all pretty equal on this one. Although Martine the mind.
[00:03:01] Yeah. Administratively, financially tax wise, might have been okay to stay one more year, but Go said it's Go time goes the name of my gut, by the way.
[00:03:13] All right, we're gonna walk into town. I'll take you to some canals. I. I am a little biased, but I think this is truly one of the most gorgeous, enchanting, magical, lovely, lively and alive cities in the Netherlands, if not the world, dare I say.
[00:03:30] And I am a proud citizen of this town. And if you're. If you're following along here on my site, you'll think. Bradley, I thought you were moving to Italy. We are moving to Italy. That's like next spring. So we've got a little detour. Maybe six months in Utrecht. Maybe longer. Maybe shorter.
[00:03:46] Maybe longer. We'll see. I'm trying to keep the adventure open because we can do hard things. You know, Speaking of hard things, you know what's easy to do is to delay it. Let's check this out.
[00:04:00] Is to delay is to not make a decision, is to think about it longer, maybe plan a little bit more. How about. Let's analyze some more. You know, let's. Let's talk with Chat GPT a few more times. Let's get a few more opinions from people. How about that?
[00:04:13] Yeah. And let's not make a decision, because that's all I really did was I made a decision.
[00:04:19] I decided not just me, my wife and I, my kids and I, my family and I, my friends and I, I decided we're gonna move to Utrecht.
[00:04:30] And that is basically all that needs to happen. There's a. There's a story about a car or a boulder on top of a hill or on top of a mountain. And all you need to do is get it started.
[00:04:42] And then the momentum of the hill can take it down more. Right? Can take it down the hill and then it builds the momentum. And at some point you can't even really Stop it. Maybe not even if you want to. Oh, Mural.
[00:04:57] Mural alert.
[00:04:59] And that's where I am. I can't stop. Well, I can't stop because we already moved, so I can't take that back. Sold the house. It's. It's done. It is signed, sealed, and delivered.
[00:05:08] So I now live in this city.
[00:05:10] Pretty cool, right?
[00:05:11] So I want to get you to a canal, because this. This city, there's something different about the canals here, and they are different from Amsterdam. If you've visited Amsterdam, you'll. You'll know what they are. But this. This city, they're. They're different because they are. There's an area down below, like, sunken, where you can walk, so you can walk down closer to the water, which is pretty cool, you know? It is October 17th.
[00:05:38] It is the 17th of the month. And that's why I do my monthly newsletter every single month on the. Every. Every single month on the 17th and every single month. I have to admit that I am surprised. I'm surprised. Oh, wait a minute. Another month has passed.
[00:05:54] And this is where my strategy of daily, weekly, monthly activities or some sort of habit or routine or ritual, dare I say, comes into play. And this is how I truly believe anything and everything gets done.
[00:06:10] It gets done because you've got a plan. It gets done because you have a schedule. A rhythm, dare I say, let's get another R word in there. Rhythm, ritual, routine.
[00:06:22] I like that. I like rhythm. Rhythm's good, right?
[00:06:25] All right. It is October 17th. Can you believe there's people sitting outside? If you live in a northern country or northern part of the world, it's October. It's. I mean, people are wearing light. Light jackets, but they're outside. It's nice out.
[00:06:40] Okay. What can we do? Hard things.
[00:06:43] I. I have one topic I want to talk about today. If you're. If you're still with me. Have I mentioned today that there is so much love for you? Have I mentioned that I have so much love to give and that you ideally can receive some from me? Even if you don't know me or even if you know me well, accept that from me. Let it come in, because I'm sharing it out there. And I openly and graciously give that love away because I have so much.
[00:07:13] And if you want to receive it, it's all yours. It's yours for the taking.
[00:07:18] Okay. We're going old school here.
[00:07:20] We got one of these music things, probably has a name. It's probably not called a music thing.
[00:07:32] Fun.
[00:07:35] Okay. People eat ice cream. In October.
[00:07:39] Hey, I had a topic I wanted to get across here. If you're still with me here.
[00:07:44] There's that love, remember that? So if you're still with me, here's a topic that's been brewing around in my head and that is, and I think it's because I've had so much shake up lately with moving and the kids moving out and we're moving and just a lot going on and then actually, yeah, some people leaving us.
[00:08:05] So how do we meet people? How do we get to know people? Like how do you get to know the people you know? And then we have a new life coming up, right? How do you get to know new people?
[00:08:20] So we're just. My wife is talking to a friend of hers who's got like a 3 year old or 4 year old or whatever and they're off to a new town and they said, I don't know anybody. And yet that's when you meet so many people because you're all in the same boat and you meet people from the school and you meet the parents, right? It's cool.
[00:08:37] So how do we meet people? How do we meet new people?
[00:08:42] And I'm going to bring it back to the numbers because I think there is one on one contact then there is sort of a small. So one on one contact I think is ideal. One on one contact in person is pretty cool.
[00:08:56] Okay, side note, to the right down there, gorgeous shopping street. And my son used to work at a high end fashion store where I couldn't afford anything. And there's another fashion street. There are just people out here like it's fall. It's gorgeous, I gotta say. All right, here we go. We got a canal. You ready? You ready for something? We had people, we had tourist taking pictures here.
[00:09:19] Here we go.
[00:09:21] How's that? Let me get some flowers for you.
[00:09:24] Gorgeous, right? There's people sitting outside in October. Hello.
[00:09:30] All right, I'll get another canal for you here.
[00:09:32] I'm not going to lose track of my topic, I swear. We even got a tourist boat going on.
[00:09:40] Here we go.
[00:09:45] Oh, I even got the flowers for you framing that photo right up there for you. Huh? Got the tourist boat, got the flowers, got the canal. Seriously, Got the blue sky. Seriously, Bradley? Really? Is that what we're doing today? It's exactly what we're doing today.
[00:09:58] I need to get to a little quieter place and I will give you a little more of a tour. Oh, you know what, let's go look at the Dom D O M.
[00:10:06] That's that Thing.
[00:10:09] I'll take you under there and I'll finish up and I'll wrap up for the, for the day, for the week, for the month with this little tidbit of love from Uchest to you.
[00:10:19] And here we go. So how do we meet people? How do you meet people? How do you meet new people? How do you get to know people? And how and why do we get to know people better than other people? Right, so let me, let me go with this one here. Let me tell you this one. Okay, so the.
[00:10:40] Here I'm going to give you a little story about where we are, where we are living. So we are currently living in an apartment that is.
[00:10:54] Owned by.
[00:10:56] Oh, I'm going in here. It's a little garden.
[00:11:00] Oh, little piece.
[00:11:02] It's owned by friends of ours who we have known forever. And we met them on the slow boat to Luang Prabang. Long Prabang is in Laos.
[00:11:23] Okay.
[00:11:24] Love these little hideaways here. Right. I'm going to go sit over here in the corner.
[00:11:28] So on the slow boat to Long Prabang, we met these people and we traveled intensively with them for six weeks. Six, right. Not six hours, not six days. We didn't know them. And now we know them really well because we traveled intensely with them for six weeks. Wow. Where are we?
[00:11:51] You're a little tour uche.
[00:11:53] So that was, that was very one on one. That was very in person. And that was intense and a long time. Six weeks. I don't even know if I could repeat that if I wanted to. Right. Where does the book start?
[00:12:05] And so six weeks, one on one, intensive travel together. I think that is like the epitome of getting to know somebody.
[00:12:14] That was in 1998. You do the math there. It's been a while and today, isn't this cool? We are now living upstairs from their apartment in like another apartment they own. Super cool, right? That is the ultimate, I think, in how to get to know people.
[00:12:32] Right? Six weeks together, intensively traveling through third world countries. Pretty awesome, right? Okay, so you're like, Bradley, that's wonderful and all, but I don't. How am I going to do that? I, like, I have a job, I have a school. I get things to do. Right. I get it, I get it. So how can you then. I'm going to sit down for a second. How can you then do something like that? Maybe, but not with that intensity.
[00:13:00] Okay, so let's, let's go back to numbers because, you know, I'm a numbers guy. How can we do that then? Otherwise. And I would then say, how can you get the one on one going? How can you get the.
[00:13:12] That, that intense time period, like maybe a week, right? Like what can you do and how connected can you be with the people and, and can you be in person right. In real life, in real time? And then, and this is why I like retreats and workshops and because then you are intensely together with people for a set period of time and you are all in like the same mindset at the same time. Like a. I've gone to Joe Dispenza retreats. I've gone to Vipassana 10 day silent retreat meditation retreats. Although I can't recommend the silent meditation retreats for meeting people.
[00:13:54] But the Joe Dispenza, I mean, there's somebody I've known since 2014 or 15 because we were at a Joe Dispenza event together and that is like five days of intensity together.
[00:14:06] Shout out to her in Portugal.
[00:14:08] So, okay, Bradley, you're still like, yeah, this is wonderful. Bradley, you're talking about like a week out and a half. How can I still meet people on a little bit easier basis, right. Than what you're talking about? All right, all right, let's tone it down. I'm going from like the top of the pyramid and we're going, we're gonna go down and see where we can end up, right? And how can we meet people? How can we intensely make friends and meet people and people we want to hang out with and maybe people will be friends with forever or have some connection or relationship with forever or as long as you want. Right? As long as still working.
[00:14:42] All right, let's tone it down. We just, we went from six weeks traveling in like Laos, in Vietnam with people. Awesome. We're still friends with him after 28 years. Then there's the one on one intense, like three, four, five day weekend. I mean, it's also like a spiritual meditation workshopy retreaty weekend. Right? So that's intense. That's pretty hardcore. Okay. And I've known her since 2014 and so. Okay, all right, tone it down again. How do we get a little, how do we get a little easier? How can we make this work?
[00:15:15] And okay, well if we're talking about time, how can we make the time then like less intense? And this is where I'm back to a daily, weekly, monthly.
[00:15:28] So what if you could meet with somebody like a friend or a mentor, a part partner or an accountability partner or even a friend on a daily basis? Okay, there Might be a bit much. How about a weekly basis? How about a phone call? How about a Zoom call? How about in person? If you live in the same town, little church bells coming to you straight from Utrecht.
[00:15:49] Or monthly? What if there's a monthly call? And what if you put it on the calendar? You know why I'm doing a video today? Because it's the 17th of the month. I kind of didn't realize it until I saw my Gary Larson calendar, said, oh, it's the 17th. Oh, it's the 17th already. Okay, awesome.
[00:16:04] So what if then you could meet on a daily or weekly or monthly basis? And I think this goes for entrepreneurs as well. What if you have entrepreneur partners or business partners?
[00:16:15] And how can you meet them? How can you get to know them? How can you work with them and keep that relationship going and growing? Oh, I like that. Going and growing. How can you do that? Right?
[00:16:26] And I think we're back down to the basics of daily, weekly, monthly. You know, you can add quarterly and annually in there too, but those are like too big for me. I can't handle that.
[00:16:36] I can handle daily, weekly, monthly. That's all I can sort of handle. And so.
[00:16:41] All right, so we're not, let's see, Bradley. We're not doing six weeks in Laos with people. We're not doing five day meditation retreat.
[00:16:50] Intense, you know, wake up, four o' clock in the morning meditation thing. Okay, so how about I. Currently I'm in a group of. What are we, like, four or five people? I'm on the board of advisors for this small organization and we meet every Wednesday on Zoom. We all live all over the place, all over the world, actually. And we meet once a week. So I've gotten to know these people over years that we've been doing this. And that's pretty cool too.
[00:17:15] So that's a group of 3, 4, 5, like under 10.
[00:17:19] Then another number is, hey, do you want to go see a little more Utrecht? Should I walk around some more? All right. It's just so noisy out there. And we got a little piece, but I'm gonna. I'll do it. I'll give you a little more tour.
[00:17:29] So then what about my Toastmasters group? That is done. That's every other Friday.
[00:17:35] And that's a group of 15, 25, 35 people. Right. And that's another type of. That's every other week and then. And we meet in person. We tried online for a while, didn't really work in person every other week, so usually twice a month.
[00:17:56] And it's awesome. And I've been doing that for years. So guess what? Guess who those people are. I know like and trust. Right? Okay. I don't like all of them. They don't all like me, but they do. They know me. Yes. They trust me, probably.
[00:18:09] Right, so that's every other week in person.
[00:18:14] And remember, the Wednesday is online.
[00:18:17] Is it as. As intense? Is it as good? No, it's not. In person is better. And in that small group, you know, three, four, five. Okay, awesome. Right? We really are getting to know each other. And the Toastmasters group, you know, 20, 30, 40 people. Do I know all of them? No. Do I even know all of their names? Like, no. Because some people come and go.
[00:18:37] All right, another church.
[00:18:38] What do you think of Utrecht so far? Right? Nice, right?
[00:18:42] Gorgeous day here. Let's see, we'll walk into this ancient building over here, check out this guy.
[00:18:49] Okay.
[00:18:51] One more thing. Maybe two more things. Ready? So I went to Tony Robbins early September, and there were 13, 000 people in a stadium.
[00:19:04] Right. And so did I get to know them? No.
[00:19:07] But did I. Did Tony and the other presenters, did they, like, quote unquote, force me to meet my neighbor? Yes. Did I have to high five my neighbor? Yes. Did I have to tell my neighbor, like, my deepest and darkest secrets? Yes.
[00:19:21] Did I hug my neighbor? Yes. Did I give my neighbor neck massages? Yes.
[00:19:26] And was it awesome? Yes. Did I exchange numbers for couple? Am I going to see them forever? No. Are we going to be friends forever? No. But was it intense and awesome for. For four days? Actually, I was there for six days. Yeah. Was it worth it? Yeah.
[00:19:40] Is Tony Robbins, like, a master at keeping the attention and energy of. Of 13,000 people? Yeah.
[00:19:48] So there you have it. All right, I'm gonna. I'm gonna stop with that. Okay. There's also online. Am I going to see these people still? No. Are we. Have we created WhatsApp groups and we're going to try to stay connected? Yeah. Is it going to work? Probably not.
[00:20:01] All right, I got one more shout out. Although if. If she hears me, she's not going to like it. I am currently in an online Toastmasters group now, too, where we've never met in person. It's sort of scattered around northern Europe and it's just not the same. Right? It's.
[00:20:22] It is.
[00:20:24] Yeah. It is what it is. It's online two times a month.
[00:20:29] First and fourth or whatever. Third, I don't know, third Wednesday of the month, and it's not working as well as the. In Person. So keep that in mind if you can do in person better. Do you want to get out of the house? No. Do you want to put on your shoes and get out of your pajamas? No. Do you do it anyway? Yeah. Do I go to Toastmasters every two weeks? Usually.
[00:20:53] So that's the difference. Oh, by the way, Tony Robbins, like, am I. I'm in the 13, 000 people crowd. Can I possibly sit back and do nothing and just take notes with my pen and paper and. And be passive? Yes. Is it going to be as good of an experience? No.
[00:21:09] Did I meet my neighbors? Yes. Did I do all the stuff? Yes. I do my homework? Yes.
[00:21:15] Did I say yes a lot during Tony Robbins?
[00:21:18] Yes. Did I scream it? Yes. Did I yell at the top of my lungs? Yes.
[00:21:22] Was it awesome? Yeah. Did it raise my energy level? Oh, yeah.
[00:21:26] Did I do it again? Yes.
[00:21:29] How are you doing? Right. I just went from two people and six weeks and intense travel through Laos and Vietnam to completely what you would think would be anonymous.
[00:21:44] 13,000 people.
[00:21:47] 13,000 people in a stadium in Germany. And is that.
[00:21:52] Am I going to connect with people there?
[00:21:54] Yeah. If I make the effort.
[00:21:56] If I go out of my way and high five and hug and talk and exchange and share and.
[00:22:04] And be genuine and. And listen.
[00:22:08] They're listening to my neighbors. Yeah.
[00:22:12] All right, there you have it.
[00:22:14] Two things going for me. Numbers. Right. I've got daily, weekly, monthly. I'd love to hear what you do daily, weekly, monthly. I don't care if it's like brushing your teeth, brush your teeth daily. Yeah, I mean, I guess we all do that one. Hopefully. Hopefully twice a day.
[00:22:28] And then what kind of group, what number of people works for you in a group setting to get to know them and how intensely are you getting to know them? And how's that going? And are you active or passive?
[00:22:47] And what's working and what's not.
[00:22:52] A cute little street.
[00:22:54] Do you love my town yet or what? You want to go back to the canals? I know, right?
[00:22:58] I can't believe it's such a gorgeous day.
[00:23:02] I love in this town. I really loving this town.
[00:23:06] I'm so glad we moved. It has not been easy. There's been definitely some road bumps. Road bumps? Is that a thing? Speed bumps, hurdles, road detours, whatever. There's been some stuff and it's been hard. How did I start this out? We can do hard things.
[00:23:24] How do you want to do the hard things?
[00:23:26] Quickly, get them done, get them started. How often do you want to do the things daily, weekly Monthly, how many people you want to do them with? I don't know, one on one. Intense. In person, you want to go for two or three, five people want to go for under 10. You want to go for 20, 30, 40. Awesome. You want to go for under 13,000. Go for it.
[00:23:47] All right, you got the numbers. So it's a combination of how are you going to put those numbers together? How are you going to make that work?
[00:23:55] How are you going to combine the time, right. Daily, weekly, monthly, and the number of people and the intensity with which you're going to.
[00:24:08] With which you are going to connect with these people? And then how are you going to make the effort to get out of the pajamas, get off bed, get off the couch, put on the shoes and get out there and connect? And how are you going to do that? And number one, I would say, is listen, I think that's the number one skill that I kind of paid attention to at Tony Robbins.
[00:24:30] I'll do one last cafe, a little cafe run here.
[00:24:35] By the way, my Toastmasters meeting is down that road to the right where I've been going for like seven years. Well, I haven't lived here. I used to live in a small town outside of town. Oh, I just said I used to. Past tense.
[00:24:48] Loving it.
[00:24:50] All right. Hey, give me a shout out to Utrecht, okay? Tell me what you think of it, what you've seen so far, and if you've ever been here.
[00:24:57] And then let me know what works for you. Daily, weekly, monthly? All of the above? Some of the above. Let me know. And then also what works best as far as the number of people in your group. Is it one on one? Is it one on a few? Is it under 10, is it under 5, 50 or under 20?
[00:25:16] Is it under 100, under a thousand, under 10,000 or over 10,000? And then the frequency with which you prefer to meet these people. By the way, as you may notice, I'm in several groups, right? And I like the differences. I like the, you know, daily. I, I don't think I want to meet anybody daily, but I.
[00:25:39] Pepper. And I'm doing my videos, my shorts, right, so that's daily, but then. So who do you want to meet on a what interval basis? And how's that working out for you? All right, let me know in the comments. I'd love to hear it.
[00:25:54] And I hope you've enjoyed our little tour through Utrecht.
[00:25:58] And let me know. All right, that's it.
[00:26:02] See if I can get a good sign for you. If you know my work, you know that I love signs.
[00:26:07] Morph design. I'm looking for a nice sign.
[00:26:09] Oh, Tess.
[00:26:11] Sorry. My son's ex girlfriend. She was so sweet.
[00:26:15] Okay, that's it. That's all we got.
[00:26:20] See ya.
[00:26:22] Remember, there's a lot of love out there. I'm sending it out right now. Receive some, take it, enjoy it, let it fall in, and it's all yours. And you don't have to give it back up. Although giving it back up is even more fun.
[00:26:35] And then we can do hard things.
[00:26:38] Okay, See ya.
