ATG 234: Awesome Is Never Accidental  ## Metadata - Author: [[All It Takes Is A Goal]] - Full Title: ATG 234: Awesome Is Never Accidental - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/bba7cae5-27f6-4fb5-b309-0c9ddc017064 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Awesome Is Never Accidental** - "Awesome is never accidental" means great achievements require intention, not chance. - Success in health, marriage, or business demands purposeful effort, not random luck. Transcript: Jon Acuff It's actually very simple. That's my favorite thing, by the way, is to simplify complicated things. Sometimes people will say, oh, that book was simple. Like that book genre was simple. And I always think, that's my goal. Exactly. Thank you. I receive that feedback a compliment. It was simple because I love to take complicated, complex things and simplify them in a way that you can actually do something with them. You can actually use them to change your life. And one of the ways I do that is with soundtracks. So a soundtrack is my phrase for repetitive thought. It's a thought that you listen to again and again and again. It encourages you to build the kind of life you want. And the thing you need to know about mindset, that's actually very simple. I'm using that word a lot today. Here's how mindset works. Great thoughts turn into great actions. Great actions turn into great results. Thoughts turn into actions. Actions turn into results. If you want amazing results, start with amazing thoughts first. So today's is a simple four-word thought. Because a soundtrack isn't a paragraph. If somebody says, hey, I got a great soundtrack for you, and then they tell me like 80 words, that's, I can't remember that. That's challenging. Soundtrack is usually fairly short, and this one definitely is. It's four words. You ready? Awesome is never accidental. Awesome is never accidental. I've never met somebody, ([Time 0:02:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6b9eabf7-c33f-4922-aa2d-7b6cb47b5cd8)) - **No Accidental Fitness Success** - No one accidentally gets in shape or suddenly starts intense workouts without intention. - Jon Acuff has never met anyone who just stumbled into fitness without dedicated effort. Transcript: Jon Acuff And I still haven't found a single person who said, John, yeah, I accidentally got in shape. Like I didn't even mean to. I was just, you know, I was binge watching Netflix. And one day I looked up and I was doing burpees. Like I even remember getting off the couch. One minute I was binge watching Netflix, next thing you knew I was flipping tractor tires. I don't even own a tractor. I was just throwing these tires around. ([Time 0:03:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9624f66a-5cda-43aa-9e47-46c28cfc38ac)) - **Marriage Requires Intentional Effort** - Marriage is not naturally awesome; it tends toward average or worse without work. - You must intentionally work on communication, shared interests, and serving your partner to build a strong marriage. Transcript: Jon Acuff No one has accidentally had a great marriage. Like I've never met somebody who accidentally had a great marriage. Here's what you need to know about the default for marriage. Let me just, I'm 24 years in, so let me shoot you straight. The default for marriage is average. The default isn't awesome. Like the default is average. The default is actually, I think, divorce, separation, average, boring. Like the minute you get married, life starts pulling you apart. Like you start developing separate interests and you get pulled apart naturally the longer you live with somebody and are married with them. You have to work to be together. You have to work to have common interests. You have to work to build a great marriage. It takes work to communicate. It takes work to figure out, okay, this is what this person really cares about. And how do I serve that? Like it takes work. ([Time 0:04:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7b8cd5ce-5365-42d7-a3eb-ddab253f582a)) - **Adulthood Can Be Awesome** - Adulthood can be great with the right mindset and effort, not a trap to avoid. - You can have an awesome adult life by being intentional and embracing growth. Transcript: Jon Acuff I think the default for marriage is very average. And I think for an awesome marriage, you have to be intentional. I think that's true of adulthood in general. Whenever I see something that's like, don't grow up, it's a trap. Have you ever seen somebody with like a sign that says that or like on Instagram, they're like, don't grow up kids, it's a trap. Adulthood is terrible. I always think, no, you just suck at being an adult. Being an adult can be awesome. It can be the best. I am having the time of my life. I wish I could go back to my 22-year me, 24-year me, my 14-year me and be like, hey, it's going to be so much fun. You think 49? I'm sure when I was 14, if 49-year me came back in time, I'd be like, oh my, we are so old. We're so old. Can you even lift a single pound? Do you have to wear Skechers? Oh my gosh, you're so old. But I wish I could tell my 14 year old like, no, your 40s are going to be fun. ([Time 0:05:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e8218e9a-bbe1-4bd8-9c47-0127925f6788)) - **Intentionality in Creation** - No one writes a book or builds a business accidentally; both require clear intention and sustained work. - Even those who stumble into a business are still being intentional about growth and operations. Transcript: Jon Acuff But it takes intentionality. Nobody ever accidentally writes a book. I've never met somebody who goes, yeah, I didn't even really mean to write a book. It just was like, I just started kind of free versing and like taking post-it notes and collecting thoughts. And then like, all of a sudden I looked up one day and I had 50,000 words all in the right order. And I was like, what? I have a book now. No one has a business that's awesome accidentally. No one I've ever met goes, yeah, but just we made millions of dollars and it was faster than I thought it'd be. It was way easier. Staffing, so easy. Legal, so easy. Business taxes, so easy. Now, I do think some people stumble into business, meaning they have a passion that actually has a business hidden inside it. And they might not have intended to have a company, but they go, oh man, it turned into a company. I think that happens, but they're still being very, very intentional. Awesome is never accidental. It's always ([Time 0:06:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2bb96ca6-12b4-4331-94b5-0f9b6571c509)) - **Three Pillars of Success Intentionality** - Successful people are intentional about three key areas: time, actions, and relationships. - This intentionality is flexible, not rigid, and drives excellence across diverse fields. Transcript: Jon Acuff If I could tell you one thing I've learned from the successful people I've had the opportunity to be around, because my job affords me opportunities to interview, interact, have coffee With, breakfast, whatever, with a lot of successful people. I think about it this way. I get to be in 50 of the best classrooms every year. Because of the nature of my job as a speaker, I get to go learn from some of the smartest people on the planet. And if I pay attention, I only get smarter and smarter and smarter. Like if I pay attention, if I'm taking notes, if I'm being deliberate. So when I go speak to Walmart, say I go to Bentonville, which I did. I stayed in this cool little hotel called, I think, the 21C. It was like this weird, cool arts hotel. Bentonville is way cooler than you think, by the way. I know right now you're probably sleeping on Arkansas, but I'm here to tell you, Bentonville, fantastic. But when I go speak to Walmart, I can learn from the CEO of Walmart International. I can learn from their team there. When I go speak to FedEx, same thing. When I speak to Range Rover, same thing. When I speak to Owens Corning, same thing. Like if I pay attention, I get to learn. And one thing I've learned that all successful people have in common is that they're very intentional. They are very intentional. Now that doesn't mean they're very rigid. It doesn't mean they're very, they're all type A, that they're all like really detailed and they're, you know, like robotic in their decisions and they've got everything always buttoned Up. No, not at all. Not at all. It just means they're intentional. And there's three things I think they're intentional about. These are the things I see again and again and again. They're intentional about their time. They're intentional about their actions and they're intentional about their relationships. Those are the three things that I see successful people be the most intentional with. They're intentional with their time. They don't give their time to a lot of things that are going to waste their time. I interviewed a CEO of a really successful roofing company recently. And I asked her some questions about, okay, what are you doing to stay you? Like, what are the things you do to be this awesome consistently? How are you, you know, what do you do to be excellent? And she said, one of her things was she barely watches TV. She's like, I never watch TV. She's like, I'm a big reader. I'd rather read instead. Now that doesn't mean everybody doesn't watch TV, but for her, it wasn't a valuable use of time. So she said, you know what? I don't watch a lot of TV. She was intentional about her time. They're also intentional about their actions. They are very deliberate about saying, you know what, in order to achieve this, here's the 10 actions, 20 actions, 100 actions I have to do, so I better get started. I better get to it. They move from talking about it to being about it pretty quickly. They move from thinking about it to doing something about it pretty quickly. They're very deliberate and intentional with their actions. And last but not least, they're intentional about their relationships. They're not casual with their relationships. They're intentional about the people who are in their life who can speak truth, who can encourage them, who can challenge them, who can kind of set the standard with them, who are running With them. They know if they run with the right people, they'll run faster and further. So they're not casual about their community. Those are the three ([Time 0:07:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/34bce3cb-9278-4032-8e32-3af0c1f9076f)) - **Intentional Time Management Example** - A successful roofing CEO chooses not to watch much TV, preferring reading to invest time wisely. - This highlights how intentional time management differs person to person but is essential to success. Transcript: Jon Acuff Are going to waste their time. I interviewed a CEO of a really successful roofing company recently. And I asked her some questions about, okay, what are you doing to stay you? Like, what are the things you do to be this awesome consistently? How are you, you know, what do you do to be excellent? And she said, one of her things was she barely watches TV. She's like, I never watch TV. She's like, I'm a big reader. I'd rather read instead. Now that doesn't mean everybody doesn't watch TV, but for her, it wasn't a valuable use of time. So she said, you know what? I don't watch a lot of TV. ([Time 0:09:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/54d6c16f-97ba-4ec6-b686-002e0bb2a6fa)) - **Small Intentional Changes Impact** - Identify if you need to improve how you use your time, take action, or nurture relationships. - Make small changes today that increase your intentionality in these three areas for better results. Transcript: Jon Acuff So my question for you today is, which one of those do you need to tweak a little bit? I'm not saying overhaul your life. This is a 10 minute podcast. This is a 12 minute podcast. I'm not saying, hey, maybe from this alone, you should just overhaul your whole life. Of course not. But what I am saying is one of those three is probably calling out to you right now. One of those three, you're like, oh, I could do a better job with my time. You're right Or, oh, hey, you know what? I feel kind of isolated. I've kind of stepped away from some of my friendships that actually really lift me up and I need to reach back out. Or maybe it's actions. Maybe there's things you used to do that you no longer do. Like maybe when you were coming up in your career at the beginning, you were like, you were the queen of thank you notes, or you were the king of follow-up. And you, you stopped doing that for whatever reason, you got busy, you got successful enough that people didn't expect it, whatever the reason is, you just stopped doing it. So maybe the point of this podcast for you is to go, hmm, what are the actions that I need to re-engage with? What are the intentional steps I need to take for this particular goal that maybe I stopped taking? I don't really even remember why I stopped taking them, but boy, they were beneficial when I was first coming up. I need to re-engage with that. I think it's always healthy for us to kind of pause and review where we are. And maybe today that's the point. You do a quick review and you go, okay, am I being intentional about my time? Am I being intentional about my actions? Am I being intentional about my relationships? ([Time 0:11:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e6b14aad-ab93-43fd-8261-5a4177f52499)) - **Intentionality Is Key To Awesomeness** - To achieve something awesome, you must choose to be intentional; random chance will not get you there. - This mindset is a simple but powerful foundation for pursuing your goals effectively. Transcript: Jon Acuff What's a small thing you could do today to start being more intentional with your time, your actions, or your relationships? Because here's what you need to remember. Here's the soundtrack. Here's the four words. Awesome is never accidental. Awesome is never accidental. ([Time 0:12:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/18d23240-af29-4558-a364-294419b35e5d))