Ben Nemtin – Co-Founder of The Buried Life | Unearthing Your Buried Life: Achieving Your Bucket List Dreams

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About The Guest

Talking Points

• 00:00 — Intro
• 02:55 — Ben Nemtin’s origin story
• 15:45 — What stops people from achieving what they want?
• 20:53 — What’s the next step in Ben’s life that he wants to take?
• 27:10 — Setting up goals that you won’t regret
• 34:07 — Working with your friends vs working solo
• 39:24 — Accountability with partners
• 44:47 — Fear, deadlines, and waiting to feel inspired
• 53:26 — What are the things that help you improve your life?
• 1:03:28 — Where can people connect with Ben Nemtin?
• 1:05:41 — What does success mean to Ben Nemtin?

Show Links

• https://twitter.com/BenNemtin/
• https://www.instagram.com/bennemtin/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennemtin/

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What is the Success Story Podcast?

On this podcast, you’ll find interviews, Q&A, keynote presentations & conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship.

The podcast is hosted by entrepreneur, business executive, author, educator & speaker, Scott D. Clary.

Scott will discuss some of the lessons he’s learned over his own career, as well as have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, notable figures, and politicians. All who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and insights.

He sits down with leaders and mentors and unpacks their stories to help pass those lessons on to others through both experiences and tactical strategies for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between.

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Machine Generated Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, bucket list, life, goals, important, friends, talk, thought, realize, called, dreams, write, big, fear, accountability, podcast, speak, book, feel, therapist

SPEAKERS

Ben Nemtin, Scott D Clary

 

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Scott D Clary  00:30

Welcome to success story. I’m your host, Scott D. Clary. That success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network that was by Podcast Network has incredible podcasts like nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew, where you’ll learn the science behind great marketing with bite sized 20 minute episodes packed with practical advice from world class marketers and behavioral scientists. Nudge is fast paced and insightful, with real world examples that you can apply to your business. Listen to nudge or success story wherever you listen to your podcast. today. My guest is Ben Nemtin . He is the number one New York Times best selling author of What do you want to do before you die, a book that illustrates 200 of the wildest things to do before you die. Now global gurus has recognized him as the world’s third best motivational speaker behind Simon Sinek and Tony Robbins. He’s also the star of MPVs highest rated show ever on iTunes and Amazon called the buried life, which documents for childhood friends mission to pursue the world’s greatest bucket list, while encouraging others to go after their own shows inspired millions to follow their dreams and has been featured on The Today Show. The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, Fox, NBC News and more. Over a decade ago, Ben was battling with depression, which led him to drop out of college and to feel more alive. He and three friends created a bucket list of 100 things to do before you die. And they borrowed a rickety old RV, which they use to criss cross North America achieving the unthinkable. They plan to take two weeks, but 10 years later, they’re still on their mission. And every time they accomplish a dream. They help a complete stranger cross something off their own bucket list. Their journey has been all the way to the White House where they played basketball with President Obama. They’ve had a beer with Prince Harry, they’ve reunited a father and son after 17 years. They surprised a girl with a much needed bionic arm. President Obama called Ben and the group and the burry life inspiration for a new generation and Oprah declared their mission truly inspiring. And we spoke about the origin story behind starting the bird life. We spoke about helping other people check items off their own bucket list. reasons why people don’t live on their own terms, the biggest regrets 76% of people have when they get to the end of their life, how to live a life that you won’t regret why it’s so hard to be true to yourself how a list can help, how to overcome fear, lack of deadlines and waiting to feel inspired, which are the biggest evidences and blockers in achieving your own bucket list. And then ultimately, the formula to be successful at any bucket list item that you put on your list how to achieve success at that item so you can truly live your best life.

 

Ben Nemtin  03:26

So I grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, which is a Canadian, you, you know is just off the coast of Vancouver. Not many people know that. But it’s on an island. So it’s a smaller town. And when I was going into university, I was really what I thought at the time I was living the dream. I was on an academic scholarship to University of Victoria, where all my buddies were going. I had I was on just made the united team national rugby team, which on the West Coast is a huge sport, right? It’s like I always say it’s the third biggest sport in Canada behind hockey and hockey. So it’s like, that’s where the national team trained. My high school coach was an ex national team coach. So this was like football in the south. So I made the national rugby team so I was fired up. But I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed. So we were training for the World Cup and I was I was worrying about my field goals. I played flyhalf which is like the quarterback in the field goal kicker. And this pressure that I put on myself, I started getting anxiety. And this anxiety would hit me in the middle of night in the night. And I started to have trouble sleeping. And so this this lack of sleep, this constant pressure, this anxiety, it all built up and I slowly started to slide into a depression and I had been a pretty happy go lucky guy up to this point. You know, I had I was a Type I was social, a lot of friends, great family. But now this anxiety was stopping me from going to school. So I don’t After school, and it was stopping me from going to rugby practice. So I was at fashional rugby. It was crippling. Yeah, I was. I was stuck in indecision. So what my anxiety, the way it sort of manifested was, I couldn’t decide whether I could go to school or not. So I’d be stuck in this indecision. And ultimately, that indecision would lead to my decision, which would be not going just because I was in the middle. So I drive to school, and I couldn’t get on the car, I drove back home, or I would get on my rugby stuff, but I couldn’t go to practice. And this was, you know, for someone that had never experienced anything like this. It was terrifying. Right, I got to the point where I couldn’t leave the house. And my parents would, they tried many things to help and nothing was really helping. And they would just encourage me to just go for a walk every day. And sometimes I would pretend to go for a walk and hide in the driveway. So it was it was very, very bad. And these feelings lasted for months, I dropped out of school, as I said, and at the end of the school year that I dropped out of my friends came and they literally sort of pulled me out of the house and they’re like, you’re coming to work with us, in Banff, Alberta for the summer, here, come work with us in a new town. We’re gonna go live and work there for the summer, we want you to come and I reluctantly agreed, right, they sort of forced my head. And when that happened, I was forced to get a job. So I started to slowly get a bit of self confidence because I was doing something for myself. I was starting to talk about what I was going through to my friends, I started to realize that I wasn’t the only one that was going through these feelings already had experienced some of this stuff. And at that point, I just thought I was totally broken. Right. I just thought I was messed up. And I didn’t realize that other people had actually experienced these types of feelings of anxiety and depression. Because no one had talked about it. I hadn’t talked about it. I didn’t people weren’t talking about mental health back then. This is 2002. So I, I start to realize, wow, okay, I’m not the only one. And that helped. But the other piece that was ended up being really pivotal for me was I started to meet new types of people that I realized were giving me energy. And I started to understand that some people gave me energy and some people drew energy from me. And I at that point, I needed to be around people that gave me energy, I met these kids that have started businesses, I met these kids that already traveled, and I was energized just by being around them. And so on my way home after that summer, I was starting to feel back to myself. But I’d also mentioned that I also found a therapist, you know, and that ultimately was the biggest piece of my recovery. So I don’t want to underplay that. It was just sort of finding people that gave me energy there. There were many things that contributed. And we can speak to that a little later on. But just for the sake of condensing the story, the thing that was pivotal in terms of a decision that changed my life, in that, at that time, was on the way home, as I was driving back to Victoria, I made a decision, I thought, You know what I’m going to try and only surround myself with people that inspire me, just like these kids I met. So I’m going to want to get back home. I’m gonna try and only surround myself with people that inspire and that decision would totally change my life, because I got back home. And there was only one kid that came to mind when I thought about my friends. I didn’t even know him very well. His name was Johnny. And he was a filmmaker. And he was going to McGill at the time in Montreal. But he grew up in Victoria and he always made movies in the neighborhood. And I thought, Man, I want to make a movie. So I called him up. I said, Johnny, you make movies, I want to make a movie, let’s make a movie. And that was kind of like a scary phone call to make because I didn’t know the kid I was just like, and he was like I was just talking to my friend Dave about something like this. I remember Dave he, he’s two years younger than me in high school. I’m going to call your older brother Duncan, let’s talk about the forest get together, we can talk about making a film. And so we all got on Skype, because they were on the they were in Montreal. And we started talking about this film, that we had no idea what it was gonna be about, right. And so serendipitously, Johnny’s in English class at McGill. And his English professor assigns the whole class homework and they have to read this old English poem called The Buried life. Okay, so it’s called the buried life. And it’s 150 year old poem, Johnny reads a poem because it’s homework. But this poem strikes a chord, and he sends the poem to us. He says, guys read this poem. And the poem. He’s like, Guys, this poet is talking about the same thing that we’re talking about right now. And we were having these conversations about, like, we have all these things that we want to do these dreams, but we never have tried to go after any of them. All we do is just talk about them. And we get inspired to go after them. But then the day to day buries them. And so this was the buried life like, you have these things you want to do. Life gets in the way you push them, you push them until you die, and you realize I didn’t do any of them. So we’re like, Okay, this dude was talking about this feeling in 1852 When in England, we’re not the first people to feel like this, let’s call our film The Buried life. So we borrow the name. We’re like we’re making this film The Buried life. We don’t know what it’s about, but we know it’s going to be called the very life. And then our next logical step was like, Well, what are buried dreams? And the way that we figured those dreams out was actually by thinking about death. So we asked ourselves this question, what do you want to do before you die? Because we thought the thought of death actually put our life in perspective, by internalizing that it made us really realize that we didn’t have a lot of time. And so we asked ourselves this question, what do you want to do before you die? And the answer to that became the bucket list. So this was our sort of tool to figure out what was important to us. And our bucket list grew from there. And we just pretended we had a million bucks, we pretended we had the ability to do anything. So we wrote down anything from go to space, play basketball with Obama, make a TV show, pay off our parents mortgage, to grow moustache, get something named after you, you know, drive across the country.

 

Scott D Clary  11:03

Literally asking everything, ask out

 

Ben Nemtin  11:05

the girl your dreams. And if anything that was there are two rules, anything you have to do anything is possible, and you have to pretend you have $10 million in your bank. So we had no money in our bank. So now we had to make some money to go on this road trip, because we’re like, Let’s go on a two week road trip in 2006. And we’ll go after our bucket list. But we’ll also because we need we’re never going to accomplish any of these things on our own. Let’s ask other people the question, what do you want to do before you die, and if we can help them, we will. So we’ll do one thing on our list. And we’ll help a stranger that it’ll be sort of our mantra as we travel. And so we bought an old RV we bought a secondhand camera on eBay, we worked two jobs throughout the summer, I was working as a beer rep for Molson, I would get my stuff done in the morning, visit all the accounts. And then in the afternoon, I’d cold call companies pretending we had a production company, looking for sponsors, we throw parties, as fundraisers, you know, we’ve been just beg borrow and stealing to get this thing together, we took out a $2,000 loan. And last, and we got sponsors on board and a local juice company pay for our guests happy planet juices, which is like a Naked Juice of, of the of Canada. So now we’re now we’re just 2006. We were taking two weeks off at the end of seven, we hit the road, okay, and we don’t even tell anybody what we’re doing, because we don’t even really know how to explain what the hell we’re doing. And what happened was, people started to hear about this road trip. And email started to trickle in through this website that we built where we posted our 100 dreams. And people said, Hey, I saw your bucket list online. And I saw I saw number eight ride a bull. My uncle has a bowl ranch he can he can get you guys on a bull. Or I saw make a toast to strangers wedding. My friends getting married. I’m the best man I can get you in. Right, we got invited to 12 weddings in two weeks. And so news start here about and now is national news. And now we’re getting hundreds of emails. We come back from this two week roadshow. And we’ve we’ve had this incredible experience, we’ve we’ve helped people accomplish their goals just through the help of other people. And we get back and like Polish crap. Like, we got to keep doing this. And so this two week road trip ended up lasting 1015 years. And the list items that we originally wrote down that we thought were completely impossible. You know, write a New York Times bestseller, sit with Oprah make a TV show. Slowly, they started to fall off the list. And then we realized that helping other people achieve their dreams actually even been more than those big ticket list items. And so we just kept doing it. And we moved down to LA and we sold the show, we did the book. And what I realized is that this whole this whole bucket list process, what it did for me, was it for the first time in my life, it gave me permission to say what I really wanted. And back when I was in high school, I wasn’t living my dream. I was living the high school dream. I was living the dream I thought I wanted playing on the national rugby team, being the athlete, you know, being the student that got the scholarship being popular. But what I wanted was something different. And finally I was around kids that enabled me to be my true self. And by writing down what I truly wanted, it forced me to actually think about what do I want for the first time in my life, and it was liberating. And I also let go of what other people what I thought other people would think mainly because we were just like I was I had the confidence of being around people that It encouraged me to be who I was. And and This experience changed my life, right. But it completely brought me back to who I truly was. And now I’ve realized, wow, this this this bucket list, it’s more than just adventure and travel, right? Usually you think about a bucket list is skydive, travel Europe, you know those types of things. But if my definition is a bucket list is anything that’s going to bring you joy and happiness. In a world that tends to bury that because all your personal passions are the first things to get pushed under the rug. Right, because there’s no deadlines for them. So we think we have all this time. So we continually push them push them until, you know, 76% of people realize that they’re out of time, because the biggest regret people have on their deathbed. This is through research out of Cornell, the number one regret, is I wish I would have lived for me, not what I thought others wanted for me, or what was expected of me. So this is a huge problem. This is the biggest problem on Earth, that three quarters of the population reach their deathbed, and they realize, dammit, I blew it. And so how can we

 

Scott D Clary  16:12

credibly sad, it’s super, I was gonna mention, I want to I wanted to ask you just one thing on this point, because you actually mentioned something that was interesting. Permission, permission to look at life through your lens and and fully understand what you want your life to be. And you realize this over the course of the very life of your bucket list. Do you think that and I want to keep going down this road? And I didn’t I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just want to I want to highlight the problem so people can try and start to solve it. Yeah. Do you think that people? Do you think that people are where do you think a lot of people are and that 76% that reached the end of their life? And they aren’t happy? Do you think it’s that people understood what they wanted? Or they maybe didn’t understand what they want? What they wanted? Or they they they didn’t even give themselves permission? Or what was the main thing that caused them to push off? creating their own bucket list living life on their own terms? Because was it internal influence external influence? I’m trying to understand what stops people from accomplishing this?

 

Ben Nemtin  17:20

Yeah, so there’s autism two ways. The first is by looking at the research. So if you look at Tom Gilovich, his research who’s a professor at Cornell, he found that there are three main reasons why we don’t pursue these calm, whatever you want personal passions, dreams, goals, the life you really want. The biggest is fear, the fear of what other people think, or the fear of failure. And those when we could talk about how to delineate what’s a real fear and a real risk and an imagined fear. But that’s the, that’s what he found to be the number one. The second is that there are no deadlines. And so we think we have this time, but we actually don’t. So we’ve got to create accountability around our personal goals. And the third is that we’re waiting typically to feel inspired to go after these things, or we’re waiting for the perfect time we over plan and we forget that action is the plan. So those are the three things, the biggest barriers, when to answer your question, the you know, specifically around like, what do I think, is it that they’re not? They don’t know what they want, or they don’t go, they know what they want, but they don’t go after it. I think it’s both. I think that a big piece of this is that we think we’re living for what we want in ourselves, but we actually aren’t, because we’ve been conditioned to believe that there’s this life, that’s going to make us happy. And so we’re going down that path. But we’re we haven’t taken the time to stop and really think about what makes us feel alive. Like what actually gives us energy and makes us feel like the best expression of ourselves. And so that’s what I try and pay attention to is energy. Like, when I do something does it make does it make me excited? You know, do I feel more like myself? And that’s when I’m doing something or that’s around people, right? Like I get energy from people. And I know that when I’m around people that are making me feel more like myself, they’re the right crew to be around. And so I think First things first is stopping and going through the exercise of thinking about what you really want and giving as you said, you have to give yourself permission to dream. And you have to reverse the narrative in your head that it’s selfish to have these goals or to pursue these things. And I know that there are a lot of people thinking, Well, look, you were in college like you had no family, you didn’t have any responsibilities. Of course, you can go on a road trip and go do whatever the hell you want. Well, yeah, that’s true. But then is not what the big idea is about the big idea is, what can you afford? The amount of time? What amount of time can you afford to commit to focusing on the things that are important to you, knowing that it’s not selfish, it’s actually service, because you can’t be a better parent, a better partner than a better professional. If you don’t take care of yourself, it’s the whole put on your oxygen mask before serving others, you can’t serve others, you became brief, right? Like you just can’t. So the first piece is like reversing that thought process that you might have that it’s selfish, and I don’t have time, right? Like, I got too much on my plate. And I got too many people relying on me. And you may have a ton on your plate, and you may have a lot of people relying on you. But do you have one hour a week to protect, to learn violin, learn meditation, you know, do you have one weekend a year to protect, to do that trip, with your family, with your friends? And in you know, can you protect that time by creating accountability around them, we can talk about how to create accountability, because that’s really, for me been the biggest tool to drive me towards these things. But that’s what I would say to, you know, to answer your question.

 

Scott D Clary  21:23

So so that’s a huge, that’s a huge responsibility on you. So you understand that 76% of people do not achieve what they want to achieve in life. Now, you’ve had this incredible career up to this point where you sort of lived it yourself. And now you have all the tools, but how do you deploy them? So what is the next step in your life? Where you’re like, I want to I want to help those 76%? Well, actually, yeah, I want to help the 76% of people so that they don’t regret their entire life when they’re on their deathbed. So this is what you’re taking on now. So what are the steps that you’re taking, like after you’re finished the berry life? Now, you know, now what you speak on what you teach over, even even as like an individual like, that’s like an incredibly intimidating task to take on, right? Like people have mortgages, they have jobs. And we’re not talking like, like, I’m sure young people that are coming out of college, they can take your example and run with it. But what about people that have been in careers for 30 years? 40 years that are 40 5060? What do they do?

 

Ben Nemtin  22:19

It’s a good question. And the position that I found myself is that’s who I’m speaking to 99% of the time, are our business leaders, right, like sales leaders, partners of larger companies that are that are, you know, throwing client events, larger C suite groups. And I never thought I wouldn’t be speaking those folks. But but the reality is, this is the human condition, right? This is, this is a feeling that is getting worse, I think, you know, Matthew Arnold, the poet in 1852, wrote about this, if he, if he can jump on this podcast, he’d probably say, Well, this is bad right now. The pandemic, and we’re, it’s like we’re getting, we’re getting more buried by social media and less real connections, we have more stimulation that distracts us from who we truly are. And so the steps that I would say, and this is really why I wrote the bucket list journal was because I was like, the only people that really know what I’m speaking about are coming to my keynotes. And these are people that are they have to work for the company, or they have to be invited to the event. So I wanted a tool for my friends and anybody to follow, to actually make this, you know, start this process and a lot is around like creating your own momentum through action. Right. So this, the first step is writing down your goals, right? It’s such a simple thing, but it’s very powerful for a number of reasons. Number one, it forces you to slow down and think about what’s important to you. So right there, you’re ahead, because 76% of people, this is their biggest regret. So you first and foremost have to figure out what you want. And I think that it’s overwhelming sometimes to look at a blank piece of paper and think, what’s my purpose? What’s everything that I want to do in my life? And just, here’s the manifesto, right? And so what I found helpful is one to put a structure to the list writing process. So in the bucket list journal, you write your goals in 10 categories. So instead of just looking at one big list, I’ve realized that there are 10 categories of life that reflect pretty much all of the things that you the areas you may have goals in your life. And some of those are based off of brawny wares book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying so she’s she’s a hospice worker and she wrote this book, it’s found that again, consistent with Mr. Gilovich, his research, number one regret, I wish I would have had the courage to live for me. That’s enough. We’re when we got and we can talk about the other regrets as well. But when you think about like that, the 10 categories of life that you want to think about when you write your list, adventure travel, pretty straightforward. We all think about a bucket list. And we think, you know, travel Europe, you know, adventure stuff, maybe bungee jump skydive, that type of stuff. Those are great. But that’s one of 10. This then you have, what are your professional goals? What are your financial goals? What are your mental health goals? Right? What do you want to do to reduce stress, this is obviously could be the biggest category of life for a lot of people considering so many people are struggling with anxiety and depression, physical health goals, relationship goals, this is a big one. One of the Top Five Regrets of the Dying from Brian Edwards book is I wish I would have stayed in contact with friends. That doesn’t cost any money. But that means you have to identify the relationships that are important to you, and invest, invest your time in those relationships. Intellectual goals, what do you want to learn creative goals, I think creativity is an often overlooked pillar of wellness. These you think about, when you’re expressing your creativity, you’re really being that true version of yourself. You know, that’s when you get in flow state when you’re playing an instrument or doing art or, you know, there’s many different creative expressions, podcasting, you know, writing. So what’s that thing that you can do, where you get out of your head, and you just, you’re just doing it because you’re, you’re, you’re flowing. So that’s a big one. And there’s, there’s a couple more that I may have missed, but you can use, you can go to write your list.com. And look at those 10 categories, if you want to use them as a guide. So you write your list, because now you have a reminder that your goals exist. So as you get buried by the day to day, you come back to your list. And it reminds you what’s important, because you’ve taken the time to think about it. You’ve taken some this intangible your thought and you’ve made it tangible. So now you’ve taken a step, and that action begets more action. And you’re starting to to move it to create your own inspiration through action. And how,

 

Scott D Clary  27:12

how audacious can these goals be? How big should these goals be?

 

Ben Nemtin  27:18

I believe that you shouldn’t have a big goal just because you think you should have big, hairy, audacious goals. Is that how you say?

 

Scott D Clary  27:28

It is? Yeah, I think it is. Yeah, I think I think

 

Ben Nemtin  27:32

a little bit odd. Yeah. So I’ve never actually said it

 

Scott D Clary  27:35

out loud. But yeah, I think that’s the thing. But yeah, it is a little weird. But the point is the big the big, audacious goals, right? So do you say, you know, I feel like people would sort of do do this. And when they fill out these 10 categories, they can, they can fall into two fallacies, they’ll set goals that are too small, that are something they could that they know, they’re going to accomplish it anyways. Like if, for example, like if you are a professional on a professional path, and I think of I guess, like professional goals and monetary goals, but even like with, you know, your your girlfriend that you’re dating, you’re gonna say, Well, you know, we’re gonna get married in three years. And that’s okay. That’s a goal. I mean, and if you if you’re on a career path, where you’re making $80,000, and you’re right, I’m gonna make $100,000 In five years, well, hopefully you keep up with inflation, like these are not like really audacious goals, right? Like, these are just things that are probably going to happen anyways, that’s still important. But should the person be setting even larger milestones? Should the person be setting for example, with a relationship, like, we’re going to not only be married, but we’re going to commit to like once a month, or even once a week, date night, and we’re going to make sure that we’re always in love and always best friends and verbalize that and make commitments to that in at this at this stage in time.

 

Ben Nemtin  28:52

100%. So, it’s, I guess my answer to your question would be, there’s no rules with with your list, the only rule is that it’s important to you. So with that being said, that can be a huge dream, I wouldn’t suggest just writing down a huge dream because you feel like you need to do something really, really big. You know, I think if you check it and you realize this is really important to me, then yes, but what you said about relationships, I think that’s spot on. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s identifying what’s important to you, and then starting to write down things that are measurable, that you know, when you achieve it, you can clearly understand like I’ve accomplished this, so it’s not staying in love, quote, unquote, right? It’s what are the things that are specific that I know that we can commit to that we know when we’ve accomplished those things? So date night, once a week, you know, checking in every every two weeks to have a conversation and updating this list of what’s important to us. What do we really want so that it evolves as we evolve and as a relationship evolves. So I think it’s a great conversation to have with your partner, it’s a great conversation to have with your family to do a family list, what are the things that we want to achieve as a family. So I have parents that do summer bucket list with their kids, you know, young kids that are, they all the things they want to accomplish during the summer. And then it’s with kids that are in college, you know, having this conversation about what’s really important to you, and, and how, because when you set it, the next step in achieving your goal is talking about it. So when you talk with your, your partner, you say, hey, let’s let’s, this is something that I think is important, I think we, you know, we’re getting we’re getting buried by by work and the kids, we need to protect time for us, we need to do it, let’s do date night, once a week, once every day, at least once every two weeks, you know, and let’s talk about and so by sharing that, right now you have accountability, because you’ve spoken so when you talk about your goals, you feel accountable to the people you’ve spoken to. And if you look at the big problem, there’s no deadlines. So it’s hard to keep yourself accountable, you have to be very disciplined, just to you know, get up every day and work out. But if you have someone knocking on your door, your your training partner, or texting you, where the hell are you, you’re gonna get there, right, so how, so by talking about your goals and sharing them, one, you you feel accountable to them, too, they can keep you accountable, you don’t want to let them down, right, you’ve expressed that this is important. The other thing that’s great is when you share your goals, is they’re they’re there to support you. So let’s take take the training, for example, if you communicate with your partner, I’m gonna get in shape. I’m working out three times a week with John, my training partner. And, and it comes Friday, you know, and it’s the third day of the week for your training. And, you know, the kids are crying or you know, some hits the fan and, and you’re like, I’m not gonna go, she’s like, No, no, you this is I got this, I know, this is important to you. But so they support you in this pursuit. And so and here’s what I’m finding in organizations is really interesting is that when, you know, leaders, give people permission to communicate what these personal passions are. Then it gives them the opportunity to feel like they can be their true self, which creates a culture that encourages people to pursue their professional passions, but also be the person they are and pursue their personal passions. And when leaders support their team to do these things. It is really rich environment. And then you see people helping each other. Right, which is what I found through talking with, you know, when I come back to these organizations, and continually talk about some of these ideas, leaders are the creating goal funds, right for their teams. There. There’s bucketlist, Slack channels that pop up where people are supporting each other. So how can you know you employee reviews and one on ones you check in on the personal goal as well as the professional goals, because if you think about it, work, the workplace. It’s just structures of accountability. That’s all it is, right? It’s leaders keep us accountable. Salary keeps you accountable, you don’t want to look bad, you want to let your team down. So you can insert the personal goal into those same structures to drive you forward. So you know, that’s a little bit about like, the next steps for you as a person, you write your goals, you share them. And then, you know, the work that I found myself in these days as well, is helping these teams create environments where they attract the rest of the best talent, you know, retain and have empathy as a leader to be like, Hey, I know you’re a human being. You have dreams, we all have dreams. What are they? Let’s connect and talk about them. Maybe I can help you. And that’s a powerful thing.

 

Scott D Clary  33:54

I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today’s episode HubSpot. Now, because at this time of the year, we like to think about new ways to solve problems, right New Year new you, we like to think creative, innovative, scalable solutions that make our jobs easier, and 2023. That’s where HubSpot comes in. It’s a connected all in one CRM platform that serves as a single source of truth for managing customer relationships across all your teams, so that you don’t have to worry about the time sucking management and mind boggling costs of multiple solutions. Best of all, it’s free to get started. Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better and get a special offer of 20% off on eligible plans at hubspot.com/success pod. Is that actually, you know it’s it. We didn’t even we didn’t even need to jump there right away. But I think it was an important lesson, the accountability piece and I was actually curious about when you were doing your own bucket list. Did you find that you had more success immediately because you’re doing it with friends? And also sort of an add on to that question, that bucket list. I’ve listened to some other interviews and some of those items were shared items. And some of those items were solo items. Did you find it was easier to accomplish the shared items versus the solo items? Or was there any differentiation there when you were doing that own bucket list?

 

Ben Nemtin  35:14

So we had individual items and shared items, as you said, but we all did all of them together. So it’s actually the first time I thought about this. So for instance, rideable, I had no interest in riding a bull. I had a herniated disc from rugby, you know, this, this wasn’t getting on one. Dave, one of the guys was very passionate about writing a book he called dozens of, you know, outfits in Idaho and Utah, no one would let them on a boat. They’re like, it’s too much liability. You’ve never like, No, we’re not gonna let you put that into your documentary. Finally found someone and, and he did it. And Duncan and I ended up doing it last minute. And Gianni, I did not. But we all did a lot of these most list items together. Even if it was just one person’s dream, most of them were collective dreams, but the the accountability of having those other guys with me,

 

Scott D Clary  36:13

even even you for them, when when Yeah, exactly, double.

 

Ben Nemtin  36:17

And even, there’s no way I would have done some of the things street field and get away, I’ve no chance unless I was forced into that position, because they were like we’re doing this, you know, being a crop competition. In LA, I can’t dance like this is a nightmare for me, you know, survive on a desert island, you know, and just have to figure out a way to make a bed on the sand and live off coconuts like ask out, try and ask about Megan Fox on the Transformers premier red carpet like these things made me so nervous, I almost threw up. But because I had those guys with me, and there wasn’t an option to not do it. There was just there was no option. And the other thing that I think is more powerful, is like when I tell the story of starting that road trip in 2006. And, and getting to, you know, these big, bigger list items and make a TV show and all that it really sounds like a great startup story. You know, it’s just a rocket ship. From 2006 to the television show was was three, four years. And we had many times when I wanted to give up. Right when we we got offered a show in Canada. By the way, a lot of people don’t know this, but MTV Canada after the first tour, we went to Toronto, we had made a trailer, we put it on YouTube, it got the front page of YouTube. We met with production companies in Canada, MTV Canada, offers a show, they wanted to own the IP, they want to own Barry Lyndon. And we were like, we just kind of want to keep doing this on our own. Like we didn’t want to, we want to make a show, not sell a show, basically. So we politely you know, declined. The next summer 2007. We got lots of sponsors on board. We got Palm Pilot at the time we got Levi’s. They helped us by the bus. We must be you know, we raised a lot of money for sponsors to enough to get a full crew from LA to follow us for two months on the road. Put all this money into the dock, got back home realized how expensive post production is. We had spent 90% of our money, we hadn’t paid ourselves a dime. And we had turned on a show we were broke. I started working at a bar didn’t even know how to bartend in Vancouver. And I was like We blew it dude, we turn down to show we spent all our money on this doc that no one will ever see. And now I’m working in a bar dropped out of school I dropped out of school. And it was the three other guys right that in those moments when I felt so down that we’re like, get back up. You know, we’re gonna work to keep doing this. I randomly met this girl that knew my shoot her her parents were friends with my parents and I was on a random trip to Mexico and she lived in LA and she was like, Oh, this is kind of cool. You know, like I can maybe introduce you to some people on a whim I flew down to LA by myself, met some people and started just coming down to LA learning the entertainment business need realized I needed an agent realize we needed a production company. We cut our own pilot from the footage we filmed. So this documentary footage like oh, let’s let’s cut a pilot. We’d crash the MTV Video Awards in Vegas snuck in the whole thing. filmed it we use that as a pilot. Ironically, we got in pretending we were filming an MTV pilot. And then we use that footage to cut a pilot ended up selling the show to MTV with that footage, but a lot of ups and downs and if I was trying to do this by myself, I would have stopped after the first year 2007 Yeah, so they really

 

Scott D Clary  39:54

that’s super important but that’s that’s that’s also a sort of like a hidden facet and be being successful in your bucket list and your goals, because you have to find that support group. So if somebody is building out this list, they probably have people in their life. Of course, they have their family, they probably they could have a partner, a spouse, whatever, boyfriend, girlfriend, but not always. So if somebody does want to radically improve their life, you mentioned a few things that could maybe detract from them being successful at this, and I want to actually walk through those so people can understand fear, the deadlines and the will, the waiting to feel inspired those three items. But I think the other item that could stop somebody from your successful is lack of accountability and and those partners in their life that can hold them accountable. So I would ask you, how can somebody find people that can hold them accountable to the level where you held your friends accountable that held you accountable?

 

Ben Nemtin  40:49

I think this is likely a very common question. Because I get it a lot. And you know, it’s like, I don’t know, anybody that’s inspiring, or how do I find these people? And I think that that’s why a lot of people move to different cities like LA or New York, because it feels like there are creative inspiring people there. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to find those people, though, because there’s also a lot of other types of people in these cities. And you can get caught up in the in the wrong types of crowds. So the I’ll give you my experience of what led me to this, and then what I think would help so even before I called up Johnny on the phone, who was a filmmaker, and I was like you’re inspiring. I want to hang out with you. Let’s let’s let’s make something about a year before. A guy that I knew from high school. He was younger than me. And he was in high school and I was in university, he started a clothing line. I didn’t know where I was, like blown away a really cool clothing line. And I was so flabbergasted. I was like how did you do that? You don’t have any experience in fashion? Sick. What do you mean, I just took out a loan and I did it. I was like, wow, I was like, can I get involved? Like can I? So immediately I was I was drawn to this person, I was inspired by him. And I asked if I could help not thinking about anything other than I was drawn to this dude, because he was doing this thing. And so I asked him if I can help. And he said, Yes, I need press, maybe you can get me some press, you know. And there was this, these are the days of like cool hunting blogs, you know, where people would just post stuff they thought was cool. And like they would just get is a great, greatest gig of all time, you just get sent all this cool stuff. And if you really liked it, you just post a photo of it. Right? So there’s this, there’s this guy, Josh Spear, who had a website gesture.com. And he was I saw on the front page of the Toronto Sun style, or Toronto Star, it was like the style section or cool it was the lifestyle. It was like a Josh’s, it’s cool. It’s cool. So this is early 2000s. And I was I was like I bet you he would like this, my friends call it like anyways, got in contact with just send him an email, he got back to me through his website, I was like, wow, I got to kind of this guy we sent in my friends clothing, he did a post about it. I was like, Holy crap, like that was easier than I thought. I was like, if my friend made a clothing line, I wonder what I could do. I want to make a movie.

 

Scott D Clary  43:13

So he found a way to get into into his life, like through providing tons of value through associating with him through through you build the relationship by being listened like and then you showed up to which is another important thing to like when when he asked for help, or whatever it is, like you showed up?

 

Ben Nemtin  43:27

Exactly. And then, you know, he was friends with Johnny. So I started hanging out with his friends. So, you know, like minded people tend to hang out with each other. So my advice is, find one person that you think is doing something cool, or that is inspiring you, you know, in some way, shape, or form. And if you know them a little bit, just try to get to know them a little more, and see if you can get to know their friends. Because likely they run in a circle of like minded people, and you sort of try and go down that rabbit hole to to open up your circle to these types of people. And you’re following your energy. So you’re not following. It’s not necessarily tactical where you’re like, This person is successful. I need to hang out with this person. They’re making a lot of money or doing this, like what are the people that make you feel more alive? Who are the people that give you energy and inspire you because by surrounding yourself with inspiring people? by osmosis, subconsciously, you feel that you can do good, great things, because you see your friends doing these things. And you realize, well, if they did it, but I wonder what I could do. The the flip side of that is if you see people you don’t know do incredible things. I think your initial reaction is, oh, they’re smarter than me. They’re better than me. That’s why they’re doing those things. But what do you know them? You’re like, I hate on this person all the time. They’re not that smart. Right? They’re not that great. You know, I can probably do this stuff. And so you’re the The high tide right rise to the boats, you believe that you can do great things just because you know these people and so your level of thinking subconsciously rises. And that’s the power of, of surrounding yourself with inspiring people.

 

Scott D Clary  45:17

So three, three points that I want to go into three points that can inhibit your success, right fear deadlines, waiting to feel inspired. So can you go into those a little bit deeper? And then can you walk through how you would suggest somebody overcome these three main blockers for getting started and then succeeding at living your own bucket list and your own varied life?

 

Ben Nemtin  45:40

Yeah. So the top three barriers, number one fear, fear of what other people think, or fear of failure. Very common fears. We all feel those fears. I look at these taxes, you have to pay to achieve your goals, these aren’t going away, right? You’re never going to conquer the fear. I speak over 100 times a year to lots of people, I still get stage fright. I know that this is part and parcel with doing the thing that’s important to me, I’m pushing myself, I’m going to feel that discomfort, that fear. But that also is a positive, that means I’m growing. That’s an indicator that I’m pushing myself to evolve. So when you think when you feel this fear, know that part of it is excitement, fear and excitement, anxiety, excitement, very similar feelings. So when I’m afraid to, or I feel stage fright, or I’m nervous about a talk, I think, wow, I must be excited. So I can shift some of that energy into excitement. So I think just the awareness that the fear is not going to go away, and that it’s a part of you growing, you know, to get to where you are, you didn’t coast there. It’s not like you conquered fear. But you took risks, you had to put yourself out there, you’re like, what are people going to think of this podcast? What if I fail, that stops most people that fear. So firstly, awareness that the fear is not going away, you’re never going to conquer it, you got to push through it. And that feeling is actually net positive. Because what I found is that when I put myself in that vulnerable position, right, ultimately, something positive is gonna come with it. At the very least, I learned something about myself, even a full of failure is a positive, because I’ve learned something about myself. Usually, it’s a pivot into the direction that I know that I’m supposed to go. And so so let’s look at like both of those fears individually. But I think at first is just the awareness. Now, I think it’s important to look at what are the real fears? And don’t look at fears, look at risks? What are the real risks? So are you risking your ego? Or what other people might think of you? Or are you risking your financial well being are you risking to the well being of your family, you know, is your is your life is your likelihood is at risk, your mortgage, all of these things are real risks. So I don’t want to be so just non grounded in reality, the basic fact that you need to look at what is at risk, but I think that sometimes we inflate the Imagine risks. So you can write down, what are the real risks. So now, you know, this is what you’re risking. And if you feel comfortable, putting those at risk and knowing that, okay, you know, what, if I fail here, I’m not gonna lose my house, my family’s gonna be okay, my health is gonna be okay. Then I think that this is something that I can take a crack at. So you sort of look at like this, this this fear, as, you know, if you’re afraid to go after your goal, or you’re waiting for the right time, unfortunately, you failed, right, because you did not achieve your goal. So at least when you try and you fail, what you learn from that really outweighs any potential hit of your reputation. And I think the other thing that’s kind of interesting about the fear of what other people think, because it’s something I struggle with, right? You know, this is something that doesn’t go away. But the truth is, when it comes to the fear of what other people think people just aren’t thinking about me as much as I think they are. Right? They’re busy living their life, worried about what other people are thinking about them. They’re not thinking about me all the time. And so they’re the In addition, they’re also more supportive. Like when we finally had the courage to talk about what we wanted with our bucket list. The reality is, people stepped up and helped. The only way that we crossed things off our list is to to help other people. And if we didn’t talk about it, and we didn’t, you know, it’s really hard to say what you want and share what you want. Letting go of what other people think is really difficult, but you give them the chance to help you. And if you don’t talk about it, no one can help you and we found that people stepped up in unexpected ways. So that is the fear piece, which is the biggest which I think, you know, is the number one barrier. And then the SEC Do barriers very quickly. There’s no deadlines. So we push these personal goals. So we need to create accountability. And that means that we need to write down our goals, because then you create a bit of accountability. We need to share our goals, because that creates accountability. We need to have accountability partners check in with us. If you want to increase your chances of success by 77%. You have you said regular updates to your accountability, buddy. Right? So if you if you say, I’m gonna write my next book this year, I’m like, great, send me a chapter a month is me, send me what you’ve been working on every month. If you say on the podcast, ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to announce I’m writing my next book. You’re gonna write the book?

 

Scott D Clary  50:45

Because then you’re gonna write the book. Yeah, you tell

 

Ben Nemtin  50:48

everybody, right? I was like, how’s the book coming? How’s it going? How’s the book coming? It’s like, crap, I gotta, I gotta write this thing. And so those, those are ways to create accountability, you can you block it on your calendar, you know, just just like you put in your calendar, you have a podcast recording, it’s very rare, you’re gonna miss that right? With the big guests coming in, like you’re not you’re protecting that time, you need to have the same vigilance and protecting time for your personal goals, these personal passions. So that means protecting it, putting it in your calendar, communicating it with people, you know, setting precedents, you know, if you if you do a trip with your friends, and it’s every once a year, you do it on the same weekend, that’s great. Because that’s happening, you have a group of friends, you’re going on that trip, and you do it every year, you’re keeping each other accountable, you know, the date, your your family knows it’s important to you, that’s that is the type of accountability that you need to drive forward. So and the third goal, or sorry, the third barrier, is what is it so no accountability, fear, oh, waiting to feel inspired, to feel inspired. Which I think we all feel right, like pandemic hit, I rushed out on the perfect grabbed a guitar bought it, it’s sitting in the corner, I’m just waiting for her to feel inspired to pick up and play like, it’s, the inspiration is never gonna hit. But you create your own inspiration through action. And the trick is, sometimes we feel like we need to know the path to success. I’m sure you didn’t know how the hell you’re going to build a successful podcast and brand.

 

Scott D Clary  52:26

But I didn’t know that if I did it, you know, 1000 times and it would figure itself out eventually.

 

Ben Nemtin  52:32

Exactly. So you would learn by doing. And so you don’t need to know the full path to success. Those those initial small steps, you start, you build your own inspiration through action. So it’s literally, you know, throwing a snowball over a hill, it’s the momentum and it grows. So that’s why you want to create very easy steps in the beginning, like writing it down, like talking about these things that will start tuning, you know, what are this the smallest things in the bucket list journal, when you start a list of you break it down into 48 hour action items, what are the three things you can do the next 48 hours, let’s create the momentum. You know, and so this, this, you’re sort of the architect of your own inspiration through action. And sometimes, like we were talking before you over plan, we love to plan, right? Well, we’ll plan till we die. And then we’ll forget that action is the plan. The action is the plan. So your your plan is to learn as you go. And you’ll even if you don’t know the second step, just the first step, you’ll figure the second after first. So in short, you create accountability to to move yourself forward, you create your own inspiration through action. And you identify real fears and imagined fears. And understand that you’re really the architect of this whole process.

 

Scott D Clary  53:56

I love it. And I want to sort of take a concept that we spoke about at the beginning and then bring it back at the end because you do speak about mental health a lot. And we didn’t explicitly address it. But you solved the issues and the stress you had in your life through a variety of mechanisms. Yes, there was more formal like your therapist and whatnot and surround yourself with people with with great energy. But talk to me about goal setting mental health, what it helps you accomplish some of the things that you’ve noticed that have that have improved your life and maybe your clarity of thought and your mental health and well being as you’ve gone through this process, because you have a mental health toolkit that you speak about. And obviously it’s something that’s been very personal in your life as well. So why is that a topic that you still speak about? Even many obviously, there’s been some impact. So I want to break that down for people as well. So it’s not just the tangible do the next thing and it’s great. We set a deadline for a promotion. I got the promotion but there’s your psychological benefits as well. Yeah.

 

Ben Nemtin  55:02

Yeah, I think first of all I was I think it’s important to just be clear that like, I didn’t cure my depression through a bucket list. You know, I think that what a bucket list did for me was that it helped me identify the things that are going to make me happy and bring me a sense of joy. And so that’s fairly intuitive. But it’s also overlooked, you know, like, what are the small things that are going to bring you that sense of joy. And that’s the core of what a bucket list is. And that’s something I stumbled into, because I realized in now, reflecting that I wasn’t living for me. So I think that a lot of people are unhappy, because they’re not living for them, which is when you’re not in alignment with who you are. I think that causes some unhappiness. Now, the other thing that I think is important, too, to talk about is that I’ve been through a couple pretty severe depressions since that first depression. Now, they weren’t as debilitating as the first, but I am someone who is prone to these types of feelings. And the thing though, that I’ve realized is that anytime I go through any type of depression or struggle, I do really learn things about myself. And that’s where the mental health toolkit came for me was that realizing out of necessity, I need to understand habits that work for me to help me pull myself out of these dark times. And so I think everyone should have their own mental health toolkit of habits, you know, just work for you. So that when you hit stress, you can use utilize these habits to, to pull yourself out. And also I realized that if I practice these things, when I feel good, I just feel better. So these are just things that are good for me, that ultimately, sometimes get pushed under the rug, because we get so busy. So therapy is a big one, finding a therapist that you connect with, right, that you respect that is good at what they do, that you like to talk to, is really important and also hard. And I think we talk about therapy a lot. But we don’t talk about how frickin hard it is to find a good therapist that for you. And knowing that it’s probably going to take a couple cracks, and meetings with different therapists until you find someone that you that you resonate with. I like to think about the simple analogy that if you walk into a dinner party, and you start talking with people, what are the chances the very first person you talk to, you’re going to, like, you’re going to respect what they do, and you’re going to have a connection with, right. And so the reality is, you’re gonna it’s gonna take a couple of people. So that’s the same with a therapist that you’re just going to don’t be discouraged. A lot of people, they’re like, oh, therapy is not for me. So really, how come by you know, I talked to therapists, it just didn’t didn’t quite work. Well. Try another one. Like you try a couple, right? Because I think that’s, that’s key, there’s barrier of entry to therapy. So I don’t want to just gloss over the simple fact that therapy is expensive, if you don’t have benefits that cover it. So if you can’t talk with a therapist, keep in mind, there’s other options for you. There’s there’s lower cost options, you know, there’s a lot of digital platforms now that you can talk with therapists virtually for less expensive, if you’re ever in trouble, there’s a there’s a new suicide and hot it’s like 911, but for mental health crisis,

 

Scott D Clary  58:19

but not 911. I’ve heard about this

 

Ben Nemtin  58:21

9988. So just dial 988 If you’re ever in trouble, you’ll talk with someone that’s your in your back pocket, there’s also Crisis Text Line, but you don’t feel comfortable calling you can text Crisis Text Line and get a response right away. So just knowing that, hey, this is part of the human experience, like if you’re going through a tough time right now, you are absolutely not alone. Biggest thing I would encourage you to do is to talk about it, whether it’s via text to Crisis Text Line, calling a therapist or calling someone that cares about you and just talking about because when you talk about your struggles, a couple of things happened. Number one, you give someone else the opportunity to help you. You also, you get to break down what is really going on, and it becomes less scary. Things are so much scarier in your head when you’re just beating them around. But when you talk about them, they lose their power. And you start to realize, okay, I actually might be able to work through some of this stuff. So it’s part of processing is talking about it. So, you know, this mental health toolkit that I’ve learned throughout the past 15 years are just things that helped me navigate this stuff. And so if you I can talk about some of them, it’s some of them people have probably heard about, but I think that it’s like, the trick is getting these things from habits into routines. And so they are things like purpose, right? So that’s why the bucket list is important. What are the things that are gonna bring you that sense of purpose, connection, talking about these things? It’s also meditation. You know, I really like Transcendental Meditation, mainly because if I can’t sleep, I meditate and well Last time, I’m able to get back to sleep. And sleep is the biggest pillar of my wellness, right? I know if I don’t sleep, I’m in trouble. Nature, right? It’s proven that just being out in nature for 20 minutes, you don’t even have to exercise. And you get an increased sense of well, being in Japan, doctors prescribe forest bathing, which is getting out in nature, to patients that are feeling anxious or depressed. You know, exercise has been super important. And we all know exercise is good for us. But you don’t need 60 minutes of exercise, you could do five minutes, what I what I do is, every morning, I just get up. And before I get in the shower, and I build this into my routine, and this is what James clear talks about in atomic habits, which is books around you just implementing these types of habits, or is a thing called habit stacking. So how can you pair a habit with something that you already do so just like you wake up, and you brush your teeth in the morning, if that’s what I haven’t, you start there. you brush your teeth, before you brush deep, you just do push up, so you can’t do anymore, you just sit ups till exhaustion, a plank, put a pull up bar, just do as many as you can before you jump a shower. And that for me is been key because if I don’t do it, first thing, I’m not going to do it, I guess he’s get too busy. So try these things, see what works for you. I put the my toolkit on my Instagram bio. So it’s like the one link in my in my bio, which is at Ben damped, and it’s the download there. So you can check it out and try these things. It also talks about the science behind them, and how to get them from habits to routines. So, you know, one, the awareness that life’s about ups and downs, you’re gonna go through it. And that’s actually okay in the sense that it’s, it’s not abnormal. And you’re going to learn things about yourself through this, you’re going to build empathy for other people. And if you’re really in a tough spot, you know, texts or Crisis Text Line, call 988. Talk with a therapist, talk with someone don’t keep it inside. Because it’s so much harder to solve problems on your own. Like if you think about it, like, what let’s say you’re, you know, running this this podcast, and you’re trying to solve a problem. What do you do you go to a mentor, you ask for help you, you talk with a friend. And we

 

Scott D Clary  1:02:12

just so what so why is Why is why would it be any different? Right? What exactly why would it be any different for your own health for your own mental health if you if it’s not a business problem, it’s still somebody out there can help you because they figured it out before,

 

Ben Nemtin  1:02:24

figured out before and the stigma stops us. Right? So the mental stigma is still there, it’s getting better. One of the silver linings of the pandemic is that mental health has become a national conversation. Dude, I’m telling you, I, when I started speaking in 2018, my talk is a mental health talk effectively, right? Like all of this is about, you know, being good to yourself. So you can do your job at the highest level, you can do all these things. And I build my talk as a mental health talk. No one was buying it. Right? I had to rebrand it into the impossible as possible. It performance, you know, I still was the same talk. But no one’s buying it. This was not a conversation in 2018. In the in the corporate level, right. And fortune 500 companies were talking about much. Now it is which is fantastic. And that’s a that’s a benefit from the pandemic. The downside is more people are struggling, it’s a benefit. Because it’s a necessity, it’s become able to compensate because it’s a necessity. So we need to continue to strip the stigma. And the way we can do that is by talking about it through things like this, this podcast and other conversations with friends, everyone has the opportunity to reduce stigma by talking about it. And we need to educate people so that they understand now what do I do. And so that’s also important. So just, I have this conversation. It’s important. So thank you for giving the opportunity to talk about it. And I think that the connection between mental health and purpose, which is really what this is, is sometimes overlooked.

 

Scott D Clary  1:03:57

I love it. Okay, so I have one one last question to close it up. But before I ask the last question, most importantly, where do people connect with you? Where’s the social, the website, all that stuff? You mentioned your Instagram handle, but other places they should go check out as well.

 

Ben Nemtin  1:04:10

Yeah, so most of my social handles are at bempton, which is just my name. If you want to check out the bucket list journal, you can go to write your list.com. And you can at least look at the actual 10 categories, use those as a guide. But if you want to buy the journal, you can just search the bucket list journal on Amazon or go to regulus.com I encourage people to write write their list and then share it on social you know, like, tag Scott and I you know, let us see it, you know, we can be your accountability buddies. And start this start this journey. And if you’re thinking about, you know, all the other things you have to do today, and, and you’re gonna you’re gonna start your list on the weekend. Take 1015 minutes after this podcast just start the process now. Because I guarantee a year from now, you’re going to wish you started today. And if you think it’s too late, you’re wrong. I speak to a lot of people that start their list at 70 years old, 80 years old. A year from now you’re going to wish you started today is never too late to start your list, you’re just going to this is this is a lifelong process that you’re going to continually evolve your list. That’s why you want to write your list in a journal, not a piece of paper, not on a Notes app on your phone, a physical thing that you actually care about you treasure so it’s you’re going to keep it is a safe place for your dreams to live so that you can come back to it and update it as you grow. Right. So as you’re having a conversation with your your partner, you can update your list. And I think that you know if the what I like about the journal is that one it gives you like the do’s and don’ts for writing your list, right? It gives you quick trick tricks like you want to attach a timeline, you wanted to find your goal. So it’s clear, you want to name specific things. You want it you want to make it measurable. And then you write your list in those 10 categories. And the purpose of the journal is to get you over those three barriers that we talked about. create accountability, create inspiration through action and move through through here.

 

Scott D Clary  1:06:12

I love it. Okay, last question that I asked everyone, after your career after now you now you speak globally, you had incredible TV show an incredible life? What does success mean to you?

 

Ben Nemtin  1:06:25

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. And success, to me are two things, one, sleeping through the night without waking up. And to because what that means is that I’m not worried about anything. If I’m stressed out or worried about something I’m thinking about in the night, and I’m not sleeping through the night, and when I sleep through the night, I feel completely energized and I feel like like myself. So that’s the first thing is sleeping tonight. The second is success is being true to myself. You know, there’s this is, I think a lifelong pursuit. It definitely has been a lifelong pursuit for me. It’s very easy to get pulled away from that it feels like so many things, pull us away from who we truly are. And to to be true to yourself and and live that way. I feel like life starts to unfold for me and in a magical way. Things start to happen, serendipity starts to happen. I enjoy my days more. You know I have more fun, I have more energy, and I’m happier. So So that for me is the goal. And I think that if I could sleep through the night I can live true to myself. Everything else will fall into place.