What Do You Want To Do Before You Die? With Buried Life's Ben Nemtin
In this episode we bring former Buried Life star Ben Nemtin onto the show to discuss one of the most important questions in our lives - what do you want to do before you die?
Ben Nemtin is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, co-founder of The Buried Life movement and inspirational keynote speaker. He has delivered over 500 keynotes to brands and Fortune 500 companies around the globe. In 2019 Ben was named in the World's Top 30 Organizational Culture Professionals by Global Gurus. Ben's message of radical possibility has been featured in major media including The Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC News, and more.
What do you want to before you die?
Mortality forces you to put things in perspective and understand that your time is limited
Most people don't regret the things they DID, they regret the things they DIDN'T do
How Ben's life was torn apart by crippling anxiety..
Some people give you energy and some people take your energy
TWO RULES for MAKING YOUR BUCKET LIST
Pretend you have 10 million dollars in the bank
Pretend you can do anything
You MUST have the help of other people.
The biggest regret at the end of life is INACTION or LACK OF ACTION.
76% of people on their death bed had the regret of "not living to their ideal self" - not "living the life they wanted but living the life that others want you to.
There are 3 reasons why we indefinitely push our personal life goals to the periphery
No Deadlines for our personal goals
No accountability for our personal goals
We wait to feel inspired by our personal goals.
FEAR
Fear of what other people think
Fear of failure
How do you create accountability for your goals?
Write them down.
Share those goals.
Have an accountability buddy check in with you down the line.
Taking small steps towards your goal CREATES THE INSPIRATION to pursue it further.
You are the architect of your own inspiration by TAKING ACTION.
You're never really ready, you just have to START.
How do you deal with the fear of what other people think?
How do you deal with the fear of failure?
How do you surround yourself with people who inspire you instead of drain you? How do you deal with the toxic or negative relationships in your life?
"There is no way we would have crossed off any of the list items without the help of other people."
"Connecting the dots with people who could help."
How do you keep the fire of inspiration burning inside yourself?
Tap into untapped creativity and listen to your inner creative urgres
Figure out how to have an IMPACT on other people.
When you help someone you don't just help one person, it creates a ripple effect through everyone that person touches and interacts with in their lives.
Small actions can create exponential impact. One person can create an enormous impact.
What are you doing in your work that is impacting people?
How do you create positive ripples in your life to make an impact?
How do we prioritize the things that are truly important in your life?
Don't let life get in the way of things that are most important to you?
How do you remind yourself that EVERY DAY is IMPORTANT and that ONE DAY YOU WILL DIE.
It's not selfish it's actually service to do the things that are really important to you.
Are you answering the question for YOU or are you answering it for someone else?
Are you responding to the urge to please others?
Are you responding to the urge to be seen a certain way?
ASK YOURSELF: Will I regret NOT doing this?
The categories on life:
Adventure & Travel
Physical Health
Mental Health
Intellectual
Learning & Brain
Material
Houses, luxury items, etc
It's OK to have material goals!
Professional
Financial Goals
Creative Goals
Giving
Relationships
Surrounding yourself with people who inspire you
Romantic relationships
Your bucket list will evolve and grow as you grow.
You can write family bucket lists too. You can do bucket lists for the summer or for trips. You can do bucket lists with your significant other.
Break goals down into really small tangible action steps that you can begin executing right away.
By doing what you love, you inspire others to do the same.
Homework: Grab a piece of paper, spend 20-30 minutes writing down everything you've ever dreamed of doing, and everything you think you would regret not doing by the time you die. Then go through each category of life and add from there. Then SHARE the list with other people in your life.
Thank you so much for listening!
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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research
General
Media
ATD Blog - “Believe the Unthinkable Is Possible: A Q&A With Ben Nemtin”
PCT Online - “‘Live Life with No Regrets’ Encourages PestWorld Speaker Nemtin” by Brad Harbinson
Author Directory on Positively Positive
Ben Nemtin - Vimeo Video Reel
[Podcast] Ideas Elevated - Ben Nemtin: From Crippling Depression to Playing Hoops With Obama
[Podcast] Dhru Purohit Podcast - #101: How to Die Without Regrets with Ben Nemtin
[Podcast] LIVE INSPIRED PODCAST WITH JOHN O'LEARY - Ben Nemtin of MTV’s ‘The Buried Life’: What Do You Want to Do Before You Die? (ep. 336)
[Podcast] Good Life Project - BEN NEMTIN: LIFE BEYOND THE BURIED LIFE.
[Podcast] Lewis Howes - Ben Nemtin: How to Achieve Your Wildest Dreams
Videos
Ben’s YouTube Channel
Yes Theory - Epic Launch of the Yes Theory World Tour 2020
The Buried Life - The Original Trailer | The Buried Life
Goalcast - Before You Bury Your Dreams, Watch This | Ben Nemtin Speech | Goalcast
TEDxTalks - 6 steps to crossing anything off your bucket list | Ben Nemtin | TEDxTeen
University of Utah - Commencement 2018 — Ben Nemtin Delivers Keynote Address
True Calling - Star of MTV’s “The Buried Life” Ben Nemtin Shines a Light on the Magic of Audacity
Books
Amazon Author Page - Ben Nemtin
What Do You Want to Do Before You Die?: Moving, Unexpected, and Inspiring Answers to Life's Most Important Question by The Buried Life, Dave Lingwood, Ben Nemtin, Duncan Penn, Jonnie Penn
Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet, bringing the world’s top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fable.
[00:00:17] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than 5 million downloads and listeners in over a 100 countries.
In this episode, we bring former Buried life star, Ben Nemtin onto the show, to discuss one of the most important questions of our lives. What do you want to do before you die?
Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How to Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.
In our previous episode, we brought on mental toughness expert, Amy Morin, to discuss how to help you and your family be more mentally strong.
Now, for our interview with Ben.
[00:01:35] MB: Ben Nemtin is a number one New York Times bestselling author, Co-Founder of the Buried Life Movement, and an inspirational keynote speaker. He's delivered over 500 keynotes to brands and Fortune 500 companies around the globe. In 2019, Ben was named in the world's top 30 organizational culture professionals by global gurus. His message of radical possibility has been featured on major media outlets, including The Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, ABC, NBC and many more media outlets. Ben, welcome to the Science of Success.
[00:02:08] BN: Thanks, Matt. It's great to be here.
[00:02:10] MB: Well, we're super excited to have you on the show. As we were talking a little bit about in the pre-show, I have been a fan and viewer of Buried Life and everything that you guys have been doing for the last 10 years, at least. It's great to finally, to bring you on the Science of Success.
[00:02:23] BN: Thank you. I'm a big fan of this podcast. It comes full circle.
[00:02:27] MB: You're very kind. Well, I'd love to start out with this question that you guys open the show with, and the title of your book, to me, is a question that is probably one of the most, if not the most important questions in our entire lives. It's something that I would say, most people probably never ask themselves. First of all, what is the question? Second of all, what initially led you to ask that of yourself?
[00:02:52] BN: I’m first of all, so glad that you feel that way, because I feel the same way too. The question is, what do you want to do before you die? I think, that a lot of people don't think about their death, because it's uncomfortable to think about. To digest your mortality is something that is for just most of us, something that it's not the most fun thing to think about. I believe, it's really important because it forces you to put things in perspective. It forces you to understand that your time is limited, and to prioritize the things that you truly want to do in your life.
That the reality is that most people at the end of their life, they don't regret the things that they did. They regret the things they didn't do. I think, it's because well, we can get into why this happens. It's for many reasons, but one of the reasons I believe is that we don't really think about the end of our life very often. We were lucky as college kids to stumble across this question.
The way that it came about, so I was in university. I grew up in Canada, in Victoria BC. At that point in my life, things were really good. I had an academic scholarship to a great university. I was playing at a pretty high-level for the under 19 national rugby team. In Canada, rugby, especially on the west coast is a big sport. It's like, you either play hockey, or hockey or rugby. I was living what I thought was my dream, I guess. I put a lot of pressure on myself. This pressure built up and we were training for the World Cup, which was in Paris, France. I played the flyhalf, which is like, you're the quarterback and the field goal kicker. It's a very high-pressure position.
I started worrying about my field goals. I was like, “What if I miss an easy field goal right in front of the goalpost and blow this opportunity?” This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. What if I shank a kick and it's over? I would think about this at night and I couldn't sleep. This lack of sleep and this anxiety that I was feeling about the trip and this pressure that I put on myself, I slowly found myself sliding into a depression.
I couldn't go to school. I would drive to school and I was stuck in my car. I couldn't get out of the car and go to school. I dropped out of school. I couldn't go to rugby practice, because my anxiety just stopped me. I got dropped from the national rugby team. Before I knew it, I was just shut in my parents’ house, and I couldn't even really leave the house. For someone that was typically A type personality, I had high-energy group of friends, a supportive family, I was a hermit in my parents’ house. My parents were just encouraged me to just go for a walk every day. That was my activity. I was crippled by this and felt like this for many months.
Ultimately, my friends convinced me to come work with them in a new town for the summer, after this semester I dropped out of. I went to this new town, and slowly started to come out of these feelings. There were many things that contributed to my recovery, which we can speak to, or I can speak to later on.
Right away, I got a job, so I started feeling some self-worth. I started talking about what I was going through to my friends, and realized that they had gone through something similar, or had their own struggles. I never really understood that. I thought I was completely on my own and these feelings. I also started to meet young people that were inspiring. Kids that had started their own businesses, or they traveled around the world. I'd never really met young people like this. I realized they gave me energy.
I started to understand that, well, some people give me energy, and some people take energy from me. After that summer away, I thought, I'm going to try to only surround myself with people that give me energy, only people that inspire me. That changed my life. Literally, that one small decision, to try and surround myself with people that inspired me changed the trajectory of my life. Because I consciously sought out those relationships. One of the kids that inspired me was a filmmaker. He lived in my neighborhood. Secretly, I always wanted to make a movie. His name is Johnny.
I call up Johnny. I said, “Hey, Johnny, let's make a movie.” We got two other buddies involved in this movie-making mission. We had no idea what the movie was going to be about. We all had all of these things that we always wanted to do, and for some reason, we'd never done any of them. It's felt like they were buried.
Serendipitously, Johnny was in a freshman English class at university, and he got assigned a poem called The Buried Life. The poem was 150-year-old poem, written by an old English author, poet named Matthew Arnold. This poem spoke to the same feeling we had been talking about, which is, we had all these things that we want to do, but we hadn't done them because they were buried. We had moments when we're inspired, but that got buried by the day-to-day.
We thought, okay, we're going to call this movie, The Buried Life. How do we unbury these dreams? That's how we got to the question, what do you want to do before you die? Because for us, the thought of death, it snap things into perspective. When we sat down and thought about this question, the bucket list formed from that.
Our bucket list was our answers to the question, what do you want to do before you die? When we wrote our list together, we pretend – Well, we had two rules. The first rule, you had to pretend you had 10 million dollars in your bank. The second rule, you had to pretend that you can do anything. We had outrageous dreams on our bucket list. Go to space, play basketball with President Obama, make a TV show, write a number one New York Times bestseller, sit with Oprah, pay off our parents’ mortgage.
We thought, okay, there's no way we can accomplish any of these things on our own. We're going to need the help of other people. How about every time we cross something off our list, we’ll help us total stranger that we meet, cross something off their bucket list and that's what our movie will be. We'll go on a road trip. We'll cross things off our list, then we'll ask strangers the question, what do you want to do before you die? If we can help them, then we will. This is back in 2006.
We didn't have any money, so we worked a job throughout the summer, so we could save up to take two weeks off at the end of December to go after a list and help other people. We threw parties as fundraisers. We cold called companies, pretending we had a production company. We bought a camera on eBay. We built a website with our 100 dreams in a contact page. We hit the road in a board RV, that the mechanic said would not make it back. Hit up local shops, like a skate shop for skateboards to give away, a juice company gave us juices to live off of. Red Bull gave us Red Bulls. A granola bar come to give us granola bars. We had enough money for gas through the fundraisers, and we hit the road.
What happened, which was completely unexpected is that strangers started to hear about our mission and they wanted to help us accomplish all the things in our list. All of a sudden, we got emails with people saying, “I saw number nine, ride a bull. My uncle has a bull ranch. He can get you on a bull. Or I saw number 42, make a toast to a stranger’s wedding. My best friend's getting married. I'm the best man. I can get you in.” Then, we got flooded with dreams asking for our help. “I've always dreamed of flying a fighter jet. Can you guys help? I've always dreamed of singing a duet with Beyonce, or riding a horse through a drive-thru.”
We suddenly had this moment where like, “Oh, my God. What's happening?” It became provincial news, national news and started to really hit a chord. After that trip, we thought, “Wow, this is supposed to be two weeks? We got to keep doing this.” That's how the journey began in 2006.
[00:10:23] MB: It's amazing. I mean, it's so inspirational, I mean, to go back and watch some of the episodes of the show. I'm curious, the original two-week journey, did you – I'm assuming, that's not what ended up on the TV show, right? That was a precursor to that. What happened with the film? How did that pan out?
[00:10:43] BN: Yeah. The short answer is we're still filming it. What the timeline was, it's a good question. Some of the clips in the intro are from that first road trip. What ended up happening was we did the first two-week road trip in 2006. We thought, we got to do this again next summer. That was way too fun. We ended up saving up and working throughout the two semesters, so that we could buy an old purple transit bus, that ended up being in the show. We named her Penelope. We bought Penelope off a nudist in Vancouver. We probably got a good deal.
We put bunks in the back. the next summer, we did a two-month road trip to the US. We had gotten sponsors onboard. We got a film crew from LA to follow us this time. Went to Burning Man in 2007. We sung the national anthem at a NBA Stadium, rode a bull and helped people in really, really cool ways.
Ultimately, there was a moment where we thought, “Okay, we have a decision to make. We can continue to do this for fun, as a hobby. Or we can really go for it and double down and go after these impossible list items, like make a TV show.” Really make a TV show was our biggest dream at that time. That's what we did. We doubled down.
Although I gotten back into school, I dropped out of school, and I started doing trips down to LA, learning the industry. We made a pilot. and Johnny edited the pilot. We had crashed the MTV Video Awards in Vegas one year in matching suits, women suits that we found in a thrift store. Got in with our purple boss and snuck into the awards. It was a totally ridiculous stunt. We ended up using that as our pilot story and sold it to MTV. They didn't know that we had crashed the Video Awards.
For the show, we went and filmed all new list items. We did use some of that early footage in some of the intros and stuff like that to tell the story. We were starting to learn that this idea of a bucket list was really starting to morph into a way to live your life, and the list was a device and a mechanism to remind you of the things that are important to your life, in your life. Because it's human nature to feel buried. Life always gets in the way of the things that personally you want do, because there's no deadlines for your personal goals. You always push them.
This list evolved into this lifestyle, which I think, has worked for me to really help remind me of the things that are important in my life. Yeah, it was it's been a wild journey. We've accomplished some things that really, I feel like, we have no business doing. It's been an incredible, incredible time.
[00:13:36] MB: You made so many good points and things that I want to explore a little bit more. Even just that notion that looking at our own mortality, which a lot of us are afraid to look at, can serve as a forcing function that helps unearth those moments of inspiration that just get buried in our day-to-day existence. That's such a critical takeaway. Why do you think it is that we constantly let those things just lapse and say, “Yeah. One day, I want to do that.” Then most cases, at the end of your life, you look back and say, “Well, I never did all those things.”
[00:14:05] BN: There's a great article that's written by psychologist named Tom Gilovich. He's a professor at Cornell. He ran a few academic studies and he wrote it in the psychology journal, Emotion. It's called the ideal road not taken. He looks at, it's such a fascinating and powerful article, because he finds that people at the end of their life, don't regret those things they did. They actually have regrets of inaction.
He found that when he asked people on their deathbed, what's your single biggest regret in your entire life? 76% of people had the exact same answer. That answer was, I regret not living my ideal self. Living the life someone else wanted for me, versus the one that I wanted to. That stat really changed my mission, or re-energized me around the idea that my goal is to get more people into that minority that end their life thinking, “You know what? I did the things that I want to do. Or at least I tried. I don't regret the inaction.” Because I can't imagine ending my life that way. I mean, I feel as though that would be something that would be difficult to grapple with at the end of your life.
The reason why this happens, it's really three reasons why we indefinitely push our personal goals. The first thing is that there are no deadlines for personal goals. We say, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll do it next week or next year, because something else has come up that's more important. Whereas, with things like professional goals, we have all these structures of accountability to drive us forward.
We need to create accountability around our personal goals and drive us forward. How do we do that? We write down our goals. That creates a bit of accountability. We share our goals, because then, we feel accountable to the people we just shared our goals with, right? If you tell your good friend, “Hey, I'm going to start writing my book this year.” You're a little bit closer to starting that book. If you tell all your social media followers, “I am committed to starting my book. I'm going to write it this year,” you feel even more accountable.
That helps, if you want to increase your chances by 77%, you have an accountability buddy checking in with you down the line. That's the first hurdle is there's no accountability. The second is we usually wait to feel inspired to go after those personal goals. That inspiration really just hits us out of the blue. We don't feel inspired to pick up the guitar and learn to play. We get inspired, because we start to play and we feel inspired by doing it. By taking small steps towards your goal, even if you don't know how you're going to end up on stage playing that guitar, you don't know how you're going to achieve your end result, doesn't matter. Those initial small steps start to build inspiration.
You're the architect of your own inspiration by taking steps of action. I think, that we've all experienced that in some way, shape, or form, where we have no idea how we're going to achieve it, but we just start. You don't even know what the second step is. You just take the first step and you figure out the second step after the first. That's how you build momentum and move through that stagnation of waiting to feel, “All right, I'm ready.” Because you're never really ready. You just got to start.
Then the third thing that stops us in why we have regrets at the end of our life, is actually is the biggest, or at least this is what Tom Gilovich found to be the biggest barrier is fear. No surprise there. It's the fear of what other people think, or the fear of failure. I think, that it's interesting to look at those two fears from a 10,000-foot view, or zoom out and say, “Okay, let's look at the fear of what other people think.” This is a common fear that we all feel.
If you really think about it, people are just thinking about you much less than you think they are, because they're so busy living their life, worried about what other people think about them. There’s that joke, in my 20s, I was worried about what other people thought. In my 40s, I didn't care what other people thought. In my 60s, I realized they were never thinking about me in the first place.
It’s like, that fear is, as long as your basic needs are met, it's sometimes more of a made-up fear. The fear of failure, we all feel it. I think, it's important to note that that doesn't go away. If you're afraid to go after your goal, or you're waiting for the right time, you failed. You didn't achieve your goal. At least, when you try and you fail, you really outweigh any potential hit to your reputation.
The things that stop us, there's no deadlines, so we got to create accountability. We wait for inspiration, so we got to create inspiration through action. We got to define which fears are real fears, versus the ones that are imagined.
[00:18:50] MB: So many good insights. Even coming back to what you said a minute ago, that it's almost the inverse. This is something that I learned years ago that really transformed my life is that action creates motivation and not the other way around. Everyone thinks you have to wait to be motivated to take action. The reality is, even the small, really, almost just miniscule actions can start to build a slow snowball of momentum, that really catapult you towards whatever direction you want to move in.
[00:19:20] BN: Yeah. Rich Roll has a great quote, “Mood follows action.” It speaks to that same idea.
[00:19:27] MB: Yeah. I love this idea of being the architect of your own inspiration, instead of waiting for it to happen. Such a good insight. A corollary of that, too, that you touched on, which I know I've fallen prey to this in the past, and I think so many of us do is this idea that you have to be ready to start when in reality, it's almost once you pull that veil away and realize that nobody's ready. It's almost this monumental shift in your being when you understand that everybody, to some degree, is just figuring things out as they're doing it. They're never really ready to take that next big step into whatever they're doing.
[00:20:05] BN: A 1000%. I think, that's why it's so powerful to surround yourself with people that inspire you. Because you can see, when your friend does something amazing, you think, “Wow, I wonder what I could do.” When you see someone that you don't know do something amazing, you think, “Wow, they're better than me. They're smarter than me. They are X.” You know, because you're friends with the person, or you know this person that's done something great, you know that they weren't really ready. You know that they're no different than you. You can relate to them, because they're your friend. It actually elevates your level of thinking, almost subconsciously.
When you see your friends, or your circle accomplishing, or doing things that they thought were unattainable, or just that you find inspiring, it subconsciously lists your level of thinking. I think, it's because you get these insights, like you just mentioned, where you realize, “Wow, I saw that they just took the leap. They figured it out as they went, they weren't ready, but look at what they're doing. That's inspiring.”
I remember, my friend started a clothing line in high school. I was blown away. I was like, “How did you do that? That's amazing. You have no experience in fashion. You took out a $10,000 loan. You started this really cool clothing line. Can I get involved?” That was the catalyst for me to think, “Wow, if he did that, what can I do?” I was like, “I want to make a movie.” I called Johnny. That has been such an important mantra for me, because I still use it to this day, where I lean into relationships with people that inspire me. I meet their friends, because ultimately, that will continue to add to that circle. I think that it's something to always think about. Not everyone has to be that person that inspires you. I think that it does make a difference.
[00:22:00] MB: How do you think about, and I'm curious from your own journey, and also what you've seen in others, how do you think about starting to actually surround yourself with more people who give you energy and pulling away? Because in some instances, I mean, these can be friends, or even family members who are taking energy away from you. How do you think about managing those relationships, or those transitions?
[00:22:21] BN: Yeah, it's tricky, especially when it's with family, and saying, oftentimes, you can't. I think, the awareness is key and to understand, if it's with people like family, where you understand, “Okay, I know that I need to put up a little bit of an emotional guard here, because I know that this is something that drains me, and I just need to be aware of that. Or I need to make sure that I take care of myself first, before I take care of other people.”
I think with your circle, regardless, there's always an opportunity to lean into those tribes, or those groups, or those friends that inspire you. If you haven't found those people, you're not alone. I would say that, one thing you can do is you can be active in your pursuit of those things. Maybe, you can search out different people that share a passion that you may share. You can either connect online, or in person and start to lean into those different types of relationships. If you find someone that you get really excited around, again, see if you can meet some of their friends. That's how you go down this rabbit hole of finding people that are like-minded.
I think that especially, for those that might be younger, even in high school, or college or after, I think, sometimes it just takes time to find your crew, your tribe, your group, and that's okay, but don't give up. You can get discouraged sometimes, when you feel like, “Well, this is all the people that I know, and I don't fit in. I don't know how I can find someone that understands me.” I would just say, don't give up. It's a big, big world out there. It's getting more and more connected. You will find those people that support you, that lifts you up, that have those same interests as you. It just takes a little bit of time.
[00:24:16] MB: A corollary of this broader notion of surround yourself with the right people that, to me feels really insightful, especially when you were so young to come up with this conclusion that you have to have other people helping you to achieve big goals. You touched on that earlier, but to me, it's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking, you have to do everything yourself. I found that to be a really inspiring piece of the ethos of the journey, the message of Buried Life was it wasn't just about you. It was about helping other people, but also, getting help from other people.
[00:24:52] BN: Yeah. There is no way we would have crossed off any of the list items without the help of other people. Which goes back to the idea of the importance of sharing your goals. If we would never have shared our list, we would have not achieved any of them, because no one would have known how to help us. We were always blown away by the generosity of others, as it relates to our list, and also, as it relates to other people's lists. Because keep in mind, if we had no way to accomplish our list, we had no way to accomplish other people's lists.
The way that we did that was by connecting the dots with people that could help. We met someone in Kelowna BC, who needed a truck to start a landscaping business. He was in and out of a homeless shelter. We just told his story to a local used car salesman, and he gave us a $2,100 truck for $480. Then, he paid for the insurance out of his own pocket, and we delivered the truck to the gentleman. That was actually the first person we ever helped on our very first road trip. We realized, wow, when you give someone a chance to step up and be a hero, they take that a lot of the times.
We were able to use the generosity of others to help other people and be a conduit. Then, over time, realized that that was actually more meaningful than our list. Even above and beyond the big list items was moments when we shared such a meaningful moment of time with someone else, when they did that thing that meant so much to them that I'm convinced will stick with me until I die. I think, that that's something that we, again, got lucky, I guess, to stumble upon when we were younger, of just being – We just thought it made sense. If we were going to accomplish our list, we should help other people do theirs.
[00:26:40] MB: How do you keep that ethos, that energy alive? I mean, even when I think back, when I watch episodes of Buried Life, I feel this wealth of inspiration. It's almost a question we asked earlier, how life can just cover these things up and make you forget about them. How do you, 10 years into this journey, or 15 years into this journey at this point, how do you every day, or as frequently as possible, keep the momentum going, when you're not on the bus anymore and you're not out doing that? Maybe you are doing it still every day, but how do you keep that fire alive?
[00:27:14] BN: One is to tap into my creativity. A lot of the times when I start to slow down and feel burnt out, I am not expressing a piece of me that I feel should be coming out. It usually comes out in a form of creativity. I think, creativity is also an often, overlooked pillar of wellness, because it's just this true version of yourself that you are letting out and expressing. I try it. Then, I get excited about that thing, because it's a creative expression of mine.
Another thing that I do is I try and – Right now, I'm doing a lot of public speaking, and the reason why I love speaking, even virtually now, but especially when you're in the room with people, is like, you can see people change in the room. You can witness this transformation. You can feel that. It's energizing, to help people in some way, shape, or form and to experience that. I think, that in all of our lives, and when we think about what we're doing, if you can draw it back to okay, what's the impact I'm having on real people? Not just the impact I'm having on maybe my customers, my clients, my colleagues, my whomever you may be helping; my listeners, my followers. Because that's just one piece of the puzzle.
When you help someone, you don't just help that one person, you help the people around them. You're helping their family, you're helping their friends. It creates this ripple effect. I always like to think about the ripple effect, because it's such a incredible phenomenon in my mind, because it means, small actions can create exponential impact.
It's proof that one person can create this enormous impact through this ripple effects. You may be walking down the street, and you may see someone that looks like they're having a bad day and you say, “Hey, I really love your jacket. It's awesome jacket.” You don't know how that's going to affect them. That could literally change their whole day and then change their whole life, and you don't know. Because every action has a reaction, those reactions can be positive or negative.
If you think about your feeling uninspired, what are you doing in your work that is impacting real human beings and come back to that as a source of a fuel and re-energize your core purpose and your why. If you can't think about that in your work, can you do that in the rest of your life? Are there things that you can do to create positive ripples to make an impact, because especially now where there's sometimes so much that can bring us down, and sometimes it feels so overwhelming. When you think about, “Well, how can I make an impact?” You can make an impact because of the ripple effect. That's something that I think is important to keep in mind,
[00:30:08] MB: That's a really good insight. It's so true that just having a – impacting one person impacts everybody; their family, their friends, everyone they interact with. There's even some really interesting psychology studies around the negative side of that, where you see, if somebody you don't even know who's three or four people removed from you, and a friend network gets divorced, for example, it raises your probability of getting divorced. There's other examples of similar things. I really like the application of that in a positive direction.
[00:30:40] BN: Yeah, because I think, we can all think about people that have made an enormous impact in our lives through small actions, whether it's a teacher, or a family friend, or a friend. That I've experienced myself with my friend starting a clothing line. It wasn't even that good of a friend of mine. I knew him in high school. If he wouldn't have started his clothing line, Buried Life would not have existed. Straight up. I would never have thought about making a movie. I would never would have called Johnny. We never would have got together. I can't say never. Chances are, that was the catalyst that made this whole thing begin.
Then, you think about the people that were inspired by Buried Life, the people that watch the show, other people that went on to do amazing things, the Yes Theory Boys that are doing incredible things, other folks that are playing Major League sport. We get all these stories coming in, and you realize, wow, this ripple effect is very real.
It's not even us that started it. It's my friend that started a clothing line. You think about the impact this kid had on starting a clothing line, which by the way, doesn't exist anymore. It wasn't successful. He just did it for a year or two and that was it. It created this whole cascade of events that changed the world, because it wasn't even our impact – The impact that people are making from this source of inspiration, from the very life or what have you is far greater than we made. Look at you in the podcast. We may have played a small role in that, so there's a ripple there.
[00:32:12] MB: Totally.
[00:32:12] BN: The inspiration that you have on your listeners and beyond. I mean, you can't even wrap your head around this idea. Everyone has the power to do that. The trouble is, it's hard to quantify, but it's very real.
[00:32:26] MB: It's funny, you can go further back, your friend who started a clothing line. Why? If you all the way back, I mean, it becomes – we get into some Buddhist ideas about how the whole world is one giant interconnected whole, which is quite interesting. It's really fascinating. I mean, it could go back all the way to the beginning of time.
[00:32:46] BN: It does. It must mean. Yeah, exactly.
[00:32:47] MB: In the vein of unbroken causes. I want to bring the conversation back to this question. What do you want to do before you die? How have you seen people, and what are some of the lessons you've seen around how we can more effectively ask ourselves that question, and where we can go wrong when we ask it?
[00:33:07] BN: Where we can go wrong with the answer?
[00:33:10] MB: Yes.
[00:33:11] BN: I’ll answer that in two ways. How can we more effectively ask ourselves the question, what do you want to do before you die? Or just keep our mortality top of mind. I think, this also comes back to how do we prioritize the things that are truly important in our life? Because that is really what the question, what do you want to do before you die, tries to synthesize, is if you look at the top five regrets of the dying, there are things that aren't necessarily money related, or power related. It’s things like, “I wish I would have spent more time catching up with old friends. I wish I would have worked less. I wish I would have lived the life I wanted, not others.” That’s stuff that you know, but you lose sight of.
How can you keep this question, what do you want to do before you die? Or this idea of not letting life get in the way of the things that are important to you, top of mind. There's no golden arrow for that. It's different for everyone. For me, the things that have helped are how can I remind myself that every day is important? That can be making sure that I prioritize the things that I know are important to me and put them in my calendar, whether that'd be quality time with people that I care about, whether that's doing activities that I know are going to bring me joy. It's protecting that time, like I would protect an important meeting, or XYZ. Letting people know, communicating that this is important and not feeling guilty about it.
A lot of times, we feel guilty for taking vacation. We feel guilty for doing things for ourselves. To understand that in order to do your job at the highest level, you need to take care of yourself. In order to be there for your family, you need to take care of yourself. That idea is, it's not selfish. It's actually service to be doing the things that are important to you. I think that this question, what do you want to do before you die, for us really worked, because it cut through all the BS, and it forced us to look at, okay, we're going to die. What are the things that we want to do?
I think, that where we can go wrong with answering the question is, are you answering it for you, or are you answering it for someone else? Because the top regret is living a life someone else wants for you. Are you writing your list? Are you answering this question? Because you're responding to that urge to please others, or to be seen a certain way. I think, a quick way to navigate that is you can actually picture yourself on your deathbed, and ask your future self, will I regret not doing this? If that answer is yes, then that's a good indication that it's probably something you want to try and pursue. It's probably something that your true self really, really wants to do. I think that those are two ideas to answer that question.
[00:36:27] MB: One of the most insightful things that you talk about when you dig into how we can start to create a bucket list, or a list of things that we want to do that are really important, is having a breadth of topics and categories that you pull from. Tell me a little bit more about the importance of having the various areas of your life all coalesce into your goals, as opposed to just whether it's business, or whatever else being the predominant drivers there.
[00:36:56] BN: Typically, when we think about a bucket list, we think adventure and travel. Skydive, travel to Europe, those types of exciting list items. That's just the knee-jerk. Those are awesome list items, but they only represent one category of life. There's a number of categories of life. Some people say there's 10, some people say there's 12. There's many areas of our life. I like to think about 10 categories of life.
Especially when you're writing your list to keep these categories in mind while you're writing your list, because you want your bucket list to reflect all of those things that bring you joy and happiness and be a full reflection of all the things that are going to bring you that fulfillment. The categories are – actually, I have some of them written down right here. There's adventure and there's travel. There's also your physical health. What are your goals as it relates to your physical health? That can be something like, run a marathon, or be a vegetarian, or pickup tennis again, if you haven't played it in a while.
There's mental health. What can you do to increase your emotional, or spiritual well-being? There's your intellectual category of life. What goals do you have for your brain? What do you want to learn? Is it take a certain class, or learn new language, that type of thing? There's material which is, by the way, it's fine to have material goals. You want to buy the dream watch, or get the house on the beach. I mean, it's absolutely okay to have those types of goals.
Professional category of life, what are your professional goals? Your financial category of life. Creative, which is one that I spoke about, which is important. Then there's adventure and travel, which I think is one category. Then giving, which we've talked about, which is important to think about? Who do you want to help? How do you want to make an impact? What legacy do you want to leave? Do you want to help someone pursue their dream? Also, relationships, which ties into surrounding yourself with people that inspire you. It ties into your romantic relationships and that type of thing.
I would suggest that you think about all categories when you're writing your list, and pretend that you have unlimited funds, pretend that you have the ability to do anything when you write your list. Write it in a place that you can keep, so that you can revisit your list every couple months, or you want to track it. I think that it's important to know that your list will evolve and grow as you grow. If you write something, and then two years later, you look at it again, you're like, “Well, I don't want to do that anymore.” Take it off the list. Add something else. It will evolve and grow. This is your roadmap. This is your true north, pointing you in the direction of the way that you want to travel.
When you get buried by the day-to-day, you come back to your list and you make sure that you're on course. I think, it is a powerful tool. I think that it's also a powerful tool to use with your family, because you can write family bucket list and identify the goals that your kids have, or your family has and you can do a summer – parents that do summer bucket list. I have with their kids. I have couples that do couples bucket lists. It's just a great way to start a meaningful conversation around the things that are important to you and start to take space. Because in a world where we move so quickly to stop and slow down and think, “Okay, wait. What's really important to me right now?” Start to use the list as a tool to keep you on track.
[00:40:21] MB: Yeah. I think, those are some great insights. Once you have the lens of looking at your life through all of these different filters, you start to see buried opportunities to really improve and focus. I mean, even, I love those suggestion that you just shared of having a bucket list with your significant other. That's something that I've never even thought about doing, but would be a great idea. Probably my wife, and I could probably find all kinds of cool stuff to do, and maybe even get more aligned about the direction we want to take our lives. I think, those are all some really powerful suggestions.
[00:40:56] BN: Yeah. Yeah. I think that once you have your list, then you can move into, okay, how are we going to achieve these? That is your next step is to share those list items with people that might be able to help you, or just your general friends and family, and start to break down those goals into smaller goals. We talked about writing a book. Write a book is on your list. Well, that's a bit of an overwhelming goal. How do I go about writing a book? Well, you can break it down?
Do you know someone that has written a book? Or do you know someone that's written a book. Reach out to them and see if you can borrow 15 minutes of their time to ask them some questions about the book publishing process, or getting an agent or what have you. That's step one. Step two, start writing an overview. Write the first page. Pick three books that have been influential in your life and reread them.
You want to start to break down those bigger list items into smaller goals, and start to build accountability, any way that you can. Maybe you can start rewarding yourself for achievements. Or you can have an accountability buddy check in on you, whether that's your spouse, or your friends, or someone else, a coach. Yeah, it's interesting. I think, one of the things I've been working on that we talked about earlier is I've been putting together all of these ideas into a journal, because I think that it's important to have a place that you cherish, where you write your list, so you want to keep it for a long time, and you want to revisit it.
I've been making this bucket list journal for the last little while. I don't know if it's going to be out by the time this airs, but it will be out shortly. It's going to be that have that roadmap with those steps of writing your list, putting them into categories, how to build accountability. I'm really excited for that, because I feel like, I haven't had that tool that will allow people to just use to drive for. It'd be cool to have that come up.
[00:42:46] MB: Yeah. I think that's great, having a framework that really clearly defines, here are the areas that you need to focus on, and breaking down those action steps. I mean, one of the things that I've seen almost universally, is when I talk to people about their goals, and I say, I want you to do an analysis. Take your goals and take your calendar for the last month, three months, whatever time period you want to look at, and see how much time did you actually spend in your calendar on anything that's on your goal. I mean, it's always 5%, 10%, usually less than that. It's amazing to me how little time we actually spend on the things that we think are the most important things in our life. That's even assuming that you've actually sat down and defined the things that you think are important, which most people have taken that leap yet either.
[00:43:31] BN: Yeah, absolutely. That's why I think it's important to put that in your calendar. Because we need to look at it the same way and value that time, the same way we do our professional pursuits. Obviously, there's a priority there. I think that regardless of where you are at, you can look at your week, your month, and say, “Okay, I know that I can spend one hour a week on this, or I can spend one weekend a month,” or whatever it might be. It's different for everyone. Take the time to think about what you could put towards that thing that you want to do. Put that in your calendar and protect, protect, protect that time, just like you would. Be vigilant and let people know that it's important to you, because people will respect that. Your colleagues will respect that.
You say, “Listen, one of my goals is to build a more meaningful relationship with my son. I've committed to going to his soccer practices. I know it's at 4 p.m. on a Thursday. I'm going to have to dip out. If you need me, I'll be on at 5.” Whatever. People will, they'll respect in most cases, your desire to pursue those things, because ultimately, they're going to have something in their life that they deep down, been wanting to uncover. I think, that it will also inspire them to do that as well. Because this ripple effect goes both ways. There's a ripple effect when you help someone. One thing that I've realized, which was a big aha moment post-Buried Life is by doing what you love, you inspire other people to do what they love.
I used to think, a bucket list was selfish, because it's about you. Then I saw people around the world starting to go after their bucket list, because we went after ours. I think, we can all remember, like someone doing something incredible, that's made us feel like, “Wow, what should I do?” You inspire others by pursuing those things that are important to you. That is a powerful idea, because it gives you that permission to do those things. Because it's a win-win. It helps you and it helps other people.
[00:45:41] MB: For somebody who wants to get started and take action today, to begin implementing something we've talked about, writing their bucket list, whatever it may be, what would one action item, or homework be that you would give them to get started today?
[00:45:59] BN: I would say, grab a piece of paper. Spend 20 to 30 minutes. You could actually break this down. You could spend the first 15, 20 minutes, however long it takes you to write down everything you've ever dreamed of doing, anything you might regret not doing if you died tomorrow. No limits. You have all the money in the world. You are incredibly gifted. You have the ability to do anything, what would you do?
As an exercise and anything is possible, you can start writing your list there. Then, you can start to Google 12 categories of life, 10 categories of life, and think about after you've written your list, “Okay, do I have intellectual bucket list items? Are there things that I want to learn? Are there are any emotional list items?” That will be an exercise to spark some ideas, and start to fill out your list in a holistic way.
Then, I would say, once you have that list, I would share it with people that you know. If you want to identify the most important thing on your list, just imagine that you stumble across a magic lamp. When you rub the magic lamp, a genie pops out and genie says, “Hey, lucky day. I'm going to make one of your bucket list items that you just wrote down, come true. By doing so, you will not be able to accomplish anything else on your list. You get one wish, and nothing else will happen. What do you choose?”
Typically, that's the most important thing on your list. Sometimes that isn't written down yet. That is a mechanism to whittle down what's truly important. That might be the list item to share with people. That might be the thing that you start to break down into smaller goals, and try and build accountability around. Put that in your calendar. Spend time working towards. You're going to have to play with different mechanisms of accountability. Accountability works. That's what our professional lives are built around, right? Just structures of accountability, whether it's actual people checking in on you, leaders, or it's just the accountability, this fear of not looking bad, or it's a salary that keeps us accountable, or it's all of these structures of accountability, but we don't have those around our personal goals. We're going to have to get creative and build those around these things that we'll regret not doing at the end of our life.
[00:48:32] MB: Ben, where can people find you and your work online?
[00:48:37] BN: You can find me at Ben Nemtin. Just my full name. Most of my social handles are just @BenNemtin. Or my website, bennemtin.com. I would say, you know what? If you want, I always love to see people's list items. I would suggest that you share your list and tag us. Tag both of us.
[00:48:56] MB: That will be awesome.
[00:48:57] BN: Write your list. Take a photo. Share it on your story, or share it on social. Tag us, so we can see it. That's going to be a great first step to build accountability. Maybe we can help in some way. I think, it will also inspire other people to see your goals. I think that would be a great next step.
[00:49:14] MB: I love that. What a great suggestion. I'm really excited. I can't wait to see some of those gets shared. Well, with that, Ben, I really want to thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing your story and all this knowledge. Such a powerful journey, and then some really important lessons that have come out of everything that you've done.
[00:49:32] BN: Thanks, Matt. Yeah, it's been awesome to catch up and hopefully, we'll be able to see each other in person soon, and until then.
[00:49:38] MB: Did you ever watch the Buried Life Show back in the day? It was about 10 years ago, but the show was transformational, incredible to this day. Really, really inspirational. Truly had a big impact on me. Some of that probably came across in the interview with Ben. There was this epic intro song that you can cannot find on the Internet. If you google around, you try to find it, there's Reddit threads. There's people asking like, “What is this song? Where do I find it?” It was a remix of the song Grits by Ooh-Aah. I don’t know if you know that song or not. I don’t know if you know the remix.
Either way, it's something that I've been wanting to ask Ben for almost 10 years. I asked him that question. As a little bonus clip at the end of this episode, here's the conversation we had about it.
[BONUS CLIP]
[00:50:23] MB: One of the things that I wanted to ask you about is one of the greatest mysteries to me from Buried Life, and this is definitely like an interview question, but more just a personal thing. It was the Grits remix that you guys had as the intro song was –
[00:50:37] BN: Oh, my God. A good question.
[00:50:38] MB: - incredible. It's still a mystery on the Internet. It doesn't exist anywhere. How do I get a copy of it? I just want that remix of Ooh-Aah. Send me the MP3.
[00:50:51] BN: That's great. The answer is, we didn't have enough money to license the Grits song as the theme song worldwide. We could license it for US, which means we could – it was the song that was played live on television. If you bought the DVD, if you watch it Netflix afterwards, it had to be a different song. We hired someone to remake that, and that was the intro. When you make an intro song, you only make 30 seconds, because it's the intro. That was a commissioned piece to sound like the Grits.
People always ask for the song. It's like, well, one, it's a difficult thing to explain, because you have to understand the nuances of what licensing music is to begin with. Even if you do, it's like, well, we have the first quarter of the song.
[00:51:46] MB: Yeah. There is no rest of the song.
[00:51:49] BN: Yeah, there's no rest of the song. I love that you've wondered that, because I think, a lot of the people that were invested in the show, that was something that they – that song for us, we knew from the beginning, that was our theme song. It was just like, yeah, it just encapsulated the spirit of what we were trying to do. We fought so hard to have that be worldwide, and in perpetuity. In fact, to the point where we battled to get it, at least in Canada, because that's where all our friends were, so that they could listen to that as the theme. We could only convince MTV to let us –
Then all of a sudden, they decided to let us use Coldplay in some of the trailers and stuff, because we had made a trailer they were so excited about it. We used Coldplay and they licensed it. It's a weird world. Yeah, good question.
[00:52:39] MB: Interesting. That was something that's been plaguing me for a decade.
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