PDM 007: You Don't Know

Narrator: Welcome to the home of Project Dream Mastery. Here at PDM, we are challenging the status quo of what it means to follow your dreams and how to unlock the power those dreams will bring to your life. The show experience will be unscripted, authentic, and transparent. So now sit back, relax, and get inspired with your hosts, Lucas Johnson and Patryk Labuzek.

Lucas P. Johnson: Hello and welcome to the seventh episode of the Project Dream Mastery show, where we help inspire you to follow your dreams, defy expectations, dream big, and love deeply. My name is Lucas Johnson, and I'll be your host today while Patryk is currently out. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to be the first to receive new episode releases and if you have any questions that you would like answered on the show, please tag us on Twitter or Facebook at Project Dream Mastery. Just in case you're interested in the full experience, this episode is available with video. So check out our website at projectdreammastery.com/listen to watch now. Since I am on my own this week, I thought maybe we could talk about a few areas that are relevant to our daily lives. One of those is you don't know what you don't know till you don't know. I'm going to say that again because I know that's a lot. You don't know what you don't know till you don't know.

Lucas P. Johnson: Now, a majority of the time we're put in situations that... Or we place ourselves in situations that we feel confident in. We feel confident that we are going to come out on top. We know we're going to be satisfied with the results. We're going to be satisfied with how we perform. But when you find yourself in those situations, you find yourself in those circumstances where you don't know what to say. You don't know the answer. You don't know what life has to offer for you in that current moment. Most of us, when we graduate from college, we have a degree.

Lucas P. Johnson: We have a piece of paper that we spent four years or longer attaining, or shorter, depending if you are above average. We spend all this time trying to figure out what we're going to do with our lives. Four years, longer, plus or minus, spending to make sure that we are going to be successful in our lives. Then you go to your first job, you get it, you feel like you're on top of the world. You're so excited, so thrilled. Life is going to be... It's life-changing. It's your first job. Cool. You just don't understand that you have so much to learn.

Lucas P. Johnson: I know when I first started my job, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I went in there and I owned it. I crushed it. I was ready to go, and I felt super confident. I made sure I dressed to impress. I did everything you could possibly do to make it a positive experience. Now, a few weeks go by and I'm still doing well, thinking I'm on top, thinking, "I've got this. I know what I'm doing." A few more weeks go by, still have that mindset. And then I get on my first project. My first project was great, fantastic, nothing bad to say. But I also realized in that moment that I had a whole lot I had to prepare for. And this is relevant to your life because no matter how much you prepare, no matter how ready you feel, there is going to be a time, a place, and a person that is going to want to know something from you that you don't necessarily have the answer for. You don't have. You don't know. You didn't even know that you wouldn't know till you didn't know.

Lucas P. Johnson: We take for granted the knowledge that we have. We take for granted the availability of the resources we have. I remember growing up and playing on... We had one computer in our entire house. Okay. This box, this giant box. Now we have these little tiny things that are paperweight in comparison. We had this giant box that sourced all of this information. It was Google. We had Google. All right, you had... See, it's been so long, I can't even remember all of the search engines. But this was a new experience. This was new technology that we now know as a computer, as we know, it was just a box that was a computer. There was one for my entire house, and there was six of us in that house.

Lucas P. Johnson: Now, all of that information is at our fingertips. We have iPhones. We have tablets. We have laptops. We have Alexa, Googles, TVs, smart TVs. We have Xboxes. All these devices that have made this become a reality, made this an information age. People are wanting to learn. People are wanting to discover all these new resources and all these new opportunities for themselves. We're able to gather all of this information at the tips of our fingers and absorb, ingest, digest, all of this information. And now, we know the answer to that question. We know the answer to our client's question. We know the answer to our dreams.

Lucas P. Johnson: But what if I said you still don't know till you don't know? You don't know what you don't know until you don't know. No matter how prepared you feel, no matter how confident you feel, there is always going to be something out there that you're not prepared for, you're not ready for, and you some kind of sort of way feel like you're going into that imposter syndrome feeling. And we're going to dig deep into that here and in our coming weeks on one of our episodes. But, I just think it's really important to focus on the things that you do know. Become skilled. Become an expert in those things. Write a blog. Do something that's going to show that you know everything. You don't have to know everything, but you know what you're doing. You understand, you comprehend what's going on.

Lucas P. Johnson: There are a lot of things in my life I like to prepare for. I like to feel that I'm prepared. And it was just the other day I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I had the answers. I've done it before. I've prepared this kind of work. I've done this kind of work. And then all of a sudden, yeah, I have no idea. That's why we have YouTube University. I like to call it YouTube University. You can go on there and you have amazing people that have done this for years, and they're sharing this information to you for free all to get a little bit of credit from advertisers, if that. If any. Some of them just do it because they love to share. They love to help. Whenever you're thinking about how can you be more prepared, think about how you don't know till you don't know what you don't know. I may have said that wrong. You don't know what you don't know till you don't know, which leads us to perspectives.

Lucas P. Johnson: There's so many days and times that we wake up, we have a fresh perspective every single day that we wake up. And I wish that we could wake up every single day with that positive attitude, with that positive smile on our face, with that just exuberating feeling that you're alive and ready to go. I wish that we could have that perspective, that today is the day we're going to succeed. Today is the day that I'm going to take on this world. Today, I will become the best version of myself. I wish that's how we woke up every single day.
But one thing that we forget is that every day is not going to be the same. We forget that. We're always looking to the future. We're looking to the present. We think about the past sometimes more than the current day. What could I have done better yesterday? Why didn't I do it that way?

Lucas P. Johnson: I'm sitting here trying to reflect on the things that are playing into our lives in this current lifestyle, this current world, this current conditions. The environment that is surrounding us right now is nothing ordinary, is nothing normal. COVID-19 has changed the way that we do things. It's changed the way we think about things. Hell, most of the time, we don't even have the opportunity to see the people that we care about, to see the people that we want to see, our friends, because we are stuck inside or we are being safe about what we are doing in regards to this situation and current circumstances.

Lucas P. Johnson: We need to understand, as a collective group, that every one of us has a different perspective, and that is what makes us so unique. I love it. I love seeing these different perspectives in play, in action, and seeing how... If you just listen more than you speak, how powerful the words will come in, how deep the motivation will set in, how much inspiration you can get from someone's perspective. I have these calls with one of my really good friends that I've had since college, and we talk about everything. There's nothing that's really off-limits. We talk about anything that's going on in our lives. We vent. We vent what's going on. We talk about it. We talk about how we can improve and so forth. We talk about just things that sometimes you just need to talk about.

Lucas P. Johnson: I'm going to say it like that. When you have someone to use as a backboard, when you have someone to throw ideas off of and hear their thoughts and hear how they think about it, and you just listen, instead of thinking about what you can say next, your perspective might just change. Your thoughts might just change. I don't know how many times I've had a negative thought that's been crushed by just listening to someone's positive thoughts. It doesn't take a lot. Hell, it takes a little. Just listen. If you sit there and say nothing, it's not going to hurt anyone. In fact, it might be the best thing that you did.

Lucas P. Johnson: Especially nowadays, we sit around in... we are couch potato, or in front of the camera, or in front of the mic, or on the phone, or in front of screens, and TVs. There's one behind me. I have a TV over there. There's a TV right there. What we're doing here requires a lot of TVs, okay, first off. But, we get distracted. We get distracted by all this fancy stuff that's around us, that we forget to take the time, the quiet time to gather our own thoughts, to pay respect to ourselves. You get stuck behind a computer working for 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 hours a day, and you don't take that five minutes to refresh, to decompress, your next day is going to be skewed by the thoughts of today. Tomorrow is going to be skewed by your past thoughts, your previous thoughts.

Lucas P. Johnson: Your future is going to continue, to keep on progressing towards those previous past thoughts, those negative experiences if you don't take the time to decompress and think about the things in your life that really matter, think about the things that really are going to impact you in the next 5 to 10 years. I'll tell you how I do my process of going through this. I will get up. And the first thing I like to do is take a shower because I'm usually exhausted in the morning. I try to get my eight hours but even then I wake up and I just need a little pick-me-up. I'm not a big fan of coffee. Okay. So I don't drink a lot of caffeine because I don't want to have that dependency on it.

Lucas P. Johnson: So I get up, I jump in the shower. Some days I'll turn on some music and whatever gets you in the mood. For me, it'll be Christian music or country. I've been listening to a lot of Luke Combs and Luke Bryan lately. Born Here Live Here Die Here by Luke Bryan is... Just got me going right now. I love that song. But, I'd sometimes turn on music and then I just get in the shower. Other times I just go jump in the shower. And I know it's first thing in the morning, but that's when I do my best thinking or late-night thinking as well. And then I just start just letting my brain relax. Now, I don't always take the shorter showers, so apologies. I am environmentally conscious. I try to think about that so I try to keep my showers less than five minutes. But, sometimes whenever a thought comes in, you lose track of time.

Lucas P. Johnson: You lose track of what's going on in your life because you're so focused on, "Okay, what if I do this and this and that to improve this current situation?" Or "What if this is my... and you see my dream, my vision, this, I see where I want to be. How do I make that reality?" Just this morning, I woke up, and I got in the shower and I thought, "Wow, that dream of me traveling to Iceland can become a reality. How do I go from A to Z? How do I get there?" Because it's not cheap to go to Iceland. I live in the east coast. As of today is like $1,700 to get a flight, and I know with everything going on with COVID, the flights aren't cheap, and this is like six or seven months out I'm looking in the future just to buy a ticket and say, "Hey, this is where I'm going."

Lucas P. Johnson: My dreams became a reality in the showers. I started to see the things I wanted to see. I allowed myself to think through the process of thinking, to actually thinking out those thoughts because I didn't know what I didn't know till I didn't know. I didn't know that I wanted to travel to Iceland. So, I got in the shower. Then, when I got in the shower, I realized that I wanted to go. So there's just a lot of things you can do by analyzing your perspective and allowing yourself to think through all these parts that are going on in life. Take the time. Take the time to listen. Take the time to really analyze what's going on in your life. And when you build upon that perspective, there's going to be a lot of things that are going to change for you, and a lot of things are going to change for your family and your future.

Lucas P. Johnson: So, I don't have a lot to add today because, honestly, the show's not as easy to do without Patryk or a guest. And I really want to provide something that is going to be meaningful to you. So I want to leave with those two. Realize your potential. Understand that you can just take five minutes. Do that breathe in, breathe out. That's all it takes. Three deep breaths. And you might just take that one breath that makes you realize exactly where you want to be or what you want to do.

Lucas P. Johnson: So that said, I'm going to allow you to jump away and take that minute or two. I know we usually go about 45 minutes, but this week's going to be short. I appreciate your time, and I really just want you to understand that you're not alone. We all go through these things in our lives that change us, that help us grow, and then blossom. You're not alone. You will know what you need to know. You will grow your perspective to understand and be more understanding, more inclusive. You just have to let yourself.

Lucas P. Johnson: So if you start letting yourself become your best friend and you allow yourself just to open up and allow new things in, your life's going to be a lot more full. You're going to find yourself actually smiling, and open, and honest, transparent, even authentic. So with that, I want you to do something for me this week. I want you to take those 5 or 10 minutes and just breathe, reflect, meditate, do yoga, whatever it is, allow your brain to open up and think, allow you to really understand where you want to be. I want you to reach out to someone and give gratitude to them. Thank them for being a part of your life. Thank them for their advice. Thank them for their story.

Lucas P. Johnson: I want you to go on YouTube. I want you to watch some videos on motivational topics. A motivational playlist. And I know that we have one on Coachingtons that's really dedicated to just some of the content we found to be very helpful, that's allowed us to get motivated. Listen to that and see what happens. Write down your thoughts as you go through this because there's just so many things that have been eyeopening as I listen to these podcasts, and listen to these videos, and even tracks on Spotify, and so forth.

Lucas P. Johnson: So we just launched our Patreon membership community where you can become one of our elite supporters and gain exclusive access to early releases, live streams, and Q and A. We have a few different tiers available with some pretty sweet perks so make sure to check them out. Get to projectdreammastery.com and click the red button that says become a patron to learn more. If you have not already, please make sure to review the show, subscribe, like, and share so we can reach more amazing listeners like you. All of our shows are available in both audio, video, and written form so make sure to check out our website to access the full experience. Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode to come. I'll talk to you soon.