[00:00:00] Intro: We’re saying goodbye to the rigid numbers and strict budgets, and putting relationships back at the heart of personal finance. This is more than a podcast, it’s an invitation to reimagine your money story and journey with us through a landscape of intuitive strategies and abundance. Join a community that nurtures transformative financial mindsets.

[00:00:25] Welcome to Intuitive Finance. I’m your host, Dylan Bain.

[00:00:37] Dylan Bain: It’s February of 2012 and I’m lacing up my shoes to go for a run in the park near my home in Flagstaff, Arizona. This year has been marked so far with my New Year’s resolution that this is the year I’m going to run a marathon. And I am so excited to be out there to be running, and I’m making progress, and I’ve already done my first 5K. But as I’m lacing up my shoes, it’s sinking into my guts that I don’t want to go for a run. And it’s not that I want to give up on my goal of running a marathon, but the marathon was never really the point. The point was to try to be more healthy in the new year, because like so many people, I’ve chosen that this is the year I’m going to lose weight. And as much as I don’t want to go for a run, I don’t want to quit either. I’m struggling with the idea that I’m going to be a quitter, that this is just going to be another new year with another broken resolution, and another goal that’s just tossed off to the wayside.

[00:01:32] I tell that story, ladies and gentlemen, because this is the second day of 2024, which is a year of tremendous opportunity. And it’s going to be a year of a whole lot of political circus because it’s an election year, and we’re probably going to end up with a rematch from the last presidential election. And if we could just find somebody who was under the age of 60 to run for president, I’d probably just vote for them at this point. But I digress.

[00:02:00] The New Year’s resolutions that we have are always made with the best of intentions and with the greatest of hopes. We want to believe that this is the year, that somehow magically this year, we’re going to do the thing we’ve been putting off for every year of our life up to this point. And so many of us just fail. We just fail at this. I mean, we all know the story of there’s a specific day when all the people who joined the gym on the first of the year stop showing up. And then all the people who have been going year round, they get their gym back and they’re very happy. And then all the other people who have quit, they’re very sad about themselves. And they say, well, I’ll just do better next year, completely ignoring that there’s 10 months left.

[00:02:37] And this brings up a question for me — because I’m all about trying to improve my life and help others improve their lives as well. And I think one of the fundamental disconnects with a brand new resolution for the brand new year, is they never ask the question what game we’re playing in the first place.

[00:02:54] And what I mean by that, ladies and gentlemen, is that there’s a difference in games between infinite games and finite games. A finite game is one that we would all recognize. It is a game with a very specific set of rules, there’s very specific players, there’s very specific victory conditions. These are the types of games that we have been raised to play. This is going to school. I study, I do my homework, I take the test, I do the trick, I get the cookie, I get the A. Hooray. It’s the quarterly reports for corporations. We don’t really care what we’re doing, just so long as that the line god continues to get its sacrifice so that the line goes up and bonuses are paid out. And we just stop and reset this at the end of every quarter. This is a lot of what we see in the pickup artist world. You know, just find the girl, do the thing, be done with it, and move on.

[00:03:43] There’s very specific lines in a finite game. And they’re comforting, because we like to believe that if we just stack enough wins, that somehow we’re going to find happiness and self-improvement. And I’m here to burst bubble and tell you, finite games are great if it’s football and pretty much nothing else. The problem is, is that life doesn’t operate on a finite basis. Life operates on a infinite basis. And anytime somebody is playing an infinite game against somebody who’s playing a finite game, the person playing the finite game will lose.

[00:04:16] The classic example of this is the Vietnam War. The United States walked in with a finite game mentality. We’re here to do the thing, we’re going to achieve the objectives, they’ll surrender, and we have won. That’s a finite game. You know, clear sides, clear rules, clear victory condition, let’s play the game. The problem is, is that the Vietnamese weren’t playing a finite game. They were playing an infinite game.

[00:04:41] What is an infinite game? Well, it’s a game where the rules such as they are constantly changing. That the sides and the players are also completely in flux. Somebody’s an ally one day, they’re the enemy the other, they’re irrelevant the third. An infinite game doesn’t have a set goal, because by its nature, it’s infinite. It goes on forever. So the goal of an infinite game is to keep playing the game.

[00:05:09] In the case of the Vietnamese, it was survive and fight tomorrow, blend in with the civilian population. Okay, well, the United States are playing a finite game where they’re bound to have to try to stay in Vietnam theoretically, so we’ll just take our supply lines and go through another country. Because we’re playing an infinite game, they’re playing a finite game. And we all know how it went

[00:05:31] So when we’re making New Year’s resolutions, understand that life is an infinite game. So if we set up a finite game in response, we’re going to lose. And that’s just physics. There’s nothing we can do about it. We don’t have to be mad about it. It just is. And so you have to start asking yourself, when I’m making a New Year’s resolution, am I making a finite resolution, or am I making an infinite resolution where the goal for that resolution is to just keep playing?

[00:05:58] And it’s also important to understand, what is the end result we’re looking for? People, when they say they lose weight, they might not actually want to lose the weight. And 99 times out of 100, that’s not what they’re looking for. They’re looking to be healthy, to feel better, to have more energy, to look good naked, whatever it is. But the weight is just a number. They don’t really actually care about that. They care about what the weight represents in terms of something else in their life. They might say, well, I really want to date, so I’m going to make my goal to lose weight. Well, you made a goal that doesn’t fit what you’re actually after. The goal here is not just to lose the pounds, the goal is to attract a mate. And I will tell you as a married man, that is an infinite game. Because once you attract the mate and you get married to the mate, you have to continue to win and attract the mate every single day. The goal of a marriage is to just keep playing. That’s the game. It’s not a finite game. It’s an infinite game.

[00:06:57] And what you’ll see here as we lay this out, when we talk about infinite games, when you say, well, I just want to lose 20 pounds or I want to be healthy. 20 pounds is a finite objective that you can obtain. But if you — then what? But to be healthy is an infinite objective. And maybe what you need to do is not lose weight — although myself and so many of us, that is the thing we need to be doing. But maybe you’ll need to learn how to relax. Maybe you need your flexibility. Maybe you need to be putting on muscle mass. The actual opposite is true. You don’t need to lose weight. You need to put on lean body mass. Because the goal there, the infinite goal, is to be healthy. And you don’t win being healthy. You just get to keep playing. And the more successful you are at the game, the longer you get to play the game. It’s always better to be the oldest man in the weight room than the youngest man in the nursing home. And so which game do you want to play? Lose the 20 pounds or be healthy? Finite versus infinite.

[00:07:58] So as we’re making our New Year’s resolutions, let’s just keep that in mind, that we need to understand what game we’re playing and what the end result that we’re actually looking for is. And of course you need to walk into this with a plan.

[00:08:08] But here’s a little wrinkle that you’re not going to hear from all different people who are going to be like, you make a plan, you execute on the plan and that’s it. You need to plan for success and failure. And that’s a huge shift in mindset because having a plan means that you’re going to have a plan for what happens when you succeed and what happens when you fail, so that you can be on a trajectory and a trend of success rather than just giving up and hoping for the better result next year.

[00:08:37] A successful plan is not going to be big swings. So again, let’s go back to weight loss. If your goal is I’m going to lose 40 pounds, well, you’re probably biting off more than you can chew and you’re going to get impatient. But if you say, you know what, I’m going to learn how to really plan my meals. My goal, my infinite objective here is be healthy. So yeah, weight loss is going to be part of that. So I’m going to walk a little bit more. I’m going to learn how to eat. I’m not going to just go on the salad train. Maybe I’ll try to learn how to cook at home. Because that’s going to fit into this idea of being healthy, but you’re going to make really small changes.

[00:09:10] One of my guests, Coach Josh Wood, he calls these TNT — tiny noticeable things, because TNT can move mountains. And he talked about this exact idea. Don’t change everything at once, make small adjustments. So whatever plan you have, if you’re like, I’m going to get up at six o’clock in the morning right now, and I’m going to go to gym every day. Well, I can tell you, my own weight loss journey, being down 45 pounds, going to the gym every day is a one way ticket to burnoutville. And if you’re not getting up at 6 o’clock right now, you’re adding two things. The 6 o’clock and the gym. Both of them hard, both of them lifestyle changes, both of them pretty big. And now instead of one goal, you’ve got two. And you probably actually have more than that if you stop and think about it.

[00:09:56] You need to consider what failure in this objective is going to look like. Like what happens if you fail? So you say, well, I’m going to try to lose 40 pounds and you lose the 40 pounds, but then you gain it back. Did you fail or were you successful? You, in fact, checked the box. And if you fail, what does it mean to you? Well, I’m having trouble losing weight. What was my original goal? I really want to lose the 40 pounds. Okay, well, we can play the finite game. Just keep in mind that we can put you on a water diet for 30 days and you’ll lose the 40 pounds. But you’re not going to be healthy.

[00:10:26] And so if you fail, my invitation to you is going to be asking, okay, so maybe it didn’t work out. And let’s face it, this is going to happen with whatever New Year’s resolution you have. It didn’t work out. Okay. So how am I going to learn? How am I going to rinse and repeat? What are the consequences of my failure?

[00:10:45] And this is always an interesting thing, specifically when I’m working with men. I see this happen a lot when I say, okay, there needs to be consequences. And they always make it a punishment. We’re going to do 40 burpees. I’m going to give you a bitch ticket. You got to run a mile! None of that stuff works because now people are just avoiding punishment. But consequences are just — is just a word that means the result of the thing you did. So if you did the thing and you failed, the consequences can be, yeah, you could do 30 burpees, or — and this is important — or you could give yourself a day off where you’re going to just do something to treat yourself, sit down, and be able to relax so you can reflect.

[00:11:27] What went well? What went wrong? What needs work? Answer those three questions, and then get back on the horse the next day. And try it again with a new understanding, with new tactics, with new ideas. That could be a consequence for failure. And stop and think about what your life would look like if that was the consequence of failure. It was just a moment to breathe, and collect yourself, and get back on the horse with new understanding as a wiser individual. You would make huge progress in your life. So my invitation to you is to really consider that. When you’re trying to make a plan for your New Year’s resolution, plan for the failure. What’s going to happen? What are the consequences? And please make them positive consequences.

[00:12:11] Another thing to consider is what if you succeed? So if you have somebody who says, well, I’m going to come into this year and I’m going to get healthy and well, I don’t care what that means. I’m just, it’s going to be healthy. That’s going to be my entire focus, is being more healthy. Okay, cool. What is that going to mean for you? What is it going to cost you? If you make this journey and you obtain health, and now you’re in the infinite game of just staying healthy, what’s it cost you? Does it cost you the days at the bar watching the football game, sucking down beers and bar food? Because it probably does. Does it cost you staying up late watching Netflix? Cause you got to get to bed so you can get up to go get to the gym. Does it cost you friends who don’t understand because you used to be cool, but now you’re just all about a gym, bro. Like, what is it going to cost you? And are you willing to pay the cost?

[00:13:01] And I can tell you, for me, the biggest thing of the story at the top, lacing up my shoes after my oldest daughter was born, I was like, yes, I’m going to lose weight for her. And I made that my whole objective. And I was pretty successful. I eventually I did, in fact, in the story at the top of the show, I did flog myself out into the trail and I went from 5K. And of course, I chained the objective and now I couldn’t run anymore, so I signed up for 10k and then I signed up for half marathon. And I went all the way up to a half Ironman.

[00:13:32] And you can kind of see where this is going. Because I’m playing in finite game where it’s just do the race, do the race, do the race, this becomes unsustainable. And so as I was training for a full Ironman, I realized I couldn’t do it. Because number one, I was running out of money. This is really where my wife and I ended up starting to go on food stamps. It was right during that time. I took the second job instead of training. And I lost the time that I was using for training. But that isn’t why I stopped. I stopped because I couldn’t sustain what I was doing. Running for the finite objective of the next thing. Success for me to run the Ironman was gonna cost me so much time with my newborn daughter. Then why was I a father in the first place? I had to stop and fundamentally rethink what I was doing because the cost of success wasn’t worth it to me.

[00:14:26] And this a similar thing played out when I quit that teaching job and went back to graduate school. What was success going to cost me? It was going to cost me eight years of teaching experience. It was going to cost me my dream. It was going to cost me all of my friends that I had made in Flagstaff at that time. It was going to cost me the idea that I was raising the next generation of citizens. That was the price of success if I was successful going back to school, getting my CPA, and getting into the Big Four accounting firms. And I looked at that and said, yes, I will pay it.

[00:15:03] Success will come with all sorts of new challenges. And those challenges are going to be weird for you and for the other people you’re around. Failure comes with the benefit of the status quo. We know what’s going on in our life now, we’re comfortable. But success is a completely different ballgame. And so if you want to be successful in your New Year’s resolution — well, I would invite you to start looking for the thing that’s going to throw you off, which is probably succeeding more so than failing.

[00:15:35] And so ask yourself, what is the success going to cost me? And am I willing to pay it? And perhaps most importantly, particularly if you’re married and particularly if you have kids, what’s it going to cost my family, and am I going to ask them to pay it? Now, all of this kind of comes together with an idea.

[00:15:52] One of my good friends and mentor Traver Boehm who’s been on this podcast with his group Man UNcivilized has a call every year at the end of the year called “Name Your Year.” And I didn’t learn it from him, but he was the one man who really got me to do it for the first time. The whole goal here is that you give your year a name. And my name for 2023 was the year of emancipation. I wanted to emancipate myself from all of the stories. And all of the stones of trauma and childhood fuckery that I was carrying around with me, and I was going to put them down. I was going to emancipate myself from stories that other people from my parents to society had given me, and I was going to be a free man.

[00:16:41] And so here in during this recording, and I’m recording this at the end of December of 2023, I can say that it’s gone in ways that I never would have imagined. But I can tell you that I am a fundamentally different person, and I am free in so many different ways than I was at the beginning of the year.

[00:17:03] Food and fitness is exhibit number one. I’ve lost 45 pounds and I managed to keep it off, even though I’ve stumbled and have had trials and tribulations along the way. Hell yeah, that was part of the year of emancipation. So naming your year can give you some focus, but most importantly, and I’ve thought a lot about this, naming your year gives your year a theme.

[00:17:28] And that, ladies and gentlemen, a theme is more important than a resolution. Because a theme is general. It gives you a general direction to go in, and it gives you a flexible framework to travel in that direction.

[00:17:45] If this is the year of health and health is my theme, well, then weight loss is part of it, and walking is part of it, and spending time working on lowering my stress as part of it, and yoga is part of it, and cold plunges and massages, and floats, and also friends, getting a dog — all of these things are part of the theme of health. So when you’re trying to run and you’re like, you know what, I hate running — you’re completely free in the theme of health to say, well, I’m going to try just bike riding. Okay, I love bike riding. Oh my God, let’s do some more of that. And then pretty — this is the slippery slope that then leads you to getting a road bike, and you’re pretty soon you’re moving to Colorado, and every weekend you go from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain because there’s a whole group of people here that do that. That’s completely permissible under a theme of health.

[00:18:36] What if your theme is wealth? Okay. Well, we’re going to try budgeting and we’re going to look at investing and I’m going to take some classes. I’m going to hire Dylan as a financial coach. I’m going to do all these things, and they’re on this theme. And you look at it and you say, you know what? I really — I don’t like this day trading thing because I just don’t like doing the portfolio analysis. It seems like just a fancy way to gamble with extra steps. So instead, I’m just going to read The Simple Path of Wealth by JL Collins — link to that in the show notes — and I’m going to follow that because it’s easier. Because what the thing I learned about managing my wealth and growing my wealth is that I’m not really interested in the arts and crafts of it. If it’s sexy, it’s probably not going to make me money. And if it’s boring, it’s probably going to create inevitability for me. And quite frankly, I’m not on this earth to manage a portfolio and stress out about the stock market and the new cycle and all this other stuff. I’m on this earth to be a good husband and father for my wife and kids. So in the year of wealth, my wealth is looking at how do I make this easy for me? How do I make the path to being able to create and maintain a budget and have conversations with my wife as easy as humanly possible?

[00:19:48] And we’re going to screw it up and we’re going to make mistakes. And we’re going to find all sorts of new and interesting ways to spend money because that’s what happens when you start on this process. Because when you’re following the theme, it’s flexible. And more often than not, you can find multiple ways forward. And that’s really, really useful to staying on a path rather than trying to obtain an objective. The important thing with the New Year’s resolution — and I’m actually a big fan of marking the time at Christmas and taking the period of time between Christmas and New Year’s to truly sink in to reflecting on the year that has come and the year that is coming. And I’m looking at, am I moving forward?

[00:20:33] And one metric, ladies and gentlemen, that I’ve always found very useful for myself as to whether or not I’m moving forward is a simple question: Am I making new mistakes? Because if I’m making new mistakes, I’m in a new place and I have new opportunities. That is exactly the place that I want to be in, a place where I’m not just absent of mistakes, but I’m making new one. And if you’re making new mistakes, whether it’s with your health or whether it’s with your wealth or it’s your spouse or your kids or at the job or whatever, it’s because you’ve moved and evolved. And that’s a beautiful thing. It’s a hard thing. It’s a challenging thing. But it’s beautiful too.

[00:21:15] Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to just give you a preview of what’s coming in 2024, which for me is the year of apotheosis, the year in which I strive for the highest version of Dylan, for the greatest part of myself, to make myself into the man that I know that I can be. And part of that is this podcast. I love being on the microphone with each and every single one of you every week. I love doing the interviews. I just recently got back from a business retreat where I’m realizing I really need to start shifting the focus.

[00:21:50] And part of that is we’re going to be having a lot of online classes. I’m going to be running retreats. I’ve ran two this year, highly successful. Great time. And I found that I love doing it. And for the men that showed up to the retreats, it was hugely impactful. We’re going to be running a workshop and I am pleased to announce that we’re going to be opening up our own online men’s group. I have been involved with men’s work now for four and a half years in a variety of different ways. And I’m going to be opening up my own men’s group to talk about the issues that are facing men. And that’s going to be part of this practice as it continues to evolve. You know, when I first hit record back in the Fiscally Savage days. I was really focused on if I could fix people’s money, I could fix people’s lives. And if I could fix people’s lives, I could help be a force for good in society.

[00:22:41] And over time, I’ve started to look at my demographics. If you’re one of the 86% of my listeners, you’re a man. Or at least that’s what you put down in your data. And I talk to you, when you look at my Instagram following, it’s mostly men. People respond to me, comment on my stuff. It’s mostly men. And why? Because I’m talking about those issues because it’s my context. So I’m excited. And if you want to keep up with all of that, you should join my mail — my email list. You can go to DylanBain.com and sign up for the email list, and get a free toolkit while you’re there too. Advancing our lives so that we can be successful in 360 degrees, that we can have holistic prosperity in our lives, is huge. And you’re all part of that.

[00:23:26] So I’m going to make an ask here is if you’ve gotten anything out of this podcast, if you’ve gotten anything out of listening to me on the microphone or the interview guests that I’ve brought on, please leave me a rating review wherever you’re getting your podcasts. I really want to grow this. I really want to be able to bring on even better people and the bigger my reach, the better my guests. And I’ve had some really good guests with the reach I have. Imagine what I could do if it was even bigger. So please leave me a five star rating and review, recommend the podcast to a friend, share it on social media, and tag me @TheDylanBain, now on all platforms including TikTok and X.

[00:24:07] And what is your theme for this year? Stop and think about that. What is the theme for your year? Because when I found themes, I really started to 10x my life. When I set themes for my life, I found that every year, the man who was walking out of the year was not the man who had walked into the year. I was a radically different person.

[00:24:33] And here, on the cusp between 2023 and 2024, I find that the man who walked into ’23 didn’t walk out. And I know that the man who walked into ’24 won’t walk out either. Because I will have moved forward. I will have made new mistakes. And I’ll have lived my life by a theme.

[00:24:53] Outro: Thanks for listening. The conversation doesn’t end here. Please share the show with friends, and make sure you keep up with all the latest updates on Instagram and Threads @TheDylanBain. And dive deeper into the world of finance with me at DylanBain.com where you’ll find insights, resources, and strategies to reimagine your money story.