Baylor Barbee

I recently got the new iPhone, and it made me think about the one before it. Brand new out of the box, ran the update, and it just was not working right. And I thought, how often is that true of us? On paper everything is new, the process is there, you have done all the right things, and it still is not working.

So what do you do? With technology, the answer is obvious. When something is not working, you turn it off and restart it. Or you reset it to default settings. Because in any device, things get bogged down over time. The more apps you add, the more you run, the slower it gets.

You and I are not iPhones, but we operate the exact same way. If we are not careful, if we keep going without enough rest, stressed and stretched, we get bogged down just like a phone with fifty tabs open. And here is the trap. When we slow down, we assume something is permanently wrong with us. We think we have lost a step, that we do not have it like we used to. But often that is not it at all. Often you just have too many tabs open. You just have too much running at once.

So just like you reset a device to default when it gets sluggish, we have to do the same for ourselves. I am a big believer in what I call blackout dates. Airlines use blackout dates for the popular travel days when you cannot redeem your miles, no exceptions. We need that same level of protection for ourselves. Dates where, no matter what, we are rebooting.

We all have different battery life. For one person a reboot might be one weekend a month alone. For another it is every Friday, a movie by themselves. Some of us have shorter batteries, and it is fifteen minutes a day. Whatever yours is, it has to go on your calendar. You have to become the most important appointment in your own calendar. You would not miss a meeting with your biggest client. You should care infinitely more about the one that keeps you running.

The biggest mistake we make is pushing past the point of exhaustion, past the point where we are not even getting anything done. So build what I call checkpoints of default. Learn your own warning signs. I know that when I start getting edgy and snapping at small things, it is not the situation, it is me, and it means I have too many tabs open. So I remove myself before I take it out on the wrong people. Know your triggers, not to beat yourself up, but so you can catch it early and say, this is not as big a deal as I am making it. I just need to refresh.

Then figure out what actually returns you to default. What genuinely unplugs you. Because a lot of what we call relaxing is really just changing the focus. Sitting in front of the TV, you are still consuming. Still scrolling, still taking in stimulus. You are not truly resting. You cannot restart a phone while every app is still running. It stops and asks, you have a lot open, what do you want to do with all of this? We have to power the apps down.

You have to know your red. On an iPhone, when the battery hits red, you know it is time to charge. We have to know our own red, know what charges us, and know how long that charge takes. We are all different, there is no right or wrong, but every one of us has a breaking point. The way to avoid burnout is to know how to recharge before you hit empty.

THE BITE: You have not lost a step. You just have too many tabs open. Reboot before the battery hits red.

THIS WEEK'S ACTION: Put one blackout date on your calendar this week and defend it like a client meeting. Decide in advance what actually recharges you, then do only that, no tabs, no scrolling, no stimulus.

Move forward. Ignore good. Pursue great.

Baylor

A lot of people are hitting the wall right now. End of a long year, economic stress, burnout. And we still have objectives, we still have things that have to get done. The danger is that when you are already fried and you keep piling on, you push yourself into a worse place.

We are obsessed with to-do lists. I have started keeping a different one. A to-strike list.

A to-strike list is everything I need to eliminate. From my schedule, my processes, my life. Because here is a simple truth we somehow forget: you never clean anything by adding to it. Cleaning is always subtraction. Yet we carry this false belief that removing things makes things worse, when removing is often exactly what we need.

I start with the areas where I feel most stuck. And before I add a single new tactic or change, I ask what I need to remove. What you find is that when you pull out the root problem, a lot of the smaller problems disappear with it. Remove the big boulder, and all the little rocks you were tripping on go with it. Sometimes the boulder is a toxic person. Sometimes it is procrastination. But subtract the big one and watch the rest clear.

Think about how a courtroom works. Someone says something wild, and the judge strikes it from the record. As if it never existed. So ask yourself right now: what do you need to strike from the record of your life? The thoughts you keep repeating. The words you say about yourself. The gossip you keep listening to. The false beliefs you keep aligning with. Strike them, because they are occupying space in your head and weighing you down. If you are already tired, why carry extra weight?

One of my favorite lines is from Marcus Aurelius in Meditations. This does not have to upset you. I think about it almost every day. Yes, it is unfortunate. No, it does not have to upset you. Adopt that and you build a kind of callused mind. Gossip cannot reach you if you are not listening to it. Toxic people cannot be toxic around you if you do not give them access. Because when you let things get to you, they do not just rob today. They drain the energy you needed for tomorrow, and that is the real danger.

Now, sometimes you cannot just avoid a person. Family, a coworker, someone on your team. For that, I use what I call a mental wax. When you wax a car, the wax is a barrier between the paint and the dirt, and it keeps the car cleaner longer. You build the same barrier by reaffirming why you are there. Where I am going matters more than what this person is trying to take from me. Hold that, and the grime just slides off, the way dirt slides off waxed paint.

Heading into Q4, do not just ask what to add. Ask what to strike.

What is one thing you need to strike from the record before the last stretch of the year?

When my speaking career started picking up, I spent a lot of energy defending myself. People would say, why would a company hire you to speak, you have never even had a corporate job, what do you know about corporate?

And I would scramble to prove it. Well, no, but I do this, and I speak on that, yeah but, yeah but. Until one day I realized how much energy I was pouring into explaining myself to people who were never actually looking to be convinced. They were not weighing my answer to change their mind. They had already decided what I should not be.

If you are spending your energy defending your dream to people who do not see it, do not share it, and do not care about it, all you are doing is starving the dream itself. Energy is energy. You can pour it into what moves you forward, or you can waste it on people who have a vested interest in you not making it.

Here is what I eventually understood. The very thing they used against me was my advantage. I do not think in corporate ladders and hierarchies, so I see things from the outside, and that different perspective is exactly why companies book me. They will say, we have never thought about it that way. My difference was never the liability they framed it as. It was the value.

The same is true of you. Stop trying to fit in. Stop trying to prove you are just like everyone else so you can be around everyone else. The more different your perspective is, the more valuable you are. Your upbringing, where you are from, what you have survived, what you are dealing with right now, all of it creates a perspective that only you have. And anything in the world that is one of one is valuable. You are a one of one. Start seeing the value in that.

Two quick filters I live by now. First, take advice only from people who have actually earned where they are. People who have really done it will always tell you how to get there, because they have walked the path and they are not gatekeeping. The ones trying to talk you out of it usually have not been there, which is why they cannot tell you how. And second, remember that small minds cannot fathom greatness. Often the people knocking what you are doing are just being reminded of the work they did not do.

If your team is full of people undervaluing their own unique perspective, that is exactly what I help unlock. Booking link is in the first comment.

My dog Bear somehow always knows when it is a pup cup morning. Saturdays, and Sundays before church, he starts giving me this look. Is it about that time? Is it about that time?

But the real tell is a sound. I order on an app, and if you have an iPhone you know the little chime it makes when you pay with Apple Pay. The second Bear hears that chime, he loses his mind. Total Pavlov's dog. He knows the pattern. The chime means we are going, he knows which park we are headed to, and he is instantly in go time mode.

Here is the part worth borrowing. Bear is not reacting to the treat itself. He is reacting to the routine that has always led to it. The routine is what drops him into that excited, locked-in state. And routines are powerful for exactly that reason. We are not dogs, a chime does not make us salivate over whipped cream, but a routine absolutely puts us into a state.

The problem is that most of us do not have real routines. We drift through the day aimlessly, just hoping for the best. But look at the areas of your life where you do have a routine. They almost always produce better results.

Now, a routine is not packing your entire calendar. I am not telling you to schedule every minute. I am talking about small, specific actions, actions, not intentions, that put you into a state where you can perform. Earlier this month I talked about my putting lesson. Before, I had no routine over the ball, so my body never knew what to do because every setup was different. Once I built a consistent routine, I could repeat the same motion every time.

I have a pre-speech routine I never break. I listen to my music, I get by myself, I say my prayers, and I collect my thoughts in the five minutes before I go on. Do not talk to me during those five minutes. And what that routine really does is remind me: this is not the first time. Routine means this is something I have done and done and done. So even if it is a new city, a new audience, a new situation, who I am executes the same, because my routine tells my body we have been here before. It calms the mind and blocks out every other stress and responsibility, because once the routine activates, I know exactly what to do.

You need your own version. Call it a pre-shot routine. Watch anyone shooting free throws in the NBA and they all have one. You can have a pre-sales-call routine, a pre-teaching routine, a pre-anything routine. It just has to be an action, because the action builds muscle memory and signals to you that it is time to lock in.

One caution. Do not become a routine robot who never adjusts anything. I keep my routine, but I add wrinkles. I will tweak one small thing to see if it improves the state. With my morning routine, grade by eight, I used to do everything in a fixed order, then I started experimenting. What if I read first, then this? I moved things around until I found the optimal sequence for me.

THE BITE: A routine is a reminder to yourself that this is not the first time. Build one, then add wrinkles.

THIS WEEK'S ACTION: Pick one thing that matters to you, a sales call, a workout, a hard conversation, and build a short pre-shot routine for it. Three or four small actions you do every single time. Run it this week and notice how it changes your state.

Move forward. Ignore good. Pursue great.

There is a fallacy baked into how we talk about personal growth, and social media made it worse. We have turned growth into a fantasy. Something beautiful and clean. You are in your empowerment era, glow up, level up, all of it. We show the highlight and never mention the reality.

The reality is that growth hurts.

Between my sophomore and senior year of high school, I grew several inches, and then two more after that. I remember my knees aching every single night. The doctor called them growing pains and told me something I have never forgotten: you are going to love the height when you get there, but right now, it is going to hurt.

That is the whole truth about growth. What you are going through right now might hurt. But it is necessary to get to the level you are growing toward. So when someone tells me everything is easy and smooth and there are no growing pains, my honest reaction is that they are probably on the back side of the mountain, coasting down. You should actually appreciate the pain, because it means you are still climbing.

Look at the caterpillar, since everyone loves that metaphor. We say caterpillar goes into a cocoon and out comes a butterfly, like it is a gentle nap. That is not what happens. Inside that cocoon, the caterpillar essentially dissolves into goo and completely reinvents itself, and then wings push out of its body. Imagine wings tearing out of your back. It would hurt. We only ever see the before and the after. We skip the daring, and the daring is where the whole transformation actually happens.

There are two kinds of pain, and this is the distinction that matters. There is growth pain and there is stagnant pain. Stagnant pain is the one that turns into regret, the I should have, the I wish I had. Growth pain is different. It builds resilience, because every time you survive it you get to say I have been through worse than this. Looking back, the things that were quietly shaping my character hurt far more then than they do now.

And here is my ask. We all have chinks in our armor. Everybody has scars on their heart, and nobody is getting through life unscathed. Stop hiding yours. The strongest thing you can do for someone coming up behind you is to show them the game film, not just the highlight reel. They already see your after. Show them the daring. Show them what it actually took.

The world needs more people willing to be honest about the daring.

Years ago I gave a talk at a high ticket nonprofit event in Napa, a room full of high net worth people. Afterward, over a drink, one of the organizers told me I did a great job. I gave him my usual line: I am just trying to add one percent value to people.

He looked at me and said something that stung. That is awfully egotistical of you.

I was taken aback. But he explained, and it rearranged how I think. He said these are people who have already done epic things. You are not going to move the needle a full percent in their lives in one hour. But here is the good news. You do not have to. These are hedge fund managers. Move the needle a hundredth of a percent, sustained over a long period, and that is a massive difference in a portfolio and a career.

My ego wanted to be hurt. One percent had always been my whole identity. But once I got over myself, I realized he had just handed me one of the most useful ideas of my life.

A tiny change, held over a long enough timeline, changes everything.

I use a rough illustration for this. Leave San Francisco by boat headed for Tokyo, and if you are just a couple degrees off at the very start, four weeks later you do not miss by a little. You end up in a completely different hemisphere. The exact math does not hold up, but the truth does.

What is one small course correction that would change your whole trajectory if you actually held it?

A woman at a store handed me a perfume sample the other day. Since I'm a guy and don't wear "perfume," I almost tossed it. On my way out I gave it a sniff, and it stopped me in my tracks. It was the best fragrance I have ever smelled.

I immediately called my sister. Then my mom. Now I am telling you. I have brought it up in random conversations all week, unprompted, because of how good it is.

And that is the entire lesson. Greatness speaks volumes. It does not have to announce itself.

We spend so much energy trying to get people to notice us. To believe in us, buy from us, give us the raise. We pour ourselves into proving our worthiness. I think that is backwards. Focus that same energy on actually being great, on true excellence in your work, and other people start speaking on your behalf. Because humans are wired to want to be around greatness, and the surest way to be in proximity to greatness is to be great yourself. Everyone says I know a guy, I know a girl. Be the one people want to know.

Two more things that perfume taught me.

Greatness builds on itself. I went down a rabbit hole and learned the perfumer's family created their first signature scent for the brand back in 1984, refined the line in 2001, and this new one came 25 years after that from the original creator's son. What I was smelling did not start in 2026. It is decades of trial and error stacked on top of each other. So when you admire someone and call them a natural, remember you are smelling the final formulation, not the hundreds that got thrown out. Keep working your formula. Most attempts will be nope, not it, until one day all the notes finally come together.

And greatness lasts. My sister texted that the scent held all day, while the cheap ones fade fast. Real excellence is not a flash of brilliance. It lasts, and that only comes from respecting the process.

Stop trying to convince people you are great. Go be great, and let them do the talking.

I was at a restaurant during Dallas Restaurant Week and I ordered ceviche. If you have never had it, it is raw fish and shrimp, avocado, some vegetables, marinated in lemon and lime juice. And here is the part that stuck with me: the acidity in the citrus essentially cooks it. It never touches heat. It never sees a stove. But the environment it sits in changes it completely.

I could not stop thinking about that, because we talk endlessly about personal growth and self development, and almost never about environment.

That same night I saw a video of different metals dropped into Coca-Cola. Time lapse it, and the acid slowly erodes them. That metal was perfectly fine on its own. Put it in an acidic environment and you get erosion.

So here is the question I want to leave you with today. Is the environment you are in cooking you, or eroding you? Is it making you better, or quietly tearing you down?

We love to say it just is what it is. It does not have to be. You have a work environment, a family environment, a social environment, a spiritual environment. Look at the areas where you feel most stagnant or like you are actually regressing. It is very possible you are giving everything you have, but the environment is simply stronger than you are right now. I used to speak in schools and tell people plainly: I can pour into these kids for one hour, but if the environment at home is toxic, this hour cannot outrun that.

Whatever you marinate in is what you start to taste like. Jump in fresh water, you come out refreshed. Jump in the ocean, you come out smelling like salt. The shows, the feeds, the people, the conversations, all of it is seeping in, slowly, either cooking you or eroding you.

So take real inventory. If you are stuck despite giving your all, ask what is around you that needs to change.

And then there is one more option, my favorite. You do not have to be a product of your environment at all. You can be the coffee bean. Drop an egg in boiling water and its soft inside hardens. Drop a carrot in and its firm body goes soft. But the coffee bean does not surrender to the water. It changes the water. The hotter it gets, the bolder the aroma, the richer the flavor. It takes the very thing meant to break it and makes the whole room better.

Be the coffee bean.

Which of your environments is cooking you, and which one is quietly eroding you?

Your mind does not have a sense of humor.

I say this at every seminar, and there is real research behind it. The things you say about yourself, your mind takes as literally true. It doesn't know you are joking when you call yourself an idiot for missing something. It just files it as fact and starts building a life to match.

Which is why the way you talk to yourself quietly runs everything. And over the years I have noticed there are really three types of people. I have been all three at different points, so this is not me judging from above.

The complainer finds the problem in every blessing. Show them a rose and they will point out the thorns. They chase storms just to have something to complain about the rain. You probably know who texts you and you already brace for the drama, because they have decided that everything goes south for them, so that is all they ever see.

The realist says it is what it is. Sounds harmless. But it quietly gives you permission to write off today whenever today is not great, and with tens of thousands of thoughts a day, those small permissions compound into a lot more down days than up ones.

Then there is the third type, and I have been testing this one hard lately. When someone asks how you are doing, you answer never better. Not to perform. Because it forces your own mind to go find the good. When someone says really, tell me about it, your brain has to reach for the blessings, the opportunities, the things moving forward. And what you consistently reach for is what you consistently see.

I sat down to record one morning and every device I own decided it was update day. Every app, every operating system, all at once. I watched those little progress bars crawl for what felt like forever.

I am a punctual person, so I got antsy fast. And in the moment, sitting there stuck, it genuinely felt like the worst thing in the world.

Then I caught myself. I actually had to say it out loud. Baylor, is waiting on a software update really the worst thing in the world? Of course not. It was an inconvenience, nothing more. But here is the thing I want you to sit with, because it is bigger than a computer.

When you are already going through a tough stretch, everything else gets amplified. Little inconveniences start to feel catastrophic, and if you do not catch it, you can convince yourself you are having a genuinely terrible day when you are really having a terrible three minutes.

But the update is the part worth thinking about.

The whole time I was frustrated at the bar not moving, something was happening that I could not see. Those apps were getting stronger. Faster. Better. When everything rebooted, every tool I use was meaningfully improved. The waiting was not nothing. The waiting was the upgrade.

Your life works the same way. Those dry seasons where you feel like you are doing everything right and still just staring at the bar, nothing moving in your career, your health, your relationships. You keep asking when the update will end. Meanwhile the most important growth is happening precisely because you cannot see it. A seed that has not broken the surface is not doing nothing. It is growing the deepest roots.

A couple of reframes I had to use that morning:

It is not the worst day. You might get a bad three minutes or a bad hour. That does not make the other twenty three hours bad. Do not let a rough stretch rewrite the whole day.

Nobody is positive every single day. People tell me they wish they were upbeat all the time like me, as if it is fairy dust. It is not. I have hard days too. The difference is catching the thought before it runs the day.

You still have breath in your lungs, goals in your head, and people who need you. As long as you have dreams and you keep moving forward, you can make it a great life.

The update always finishes. And what reboots is a stronger version than what went down.

What is quietly updating in your life right now that you cannot see yet?