891. Learning vs. Knowing: Why You Stay Stuck & How to Break the Cycle

Are you truly learning, or just repeating the same mistakes? 

This episode breaks down the difference between knowing something and learning it. 

Real learning isn’t about memorizing facts—it’s about changing your behavior when faced with the same challenges. If you keep finding yourself stuck in the same cycles—whether it’s in sales, fitness, finances, or personal growth—it’s because your actions haven’t shifted. 

I’ll share how small behavior changes lead to micro-wins and how stacking those wins creates long-term success. If you’re ready to stop knowing and start doing, this episode is for you.

Transcript

1:30

Today. I want to talk to you about something that just might shift the way that you approach growth, success, and life in general. It's simple. Life is simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. And this is a powerful idea. If you're not changing how you act, you're not actually learning. You're just memorizing. And if you keep repeating the same cycles, Waking up frustrated, feeling stuck, having constant internal push pull. It's because you're truly not learning. Good news is, there's a fix. It's not an app, but there's a fix. So let's look into it. How many times, all hands raised, have you caught yourself saying, I know, I know, I know, I got it man. But then you go out there and you do the same damn thing again. How You say that, you know, that you need to start working out, you know, you need to start saving money yet. You keep spending, you know, you gotta stop procrastinating, but you keep putting things off. See, knowing isn't the problem. The problem is that knowing without action is absolutely useless. Real learning means that you got to change your behavior. It means that you got to conduct yourself differently when the same situation comes back around. And I see this happen all the time in sales, but I believe sales is the perfect metaphor for life. Life is sales. Well, sales is life. So I see it happen all the time with salespeople. A salesperson is having a terrible month. Barely closing anything. They're laughing. They're clowning. They're joking. Can't find them calling in. And then the last week of the month, they sober up and you're like, wait a minute. I don't have enough money to even cover my bills and this is where they get super serious. They go all in, no lunch breaks, making the phone calls, complete focus, ain't hanging out with nobody and they make it happen. And you know what? We always say at the end of one of those months, bro, I learned my lesson. I'm never going to do this again. How many times have we said that yet? We do it again. Two months later, they're in the same situation, scrambling to make the numbers again. Why? Because they didn't change their daily behavior. They didn't integrate urgency and discipline into their entire process. I mean, and this goes across all walks of life. How many times have you been hugging the toilet the next morning? Tell him I, I swear to God, I'm never going to drink again. You go out that same night, you think that you learned your lesson and you back at it again. I've seen it happen with dieting. I mean, you're strict, strict, strict, and then you go out and eat with friends. You smash a seafood platter, blow up 2000 calories in an instant. And then you wake up the next morning feeling like shit and then it takes you a week just to get back on track and you're not back on track. You just back to zero. You had to work out of a deficit all week long. Why work off when you can work on why work off something? destructive behaviors when you can work on and stack these wins. See stuff like this. And I laugh, man, because we all do it. But stuff like this, man, it's not learning. We just keep living in regrets and we're trying to fix it afterwards. You got to change your behavior. See, behavior simply means it's how you conduct yourself. And if you change your behavior, You're going to shift the way that you see yourself and if you change your narrative, then your results are going to begin to change too. This is how you start stacking these micro wins that become the key to macro success. So what does all this look like? You got to set these non negotiables for yourself. I call them NMWs no matter what. So you got to put these rules in man. Freedom is sometimes the worst thing for you and understand that some people can't handle their freedom. So if you like to drink, set a rule, a couple of drinks, bro. Or maybe, maybe this thing has just gotten out of hand and you know yourself, you don't start narrating and spinning and rationalize it. If you got to spin a rationalization to it, you probably need to just go cold turkey for about 60 days. Kind of dry out. You can come back to it, man. But then when you come back to it, set your rule. A couple of drinks because drink number three, that's when things get wild and woolly. So I don't want to get to that. I just want to keep it tight. I want to have fun. I want to loosen up a little bit, enjoy friends, but not let things get out of hand. If you're in sales, man, dude, come in and work in a process. That means you're going to bang these phones. You're going to work with whatever the goal is three to five new customers. Every single day, you put those new customers in the bucket I'm going to set a goal of 60 customers for the month, new customers. And instead of looking at each customer that doesn't buy. As a pity party, they're just part of my bucket, man. I just add them to the bucket. Boom. Didn't buy boom. Did I maximize it? Boom. Go to the next one. Boom. Go to the next one. Sold. Yay. Boom. Go to the next one. If you're trying to lose weight, man, take your weight, multiply it times 13 and then slash it by 500, whatever that is. So if your weight times 13 is like 3000 calories, that's your maintenance level slash about 500 calories. Now it's 2, 500 calories. And you're gonna lose a pound a week and stay within that and set your macros, one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Get your protein in, set your carbs and your fats accordingly. Hit your protein. You're good. It's not really that hard. We just make things hard because the old emotions get in the way. The old behaviors get in the way. See, when you make these exceptions and concessions, that's when you keep backsliding and bro, look, I'm not saying that you got to flip a switch overnight, but you do have to change your behavior. Change is fluid and sometimes you need to pull back and sometimes you need to push forward. If you're overeating, start cutting down. Just talked about that. If you're too isolated, this is where you got to push yourself to engage more. One step at a time. If you're lacking confidence, lean into the discomfort. You're never going to get better at anything if you shy away from it. So what do you need to push forward on and what do you need to pull back from? It's a throttle and it's not going to be overnight. You're just changing your behavior one decision at a time. Remember direction is more important than speed. The real danger is when you don't change. Because here's the deceiving thing when you don't change. It's not that you stay the same. You actually get worse. You regress because every time you repeat an old mistake, bro, it drains your emotional currency. This is why you feel funky. This is why you're perpetually pissed off. This is why you're blaming other people. You have these emotional leaks because there are things that you know you should be doing, making better decisions, changing your behavior, yet you're always pushing it off for another day. Every day, man, we get these opportunities, yet you ignore it. And this just keeps you in this web. And the problem is that frustrate, this is why it gets worse, that frustration, that push pull, that internal conflict that you have with yourself. It weighs on you, man. And it continues to build. And when it builds, it just, it's, it crushes you. And if you don't address it, this is where you get into the deeper valley of depression. And the only way you cope with depression is through isolation and doubling down on more destructive behaviors. This is how the cycle continues in that crazy, it's crazy. Until we feel bad and to cope with feeling bad. We do something destructive to help us cope, and then we feel worse in this. The cycle goes over and over again. You got to carterize it, man. And so that way you're not waking up and starting your day in a deficit. Change happens immediately. The results take time to show, but you can change immediately. So you get to these crossroads. And just question yourself. Just take a pause. Take a mental knee. Am I learning or just repeating the cycle? Is this a micro win? That can stack into macro success. Remember, direction is more important than speed. Am I going to regret this after the decision? See, you would be surprised if you would just take five seconds and just pause question yourself. If the answer is yes, but if you start rationalizing it, remember, you don't get into negotiations with yourself. If you start rationalizing, negotiations have begun. Step away from it. You're going to feel better on the backside of it. And this is how you build confidence, man. It's because you start keeping commitments to yourself and you're like, yeah, bro, I won that one. And then you just start that. And it gets easier, man. It does. Because with each decision, you get further and further away from your old self. It's not that you're not going to have those pulls I still have those pulls, but I'm not working out of a deficit. I'm not as frustrated. So the new sorts of frustrations that I have aren't out of regrets. They're more so out of wanting to get more done. And the best thing about all of this, man, you don't have to wait. You don't need a perfect plan. You just got to make a decision. One decision right now. I got to change my behavior. And that's how you start winning.