Proven Habits For Growth Through Grief, Anxiety, and Life Changes | Alex Brzostowski

Episode Overview:
In this episode of the After Peter Pan Podcast, I sit down with Alex Brzostowski—an IT consultant turned real estate investor, a devoted husband and father of two, and a passionate advocate for self-improvement. Alex has redefined his life by embracing intentional habits and shifting his perspective on what success truly means.

What You'll Learn:

• Practical, actionable advice for improving both physical and mental health
• Navigating personal growth to overcome grief, loss, and anxiety
• Redefining success beyond career achievements to focus on what truly matters
• Key insights from some of the world's best selling and impactful self-help books
• The transformative power of mindfulness and journaling

Resources Mentioned:

• Alex's recommended books: 
  • You Can Do It! by Paul Hanna (gifted to him by his grandma, we found it!)
  • Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine
  • Outlive by Peter Attia
  • Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
  • Atomic Habits by James Clear
  • 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
• Alex's journaling structure:
  • Morning
    • Goals: For 2 or 3 medium to longer term goals, identify 1 to 3 actions I’ll take today that will help me achieve them.
    • Mindset: Several bullets on how I’m feeling and what is on my mind.
    • Gratitude: Identify 3-5 things in my life that I am grateful for. 
  • Evening
    • Wins or Growth: What were my key wins from today, and in what ways have I grown (this may be new or enhanced skills, or things I’ve learned).
    • What Worked Well, and Why: Identity several things that went well today, and consider what lead to or enabled that, with a view to repeating those successes.
    • What Didn’t Worked Well, and Why: Similar to above, identity several things that did not go well today, and consider what lead to or enabled that, with a view to avoiding these again.
      
      

Social Media:

• After Peter Pan Podcast: 
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
• Alex Brzostowski's LinkedIn

Chapters

• 0:00 Hook & Intro
• 1:54 Journey from Australia to Canada: A New Beginning
• 3:00 Building a Life Together: Love Across Continents
• 5:02 Navigating Long-Distance Relationships
• 7:24 Career Development and Relocation to Boston
• 8:39 The Spark of Personal Growth
• 11:11 Authenticity vs. Growth: Finding Balance
• 13:17 Daily Routines for Mental and Physical Well-being
• 15:47 Recognizing and Managing Anxiety
• 17:39 The Role of Life Coaching in Personal Development
• 21:43 The Importance of Sleep and Physical Health
• 21:58 Practical Advice to Improve Sleep & Diet
• 30:55 Navigating Alcohol Consumption and Social Situations
• 36:24 Screen Time and Sleep / Starting a Book Club
• 41:40 Physical Health, Mindfulness, Journaling
• 46:08 The Power of Structured Journaling
• 48:46 Navigating Career Transitions
• 50:55 Facing the Loss of a Loved One: A Personal Journey
• 55:12 Redefining Success: The Four Pillars
• 59:27 Overcoming Self-Limiting Beliefs
• 1:01:17 The Importance of Personal Growth
• 1:02:50 Why Bother with Personal Development?
• 1:06:31 What Growing Up Means to Alex?
• 1:10:21 Outro

Transcript

Alex Brzostowski (0:03)
One of the nice benefits that can come from personal growth is that you can enjoy your life more.

We're all only alive for a certain period of time, You know, we've got this gift of, know, roughly 80 years on earth. And I think trying to make the most of that time is important, And another really influential book.

for me was 4000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. has this paragraph which talks about

your life experience is essentially the sum of your moment to moment experiences, right? So if you can, take greater pleasure from the day-to-day experiences, then you're gonna have a happier, healthier life.


Pat Tenneriello (0:43)
Welcome to the After Peter Pan Podcast. I’m your host, Pat Tenneriello.

Today, I sit down with my friend, Alex Brzostowski—whom I like to call the walking encyclopedia of self-improvement. Alex has read a ton of transformative books that have reshaped his physical and mental health.

After experiencing sudden loss in his family, Alex re-examined his career and life priorities. This led him to broaden and redefine his definition of success and create his “Four Pillars” framework, which emphasizes family, self-care, friendships and community, and financial stability.

In this conversation, we dive into his story, exploring practical advice, habits, and key insights from Alex and his favorite books—things that have helped him build consistency and balance. Talking with Alex inspires me to aim higher and gives me a fresh perspective.

I’m particularly excited about this episode because it’s packed with actionable tips to help you make meaningful changes in your own life.

Thank you for tuning in—enjoy the conversation!

Pat Tenneriello (01:54)
tell us a little bit about yourself.

Alex Brzostowski (01:56)
So I grew up in Canberra, Australia, which is where I'd gone to both school and university.

And I think like many young people, there's just an urge to go travel and see the world. a friend told me that she was applying for an exchange abroad and I didn't even know about the university's exchange program at that point. I went straight over to the exchange office, picked up a bunch of brochures.

and then literally like spent the rest of the next lecture just reading those. that was week before the applications were due So I was fortunately able to get my application in and I ended up being accepted to my first pick, which was to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. that was a fantastic year a very fortuitous year for me because I actually met my wife there.

I did, so we were in a housing co-op,

Pat Tenneriello (02:39)
Queens.

Alex Brzostowski (02:43)
and everybody in the co-op had to do three hours of work for the co-op each week. we were Tuesday lunch cooks and that was, how we got to know each other actually.

eventually kind of gonna summed up the courage to ask her out and we've now been together 22 years, Thank

Pat Tenneriello (02:59)
Congratulations, that's amazing.

at what point did you realize you wanted to spend the rest of your life with her?

Alex Brzostowski (03:07)
that's a good question. once we started dating, we clicked really, really well, And even though I'd said to her, I'm going home in six months type of thing before we started, we both really wanted to be able to pursue it longer term. So that was great. And obviously we had to overcome this hurdle of, well, where is that going to be given that our two homes are on opposite ends of the world?

She had already been accepted to medical school in Canada for after that. So it kind of made the decision that, well, she needs to be in Canada. And so if anyone's going to move, it was going to be me. And fortunately, she was able to sponsor me for permanent residency in Canada. Canada has a visa category that allows

you know, people in a long-term relationship who aren't necessarily married, to be able to like sponsor each other to come to permanent residency. So we were long distance for about 18 months. So after the exchange, I still had three semesters left back in Canberra. And it was sort of during that period that we got that visa application in. And, I was thrilled because it was approved on the first go, which was great.

And then, packed up my life in Australia after graduating and moved to Montreal in January of 2005. And that was when I started learning French.

Pat Tenneriello (04:25)
So you guys did long distance for the remaining semesters till you graduated and then you made the bigger sacrifice, and I can relate because my wife and I being also from different continents, not quite as far as you guys. That's how it is and honestly we haven't fully decided who's gonna be making the bigger sacrifice.

Alex Brzostowski (04:25)
And to that one, go ahead.

That's correct.

Pat Tenneriello (04:47)
How old were you when you made that decision?

Alex Brzostowski (04:48)
So

21 when we started dating and I made the decision within a few months of that.

Pat Tenneriello (04:56)
Have you always been

someone who is ready to make serious, long commitments like that?

Alex Brzostowski (05:02)
when we were talking about should I be moving to Canada and so forth? Like it did bring up the question for us, do we see ourselves being together longer term? Right. And so I recognize that kind of like compressed the timeline of the relationship to a certain extent, because it really brought forward that question of do we see ourselves being married?

one day, it's not that we got engaged at that point in time, but we obviously had that conversation around, well, is this something that we see working out? if that's not part of it, there wasn't a point in me going through that whole process to move there and so forth. fortunately, we were both really committed to the relationship. We saw each other about every four months, between our semesters, we could see each other for a month or two.

which was good. But we were both pretty busy with our respective studies. And so because we were both so preoccupied with that, we talked a couple of times each week, but we also felt as though there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I would strongly advise people not to get into a long distance relationship if there is no longer term game plan for how you're going to end up being together.

Pat Tenneriello (06:08)
How did you know she was the one?

Alex Brzostowski (06:11)
just clicked so well. And, when you fall head over heels in love with someone, it's just, it just is what it is, right? You just, you just kind of know that. But something that I really appreciated with her was whenever we would have disagreements, we could openly talk about it. we could, we could sort it out. I've been in relationships previously, it's sort of two different extremes. One,

extreme, my girlfriend at the time would just shut down and not want to talk about an issue. And I found that very frustrating, right? And then at the other end of the extreme, another girlfriend would just want to fight all the time. And it would, and it just felt like our status quo of the relationship was fighting. actually remember one night after dropping her back at her house, thinking to myself, man, tonight was a good night. And I asked myself, well, why was it a good night? because we didn't have a fight.

And it was at that point that I realized that that relationship was in trouble. So I really appreciated with my wife that we were able to talk through and resolve issues. were good about listening to each to the question about how do I feel comfortable with it and so forth. Yeah, I mean, it felt very natural to

Pat Tenneriello (07:20)
Let's fast forward. So then you're in Canada.

Alex Brzostowski (07:22)
So,

yep.

So I'm happy to walk through that a little bit. we, yes, I initially learned French in Montreal for a while, which was a challenging experience at the time, but it gave me a better appreciation for the challenges that immigrants to a place where their language is the non-dominant language can face.

And I was in Montreal that I started working for a software company. So that's how I fell into the IT sector. And after five years there, I did the MBA, which is where we met. And then after that, I joined an IT consulting company. that was in Montreal. And my wife in 2015 had a great fellowship training opportunity here in Boston. And so that's what brought us.

to Boston, but fortunately the plan has kind of aligned nicely for us in that there was a position with the consulting company I was with at the time. They had an opening down here that I was interested in. yeah, that worked out well for the two of us. when we first came to Boston, it was with an open mind. We made a minimum commitment of two years down here, but I think the New England area is a great part of the US.

And we thought a lot to where we wanna be actually since we've been here and yeah, we decided to stay permanently here.

Pat Tenneriello (08:39)
what were the key experiences or moments that sparked your journey of personal growth? Was it a journey you feel like you've always been on or were there key moments

Alex Brzostowski (08:49)
Yeah, that's interesting.

I'll share first of all that in high school, actually even before that, I was actually a pretty terrible student for most of it, right? And yeah, I just wanna admit I did a complete 180, right? And then was sort of towards the end of grade 10 where we started taking our career classes and so forth.

Pat Tenneriello (09:00)
I'm shocked to hear that.

Alex Brzostowski (09:12)
And I decided, yeah, I want to be pursuing sort of more of like a white collar professional career, which meant, you know, going to university. So I had to start working and so forth. And it was also around that time that I'd received a book from my grandmother. And I honestly wish I could remember the name of the book so I could still find a copy of it. But it was sort of the idea of the book was, you know, anyone can, you know,

achieve what they want to achieve if they put their minds to it. And part of it is around, creating your own luck by way of deciding what it is you want to go after and setting yourself up for success by way of getting yourself ready to take advantage of opportunities when they come along. Right. So that might be, trying to build, knowledge or contacts, that kind of thing.

And then jumping forward a few years, the first software company that I worked for in Montreal, I had a boss there and he was a fan of Stephen Cully's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. So I really enjoyed that book. I thought I had a lot of really great ideas in it. And so that kind of sort of got me on the journey of,

those type of books as a source of good ideas, right? And just like my personality is one that's kind of drawn to, you know, picking a goal, pursuing it, always trying to do better. yeah, so I've probably put it down to like those two books that I received from my grandma, one that I learned about from a boss of mine.

Pat Tenneriello (10:47)
we can link down in the episode to some of these books that have had a really big impact on you.

One question that came to mind spoke there's two types of people, right? those people who are like, I'm a certain way, I don't need to change. like, I'm just gonna embrace who I am. And then there's like the other ones who are constantly looking for change, and to refine who they are. And they embrace that ability to evolve and become someone different.

Alex Brzostowski (11:13)
Mm-hmm.

Pat Tenneriello (11:13)
how do you balance authenticity with growth, especially as you evolve?

Alex Brzostowski (11:14)
stuff.

I'm not sure you need to balance the two, right? Because to me, the idea of like authenticity is being true to yourself and being your true self with others, right? And I think that's definitely compatible with personal growth.

Pat Tenneriello (11:32)
You know, was catching up with a mutual friend of ours, actually yesterday, and she knew like the old Pat, right? And there's always this fear when I talk to people that kind of know that version better than this version. And this fear is like, I'm someone who's become boring.

I was known for in my mind, these fun things, right? you know, joking around and being teased for being a womanizer or like a party guy or whatever. letting those pieces of me die is like, I'm boring or like, I'm afraid that as I talk and catch up with people, like, who is this shell of a human? it's obviously.

something that's in my own head. in the same conversation I heard things like, wow, it's really impressive what you're doing and so on. But can you relate to that feeling at all?

Alex Brzostowski (12:22)
For sure. you know, that that adjective boring, I, I've felt that myself at different times, right. But then I also come to realize that part of growing up is changing, what's important to you or changing your behavior as a result of, changes in your environment and so forth. Right. And  it can even be changes in yourself? Right. as you get older, I've certainly found

I'm not able to stay out as late or I definitely can't drink as much as I used to And so there's nothing wrong with that. And I totally agree with you also on the point that it's in your head. I think there are so many times when we tell ourselves stories or put labels on ourselves about how other people might be perceiving us, but are often in a negative manner.

honestly, like I'm very happy with the, air quotes boring I've created for myself. I'm very happy in it.

Pat Tenneriello (13:17)
And with that in mind, let's dive into some specifics, some practical routines that you do every day. way that I'm thinking about this is sleep is super important. Physical and mental health are super important and work-life balance. I'd love to hear more about.

Alex Brzostowski (13:27)
Absolutely.

Pat Tenneriello (13:33)
how you're incorporating practical elements into each of those.

Alex Brzostowski (13:37)
So I absolutely agree with you that, you know, the sleep, the physical, the mental wellness and the family relationships and, you know, work balance and work satisfaction, they're all like really tied together, right? And before I sort of describe some of like the individual components there, I'll share with you and your listeners that,

in the stay at home period of the COVID pandemic in 2020 was when I realized like, I've actually got an anxiety problem. And the way that it was manifesting in myself was that I wouldn't have trouble falling asleep, but then I'd be waking up one or 2 a.m. in the morning and I just couldn't get back to sleep. It would have taken me hours to get back to sleep. And then I found often during the days,

you know, I'd be worried about things because hey, there's this new virus around, right? At the time, my kids were in kindergarten and third grade, right? So they were now at home and were all of a sudden expected to be performing three roles, being a parent, being a worker, and also being a teacher, right? By making sure the kids are getting on for their classes and stuff like that.

and there was also the U S election going on at that point in time between Trump and Biden. and so they, yeah, there was just a lot of like stress going on. And there was one night that I realized like, Hey, in the evenings, I'm just not relaxed. And then it kind of clicked for me that, hang on, this is anxiety. Right. And so I, I, I mentioned it to my wife and she was like, yes, that's, that's, that sounds right.

Pat Tenneriello (15:16)
do you think it latent, and COVID brought it to light or do you think that COVID induced your anxiety?

Alex Brzostowski (15:16)
Okay.

I think everyone experiences some level of anxiety and stress, right? I think it's once it gets over a certain threshold that it starts to become problematic for people, right? And I think actually, although there was a lot of like negatives to the pandemic and unfortunately a lot of people died, a lot of people became very sick and a lot of people had a terrible experience in 2020 when everyone was in that stay at home period.

I felt very fortunate that I was with people that I loved, right? But I felt so sorry for people that were in domestic situations that were either unsafe or unhealthy, or they just didn't have enough space, right? So for me, I think it kind of brought it over a threshold that it became more of a problem. There had certainly been periods earlier in my life when I might've had a bad night's sleep because I'd been stressed about either a project at work or something like that, but it hadn't been...

in a night of the night, that type of thing. So it's

Pat Tenneriello (16:19)
signal you shared was around sleep. Were there other signals that may arise that listeners could learn about?

Alex Brzostowski (16:27)
Yeah, so for me, anxiety often manifests as a feeling in one's chest, just sort of like as a ball of like energy or agitation, right? You know, maybe you could sort of think about it as restless legs, although it doesn't manifest like that for me,

You know, I'm not a psychologist. I'm not fully aware of like the full breadth of how anxiety can manifest in different people. But for me, it was just being here, like really worked up, often being very reactionary to things. so, yeah, so for me, you know, I guess, know, the gift that came out of it for me was that it helped me recognize that I needed to chat with someone. I actually engaged with a life coach.

Pat Tenneriello (16:48)
Fair enough.

Alex Brzostowski (17:09)
to talk through some of those things and that was immensely helpful. I still actually meet with that coach on a monthly basis, although the nature of our conversations has changed and it's a lot more about self-actualization and sort of being the best person I can try to be and so forth.

and she put me onto a number of books and a number of different programs. one book.

and program that I am a really big fan of and that helped me a lot was called Positive Intelligence by Shizad Shamim.

I'm happy to spend a minute just sort of describing that framework, but one of his main ideas is that inside all of us, we have a number of what he calls saboteurs, right? And so these are sort of like thought patterns in your mind that end up generating like negative thoughts and negative emotions.

situations, right? And so his thesis is that one saboteur that everybody has is the judge, right? That's either a judge of yourself, judge of other people, judge of circumstances. And you mentioned the judge component before when you might think people think you're boring, right? Everybody has like negative stories they tell about themselves. But there's also like other ones, right? There's one called the restless where you're kind of jumping between different things.

There's a pleaser one where you try to always please other people to your own detriment. There's the stickler, which is where everything has to try to be perfect. So he's got a framework with about a dozen saboteurs. And so it really helped me recognize those negative thought patterns in myself. And so then when I started to have them, he recommends to shine a light on it and be like, no.

that is just the judge or the restless or whatever the other saboteur is that's causing me to think that. And so I found that helpful actually quite immediately during that period. But he's also a big proponent on to like re-centering your thoughts to try and sort of take you away from the negative thought pattern and to bring you sort of more back like into the moment.

I kind of like what one would do during meditation where like you're focused on your breath or some other anchor, right? To try and bring you into the here and now. And so, you he recommends doing a number of what he calls our PQ reps, which stands for like, you know, positive intelligence, notion of like, say like IQ and EQ, right? He calls it PQ. And his other third component to his framework, which I found really helpful was called the other sage perspective.

And the Sage perspective is that in any set of circumstances or a situation, you can always find a gift and opportunity. And so, you know...

as an example of that, whenever you might be going through, a tough challenge, say you're having a disagreement with your spouse, the gift or opportunity that can come from that is that you could actually end up improving the relationship by genuinely listening to the other person, understanding their perspective and finding a good path forward that ends up with a better status quo than you had before.

the gift from something might not always be immediately clear to you, right? But they're always in there. And I found that kind of helpful from the perspective of, know, even if something, you know, really bad had happened or whatever, at least I could find a positive in it. And that kind of helped from having a more positive mindset.

Pat Tenneriello (20:45)
You're making me want to read this book.

you talked about how you recognize anxiety, you did something about it, you chose the life coach route, you jived with the life coach and the life coach recommended some resources such as this book that you're describing. And maybe just to close the loop on the life coach, because I've never worked with a life coach, I think probably most people have not.

Alex Brzostowski (21:00)
Yes.

Pat Tenneriello (21:07)
Like how would you characterize it?

Alex Brzostowski (21:08)
So

a life coach tends to be more like

now and forward looking, right? Like helping you reframe events now, helping you identify, you know, like what are the thought patterns that you're having and helping you like just like interrupt thought patterns that aren't necessarily, healthy or productive for you or that you want to be having, right? And I think, there are different, types of coaches, some that might focus on,

you know, personal relationships or business or health and so forth. But there's often a component as well of looking out at the future and sort of like trying to think about, where do I want to be, in, five years and sort of the events are like working back from that. So it's a bit more around, Maslow's idea of like self actualization, like, so we're like looking at, how you can be better. What are the things you can be doing?

Pat Tenneriello (21:59)
let's continue into the specifics of your, of your routines.

Alex Brzostowski (22:03)
So, you know, the, follow you had mentioned was around, you know, sleep, physical, mental, and, you know, family and work. Right. So from the sleep perspective, I think sleep is so foundational to, one's wellbeing, right. you, need both high quality sleep and you need enough sleep. Right. So, you know, personally, I, found I really needed to adopt good

sleeping habits or healthy sleeping habits. And so I, get off electronics an hour or two before going to bed. I deliberately don't read the news anymore before going to bed. I found that that was a real problem for me actually back in the pandemic. You know, in the hour before going to bed, I'll try to do some calming activities, whether that be like in a reading or meditating, that kind of thing. I try to be consistent.

in the sleep cycle, just so my body can get into a good rhythm of it as well. So typically go to bed around nine o'clock and get up at around five. And sort of like the five o'clock get up, getting up feeds into the physical aspect of things. So personally, I really enjoy both working out at the gym for strength training as well as running for cardiovascular fitness.

So I'll get those in the morning. I kind of discovered by accident quite a few years ago that I really love running early in the morning when there's like not many people around. I kind of sort of describe it as, know, the world's calm, the world's at I kind of discovered it in Montreal and it was a real privilege getting to run up on Mount Royale, you know, so like at 5.30 or six o'clock in the morning in the summertime was fantastic. It was just a time when I had sort of like some of my best thinking.

but the reason why I still do it now, it's so early also is so I can get home by around, you know, seven, seven, 15 and still be here for when my wife and kids are having their breakfast and I can help get the kids ready and out the door for school and so forth. but another important aspect from the physical side of things is to eat healthily, right? as I've aged myself, you know,

become more aware of things like cholesterol levels and stuff like that. I'm cutting back on junk food and saturated fats as well as drinking.

Pat Tenneriello (24:16)
Do you follow a specific diet

Alex Brzostowski (24:18)
I gotta describe it as like eating cleanly, would be the best description of it. There was a period where our family, well, at least my wife and I were vegetarian and our kids, didn't quite fit as easily with our kids when they were younger, right? So we kind of call it flexitarian now, whereby like, we'll have chicken, but there's many days when like...

Pat Tenneriello (24:38)
Okay.

Alex Brzostowski (24:43)
I don't have meat. And that's why I never thought I would actually get to that because I remember a period shortly after moving to Montreal, I had a saying that it's not a meal without meat. I was really satiated. But then I realized it was all in my own mind. once you build a habit and you get accustomed to it, it worked out fine.

Pat Tenneriello (24:52)
Yeah, yeah.

I was like you, a meal was not complete without meat. And meeting my wife and being, being kind of drawn into the Mediterranean diet. it's great. You know, I, in terms of protein, a lot of times it's fish. tend to have protein at one meal a day. breakfast will be like some, yogurt and stuff. Lunch is,

lunch is usually just like what they call a primo. So it'll be some sort of pasta dish. and then the secondo, which is the protein dish, the meat dish we have it for dinner and that kind of works is you end up eating varied and it's never too heavy and it's and it's it limits the amount of meat so that I find the Mediterranean diet is quite quite a healthy one. Do you eat a lot of fish?

Alex Brzostowski (25:33)
Let's go.

fish on.

Yeah.

So my wife actually hates fish. She just has like a violent reaction to the smell of fish. But fortunately I like fish and my kids like fish. I'll typically cook fish for myself on a Friday night. Like I'll typically like grill some salmon or something like that. But I think the Mediterranean diet's great. A book that had actually like influenced my thinking on eating well,

Pat Tenneriello (25:49)
Okay, that makes it hard.

Okay.

Alex Brzostowski (26:12)
as well as some other actually healthy habits was Outlive by Peter Atiyah. And it was like that book that really helped me become more aware of blood sugar levels and avoiding like, you know, large spikes and reactions to that. So, you know, the past couple of months, I've been pretty deliberate about cutting out added sugars from what I'm eating, you know, and sugar can be hiding in a lot of places, right? Like, you know, the cereal that I was typically having for breakfast at that point in time.

I didn't realize had so much sugar in it. And likewise with the yogurts and so forth. you know, orange, not only just orange juice, but typically fruit juices have, you know, a high proportion of sugar in them.

Pat Tenneriello (26:44)
Right.

meals?

Alex Brzostowski (26:55)
No, no. I try to be aware of what's in my meals. About 10 years ago, when my daughter was born, I'd taken a couple of months off work. And at that period, I was like, you know what? I'm going to try and use this opportunity to lose a couple of pounds. So I got an app on my phone, it's basically a calorie counter app. And that was really helpful from an education perspective of just starting to be aware of

Pat Tenneriello (26:57)
Okay.

Alex Brzostowski (27:23)
wow, there's that much in that type of item, you know? And so that was really healthy. That was really good. And that app has evolved over time to also then give better information on like, you know, what's high in sodium or, you know, high in protein or high in saturated fats and that kind of thing. So that's been a good education component, but I've been pretty deliberate about not wanting to focus on it too much, right? Because I think it can easily slip into an unhealthy habit as well.

Pat Tenneriello (27:52)
Do you do cheat days? Program cheat days?

Alex Brzostowski (27:55)
no, no, I don't do that. So do you?

Pat Tenneriello (27:58)
Okay,

I mean, not programmed, there's definitely cheat days. typically a cheat day is encouraged

Alex Brzostowski (28:00)
All right,

Pat Tenneriello (28:03)
because you're gonna sway you might as well you might as well give yourself permission to so How do you let yourself deviate from the plan? Or?

Alex Brzostowski (28:12)
So unfortunately for me, it's not typically planned, right? Sometimes it might be that, you my willpower has been sufficiently depleted, right? That I end up cheating around that. And so I'll share with you, know, like within the past few months, I read a book called Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. He's a psychologist and

Pat Tenneriello (28:14)
Okay.

Alex Brzostowski (28:37)
One of the things that he and a colleague of his had found was that people have like only a certain amount willpower. It's basically like a reservoir of willpower, right? And if you keep on using it up by being in the presence of temptations, eventually you're gonna kind of end up giving up on it, right? And you'll end up cheating and so forth, right? So I think part of it is around trying to remove those temptations, right? I found that pretty helpful.

and I've also noticed like a correlation, like say, at the end of the week, whatever, if I, end up having a cocktail or a drink, alcohol really actually reduces your like mental ability to be able to resist temptation as well. Right. So then I found that, you know, if it, it ends up being a day that I have a drink that ends up being a cheat day, because then I'll end up, you know, having junk food that I may not usually have. so.

Pat Tenneriello (29:31)
I can totally relate to those two points you just made. They are spot on. one is I'm a good decision maker so long as I'm sober. you know, which is like, it sounds obvious, but when you're living a social life, you're going out for drinks, like you're, you're a single person, you're, you're a young professional, you're going out a lot. And so

Alex Brzostowski (29:41)
Yes.

Okay.

Pat Tenneriello (29:55)
You're sober during the day and you're working and you're making good decisions, but they're work related. And so you come home and you take a load off and all of a sudden you're not sober anymore. And then you're like, shoot, I'm not sticking to all these great plans that I had. So I could totally relate to that one. And the other one is like, think about Halloween. if you don't eat candy throughout the year, all of a sudden you got like a kilo of Halloween candy sitting on your coffee table.

Alex Brzostowski (30:11)
Yeah.

Pat Tenneriello (30:22)
of course you're going to reach and grab a handful of candy. if you take the candy out of the house, like, yeah, it's going to be easier not to eat candy.

Alex Brzostowski (30:29)
Yeah, I totally agree with you. You touched on a couple of things that I have. So I think I'll just share a little bit further on like alcohol there. I also came to learn that it is like a satiation suppressant. So when you say you have alcohol in your system, your body has a reduced ability to recognize that it might actually be full from what it's already eaten or is eating. So you end up like might be like overeating,

Pat Tenneriello (30:55)
Yep. What's your relationship with alcohol, by the way?

Alex Brzostowski (30:59)
fortunately, it's, it's, it's fine during the pandemic. I did become a bourbon enthusiast, right? fortunately, like I never had a negative relationship with alcohol, but, a couple of years ago, my mother had passed away from a colon cancer. And when I had a look at

What are the risk factors for colon cancer? There's some things you can control, right? not eating red meat, not smoking, exercising regularly, that kind of thing. But there's some things you couldn't control, like your age or your genes, right? But one of the factors that was still sort of like outstanding there for me was consumption of alcohol. All right, so it was around that time that I was like, you know what? I think I should reduce that. And my...

My wife at one point said to me, Alex, I find this kind of funny because I don't consider you to have a drinking problem, but yet you're wanting to be conscientious about cutting back. And usually the experience of people with drinking problems is that when family members or friends come to them with it, they're very resistant to identifying that problem. So for me, on that, I had to kind of like...

unwind some of the habits that I built up, right? And that might've been like at the end of a workday, couple of days a week having a drink. I think that's a very easy unwinding process to go through, right? For a lot of people.

But like I had also gotten into following different blogs and following YouTube channels and joining on Facebook groups and stuff like that. And in sort of like, you know, bourbon type culture, there's like hard to find bottles that people will always kind of be looking around for, right? So there's this sort of part of like a scarcity aspect to it there that makes it more attractive for people to find. And so I just like completely disengaged from all of those groups So then like,

I didn't have that cue of putting the thought of alcohol in my mind any longer,

Pat Tenneriello (33:00)
And so when you made that decision to cut back, sounds like primarily for health prevention, were there actual goals? Was it X amount of drinks a week? you define that?

Alex Brzostowski (33:14)
Yeah, so I wanted to really fall back into within what would be sort of like a safe drinking level, right? And, you know, also being Canadian, you may have heard about two years ago, Canada's health organization came out and said, well, there actually is no safe drinking level, right? You know, like the lowest level of risk is not drinking. And then every step you take up from there increases your risk and it kind of actually goes up.

Pat Tenneriello (33:33)
Yes, I remember that. Yep.

Alex Brzostowski (33:43)
in exponentially beyond sort of like seven drinks a week and so forth. So for me, yeah, I wanted to cut it back down to less than seven drinks a week, which I'm happy I've been able to achieve. I'm still trying to take that down lower. I've learned that the presence of even a small amount of alcohol in your system can end up affecting your quality of sleep because as you go through different sleep cycles,

Pat Tenneriello (34:08)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Brzostowski (34:11)
from what I understand, the presence of alcohol actually reduces the depth of the sleep cycles. And it's really the depth of the cycle that really helps determine the quality of the sleep that you're having. going through periods of like, not having a drink for a week or whatever, like, I have really found actually, like the quality of my sleep has improved. And I've also actually found that

even though I might have less sleep than I might have had traditionally, like before I made any change, I actually feel like I have more energy. You mentioned earlier the social aspect of alcohol and having drinks with other people and so forth. And I think people who want to cut back sometimes feel nervous or some level of or disease about how are they going to navigate.

social interactions around that. You know, not that I've given up drinking completely or anything like that, but there also have been times that I've decided like not to drink in a social circumstance. And honestly, I don't think people really care. Right? Like, I think now it's becoming more and more common for people to either drink non alcoholic beers. Unfortunately, I actually really actually don't enjoy them. So I'll just kind of more stick to like, you know,

a seltzer or soda water or something like that instead. I think now, fortunately, most people just don't necessarily even ask about it. Right. I think it would be terrible to be in a situation whereby like, you know, heavy drinking is sort of part of the culture. I actually remember when I first came to Canada as an exchange student, I had taken a train from Kingston, Ontario out to Moncton in New Brunswick.

And on that train, I was talking to a lady, she was a little bit older than myself, but she was like a First Nations Canadian. And she was telling me that in her community, the expectation is that you're going to show up at a party with a two four of beer. And like, if you don't, people ask like, what's wrong with you? Like, why aren't you getting smashed? Right?

if you're finding it hard in certain social circles to just change that social circle as well as best you can.

Pat Tenneriello (36:24)
You mentioned screen time before bed. Just to get into the specifics there, does that mean you'd switch your phone off like a couple hours before bed?

Alex Brzostowski (36:33)
Well, I just won't use it. I won't watch TV or I won't use the computer because of the blue light. Likewise from the phone. I won't do stuff on the phone. So actually, I do keep my phone on because I use it as my alarm.

Pat Tenneriello (36:34)
Okay.

Yeah.

You said when we spoke last time that TV is just not, doesn't provide you any value in your life. It's just, you don't watch it. I would say that that's one area that I'm focused on right now. It's just cutting back on TV. feel like I watch too much TV. It doesn't provide me value. And I feel guilty after I could have done something more meaningful with that time last night. But then that night when I tell myself I won't, I'm like exhausted. I'm like, I just want to watch something brainless for an hour before I go to bed.

Alex Brzostowski (37:05)
shot.

Pat Tenneriello (37:14)
was that easy to give up TV or? Yeah.

Alex Brzostowski (37:16)
I think one thing that makes TV attractive is you end up getting sucked into stories, right? For me, I just wasn't finding TV shows that interesting. So it's just kind of like where I didn't put in my time, right? But then, one TV show that I really enjoyed for a couple of years was the history channel's Viking or Vikings,

So what I would do is I'd watch it on my iPad on my exercise bike. So then you can just combine the two. I find exercising on a stationary thing like it would be a bike or a treadmill. The time pass is a lot better if you're entertained. A lot of people like to unwind in front of the TV. There's no problem in that. But just personally, I would kind of prefer to, I don't know,

read a book or go for a walk, do something like that.

Pat Tenneriello (38:06)
when I was kind of mode, you come home, even if it's not that late, and you've had a couple drinks, I wasn't able to read a book. And so when I started to make that transition, and to rediscover my love of books, I was like, I missed

And so to me, that's like a big motivator Now here's the challenge. And I've noticed in this conversation, you bring up books and you're able to remember and recall like the key things that stood out to you. And it sounds like you're able to still put them to use, even though you may have read that book some time ago. Now, now maybe for this conversation, you refreshed yourself, but that's one thing that I struggle with

Alex Brzostowski (38:40)
Mm-hmm.

Pat Tenneriello (38:47)
I read this book, I'm like, this is great. I rabbit ear some pages, I may even highlight a thing or two, but like, it doesn't the information dissipates over time and not that much time. How do you keep that information fresh?

Alex Brzostowski (39:02)
I remember I learned from a consultant a long time ago that like, you your idea and your proposal or your pitch or whatever is only worth as much as the paper it's written on if it isn't implemented. Right. So to me, like trying to take things away from books and incorporating them into my life is, is an important thing. Otherwise, like what's the point in reading it? Right.

but so what I do when I, when I read a book is I typically like annotate on the side, like I might put a, like a little star next to like an important sentence or in a kind of flag, a paragraph. and then after I, I've read the book, I actually have another notebook that I'll end up sort of just jotting down what, kind of sort of the key takeaways for me from that book. Right. and every now and then,

you know, it might be in response to just sort of thinking about a challenge or maybe I'll realize I haven't referred to that other notebook in a while, I'll take a bit of a flip through it. Be like, yeah, the key ideas from that book were those things or the key ideas from that other book were these other things. And so then that kind of sort of helps me refresh it as well. Another thing I did about a year ago was actually start a book club with a couple of other dads in my neighborhood here. And so that's been quite helpful.

we typically like, know, unanimously select the book that we're going to read. And then, you know, we give ourselves up to three months to be able to get through it. was a lot of, you know, we're all busy and stuff. But then I find sort of like in preparation for the conversation around the book, you end up thinking more about it. And then obviously if you end up, you know, discussing the book for an hour or two, it kind of sort of really helps reinforce those ideas as well.

And often I found, say, a couple of meetings later when we're talking, we might refer to back, yeah, well, that's kind of like so-and-so's concept of whatever. So just kind of keeps it fresh in that perspective.

Pat Tenneriello (40:54)
I love that, by the way, the book club. That's not something I've ever been a part of, I can see how. But you started it, right?

Alex Brzostowski (40:57)
Neither had I.

Yeah, yeah. So like, you know, I'm a pretty extroverted guy, right? And so I, I know a lot of the dads and guys from around the neighborhood here. And so I kind of thought about, okay, so who are the other guys in the neighborhood that would likely be interested in sort of, know, personal development type of books and approach some of them. we started that back in January.

of this year. we actually also do is we, although we might only talk about a book every three months, we'll still get together on the other months in between just for like a social catch up and just to talk about what's going on for each of us.

Pat Tenneriello (41:40)
In terms of physical, is there anything that you feel listeners might appreciate from your gym routine or are you working with a one-on-one trainer? Is there a particular app that you really love?

Alex Brzostowski (41:54)
think an important thing around the physical aspect is just to pick something that you enjoy. It doesn't matter if you're playing basketball or squash or running or rowing, just pick something that you like. And then there's like a natural pull to it rather than you feel like you're pushing yourself to go and do it.

I think it's also good to mix things up from time to time, right? Cause if you're always doing the same routine or, running the same course or whatever, it's naturally going to get boring. It's like, it's like anything else. you're, you're the level of enjoyment that you get from something diminishes the more you've had it. So, so you sort of keep,

Pat Tenneriello (42:32)
Fair enough. Do do any team sports? Is it all solo? Are you a pickle baller?

Alex Brzostowski (42:37)
I'm not a pickleball, my wife and son and actually my mother-in-law, they all love pickleball, but it's not something that I've gotten into.

Pat Tenneriello (42:45)
Keep hearing about it, I need to try it. Okay, cool. On the mental health side, we talked about the Life Coach, but I also wanted to talk about your mindfulness practice. I know you mentioned meditation earlier. Can you tell us about that?

Alex Brzostowski (42:47)
Yeah.

So sure. So I try to meditate three times a day. I usually meditate in the morning and that might be around the breakfast time before I work out. If it's not then it typically tends more to be like after my daughter has left for school. Then the house is just quiet again before I really get into my work day. And then I just find the other times during the day that work well for me is after lunch.

And then I'll just take, you know, 10 minutes to go to meditate at that time. And also find in the evening That, that winding down phase before going to sleep. I'll meditate again during that period. And I just try to take an approach of, you know, just try to be blank in my mind or focusing on my breath, trying to relax. And for me, that's what I've found has worked really well.

from the mental health perspective as well. We've talked about reading quite a bit and I think just learning new ideas and trying to apply them to myself, I found that really helpful. The past couple of months, I have started journaling each day. It's something I'd heard about the past couple of years and it's sort of been sporadic in, but it never really built a good habit around it.

and I learned about the idea of growth journaling. I sort of looked at different blogs and sort of like what I found works well for me is, as I start my work day, I'll jot down, okay. So like of my key personal goals that I have that might be the relating to like, you know, my own fitness or building the business or from a household or family perspective,

what are the key things I want to do towards achieving those goals today? And I'll typically try to limit it to like two or three for each of those categories. And then that kind of helps provide me with a focus for the day. The other thing I do from the journaling perspective is I'll also jot down a couple of thoughts I have about like how I'm feeling from a mindset perspective. So it's just kind of like checking in with myself, am I feeling a positive mindset or am I like anxious about something? Is something really bothering me?

and then the third thing that I'll do in that, that morning journaling is writing down a couple of things that I'm grateful for. Right. So I think that helps one really see like, are the good things in your life or circumstance? And it just, I think one's performance and enjoyment of life is just so much better when you have a more positive, outlook or the lens that you're seeing the world through.

then at the end of the day, I'll jot down, what were my key wins or growth from today? reason why I do that is because then it's sort of, even though I might not have thought the day went particularly well, it allows me the opportunity to be able to identify, hey, there were actually a couple of things that went well from today.

right? Whether it'd be like tasks getting off the list, or like, also looking at like, you know, what was a new experience for me? Like, what was like, you know, the growth that came from that day? And although there might not necessarily be, you know, big growth every day, but they're typically smaller growth things, but over time, those compound, right? So then you can kind of look back, it's, you in the future, like it would be month over month, or, year over year, you're like, yeah, I've made some really good progress there over the past year. But I also try to,

consider what went well today and what I could do in other, like why that went well. So then I can sort of think about the like, how can I replicate that good thing in the future? Right. and the sort of the, the contrary point to that is like what didn't go well. Right. And maybe like why something didn't go well and what I could do in the future to either reduce the likelihood of that thing happening again or the negative impact.

that that thing would have.

Pat Tenneriello (46:50)
So I like structured approach where you know what you're going to be writing every morning and then every evening because it removes the fear of the blank page that I can relate to. I have my journal, it's right next to me, and I have another book on top. So I could tell I haven't opened it in a while. And it's a goal of mine to write more. But then it's daunting. And also, when I do find myself opening my journal,

Alex Brzostowski (47:14)
Thank you.

Pat Tenneriello (47:17)
and with a goal to write about something I tend to write about something else. like I lose focus. also while I'm writing, I have this overwhelming feeling that I can't wait to be done writing. So it's like I'm writing very quickly and I'm, you know, and so if I knew, okay, I'm going to open the journal and I'm going to bullet down three things I'm grateful for.

the way you walked us through it, I think that would me more effective at doing it and more consistent.

Alex Brzostowski (47:41)
Good

My experience prior to that approach that I just described was exactly the same as yours. Right? Like I kind of had this intention. I'd done it sporadically. I did find it helpful when I did it, but it was always like, what am I really going to write about? I just found making it easy by having that framework or sort of set of questions or topics for me to consider really helped me just jot down.

Pat Tenneriello (47:51)
Okay.

Alex Brzostowski (48:11)
points around it and get the benefit from the process.

Pat Tenneriello (48:14)
So what I'd like to do is link to that format in the episode notes. And you mentioned a blog. Did you pluck from different areas? Okay.

Alex Brzostowski (48:27)
I did.

Yeah, I kind of like it. looked over maybe half a dozen blogs and kind of drew like what I thought would work for me from, or what it was interest for me from the, from the different components. So there, I'm sorry to say there isn't necessarily a link, but I'd be happy to provide you with a brief description of it that you could put in the show notes.

Pat Tenneriello (48:45)
okay, great, let's do that. I do wanna switch gears to work-life balance and talk about the major career switch that you made, and what brought that journey.

Alex Brzostowski (48:55)
Yeah, for sure. my career after the pandemic was really like, focused around IT and IT consulting. And that's what I was really focused on. And during all of my professional career, I'd always wanted to advance within the company, right? Or whatever company I was in. Like I always wanted to, take on, you know, more responsibility, my goal was to,

be a senior executive or leading an organization myself. But during the stay at home period of the pandemic, I found I was really enjoying the time that I was having with my family. And my boss at the time, who I did really like, had shared with me that she was gonna be retiring.

And I found in myself that I actually didn't have any interest in applying for her role. Cause I thought, you know what, it's going to be a bunch more stress. It's going to be less time with family, like in a more time pressure and so forth. my wife and I had made a decision to live well within our means and we were saving a lot of money. and so I thought, you know what, the extra money that would come with the promotion would probably just end up in the bank account.

And that number itself isn't going to make me any happier. So I decided not to apply for that role. And then that kind of sort of inadvertently set in motion a series of thoughts in my own mind, which was like, well, what am I really doing? I've got about another, say, 25, 30 years of working life left.

There's not other roles in this organization that I'm interested in, but I don't want to be doing the same job for the next 25, 30 years I think when one's looking to advance in a company, you're able to put up with the frustrating aspects of your job because you kind of tell yourself, hey, if I do a good job overall, I'll get to move up and then I get to hand that problem off to somebody else. This isn't going to be my

forever. But when I lost that ambition for advancement myself, those frustrating aspects of the company's approach started to really get any more. And then separate from it, my mum had come from Australia in the summer of 2022 to visit us just as a tourist for two months. actually had a trip as a family

planned to Europe. And two weeks into her trip here to Boston, she started having a lot of pain and ended up needing to be hospitalized. And it was at that time that we found out that she had a stage four colon cancer. And so that was that was definitely a huge shock for us. And initially, we thought she had, you know, two, three, maybe five years left with us.

So I was planning on taking Lee from work, traveling with her back to Australia, helping set her up with the chemotherapy and that kind of course of action there. But unfortunately, the cancer was so advanced and she just deteriorated so quickly that she ended up being hospitalized another two times. So three times in total in a space of about four or five weeks. And...

she transitioned into a hospice here and actually ended up passing away within two months of receiving the diagnosis. right. Yeah, was, thank you. It was definitely very challenging and a tough time. But it gave me the perspective that, you know, the timeline of someone's passing, there's kind of two extremes of it. There's the very instantaneous, like say, know, car accident or heart attack.

Pat Tenneriello (52:05)
I'm really sorry to hear all that, Alex.

Alex Brzostowski (52:25)
type of approach. And then there's the other extreme, which is like the multi-year chronic illness type of problem. And I think there's a real problem with like both of those extremes. In my mother's case, two months is actually a relatively short period of time to be ill, right? At like end of life, right? And that it's also enough time

Pat Tenneriello (52:45)
Yeah.

Alex Brzostowski (52:48)
that allows you to make any changes to your affairs that you might want to get put in place. It's enough time to be able to reach out to friends and family and other loved ones. So, fortunately, I gave her the opportunity to be able to do that. And actually, since I'd moved away from Australia, a concern that had been in my mind was like, how am I going to be around and support both of my parents at their end of life being on the other side of the world myself?

and so, you I guess a blessing that kind of came from it was that her being in a hospice here, was that I was able to spend every day with her, that she was in the hospice and so forth. So we got to spend a lot of time together, which was great. I don't want to minimize the, the challenge that, that it was, but in the end, it was actually like a relatively good way for her to go, Right. so then I'd.

continued my leave from my company because I had to go out to Australia, obviously, she, you know, to have her funeral and she wants to be buried out there and I had to sort of take care of some things from the estate. And then when I came back to work, I found my heart just wasn't in it anymore. And I was like, really, I still had sort of those like lingering frustrations that I mentioned earlier. But I was also kind of thinking to myself like, Hey, what am I really doing here? If you know, my mom,

obviously just passed away and completely independently from my mom's passing. my dad needed to transition into a nursing home, cause he had had a stroke, back in 2016. And I just thought, you know what, like I don't want be living a life that I'm not necessarily happy with and, fulfilled by. Right. And my wife and I had had an interest in real estate.

from the perspective of wanting to build a real estate portfolio and looking to make money from rehabbing properties and then renting them out. talked about it quite a bit and we decided that I would be able to add greater value to our family and have increased flexibility and be healthier and more time with my wife and kids.

If I stepped away from full-time work and sort of put my focus on doing the real estate investment for ourselves, as well as leading our household and making sure our kids are well supported.

Pat Tenneriello (55:08)
Well, thank you for sharing a lot of that very personal story. a lot of people feel the way that you described, right, where they may go into work and think, what am I doing here? my heart's not in this, but, but, know, then, and then they continue the sentence. And in your case, you did something about it, which really isn't easy. And given

Alex Brzostowski (55:19)
Totally good.

Pat Tenneriello (55:30)
what you had just been through with your mom and your dad, what pushed you to actually action thoughts that people have every day all the time?

Alex Brzostowski (55:38)
I think it was just recognizing that I was unhappy in what I had been doing. I think it was a good job and I think it's a good company and so forth. But I think of this idea of like, say, fit. And it's like a fit between one's interests and their personality and their capabilities and circumstances and the requirements of a job. So at one point in time, there might be a great fit. And for a long time,

there was a great fit for me, right? I just eventually realized that, you know what? This isn't the right fit for me anymore, right? And I feel very fortunate that my wife was very supportive of the idea. She's told me since that she actually greatly prefers me in my new role as opposed to my old role, right? And it's great. I feel...

I'm very happy in a lot of ways. I'm very fortunate for a lot of things. But it wasn't an easy transition. And in the period between tendering my resignation and my last day, I actually kind of went through the thought process of redefining success for myself, right? Because I think in Western culture, particularly for men, success is defined by career success. And that's like the...

Well, I should say we define success for ourselves as like career success, right? It's all about someone's successful if they make it to VP or whatever it is, right? But it's all around career. So I kind of like looked at redefining success for myself around, I'll call it four pillars, right? One being the strength of my family relationships, like particularly with my wife and kids. The second was taking care of myself.

making sure my own physical and mental health is healthy. This wasn't that long after I'd gone through sleep problems and anxiety issues during the 2020 odd period of pandemic. The third pillar I see is having strong friendships and connectedness to the community that you're in. And then finally, my fourth measure around it was like, am I adding financial value to our household?

And from my perspective, that last one's really the bonus. And I think about them in that order because if your family relationships are suffering, the rest of those other things that I just mentioned are going to suffer as You're not going to have the energy or the bandwidth from your partner necessarily to go out and keep fit. You're going to be having a lot of mental angst.

You know, you're probably going to be consumed with family problems and not seeing friends so much. And you're probably not going to be as effective in your work, right? Because you're going to be weighed down by other problems or you might just be physically tired from it.

Pat Tenneriello (58:26)
How did you conceptualize those four pillars?

Alex Brzostowski (58:29)
I remember I was still sitting at my desk in the office and I was kind of thinking, I was falling into that trap of like, man, I'm defining my own success and worth by around career success. And I've got to think more broadly than that. And so it's kind of it sort of drew a lot on books that I'd read or conversations that I'd had. It just sort of like considered like what's important to me.

If I can broaden up my personal definition of success here, then I can reduce that as a source of anxiety. Because I think not living up to one's own definition of success is a very natural cause of anxiety.

Pat Tenneriello (59:13)
in order to make the decisions that you made, you needed a safe space, you needed safety, to really process and make those big changes. And it sounds like you have that in your life, but not everyone does.

Alex Brzostowski (59:26)
Yeah.

Pat Tenneriello (59:27)
You know, for example, if a family is running on one income, or it could also be emotionally if they're having to support their family members or dealing with trauma or whatever.

Alex Brzostowski (59:38)
shot.

I totally agree with and recognize the concerns that people might have around like what you just mentioned. But I also think we all put what I call like self-limiting beliefs on ourselves, right? Like, I couldn't leave my job because of X or I couldn't work out because of Y or whatever,

something I found really helpful is like really look out for those limiting beliefs. And whenever I find myself saying, I can't or no, I'll ask myself, well, how could I? Like, what would it take to make this work? Right? So then you shift into a bit of a solutioning thing or like, and it's something you can use when negotiating with your kids or other people. It's not just necessarily within yourself.

back when I was still working as an IT consultant, a more senior person in the company came along to me and said, Alex, I need this specialized resource that's on your team for this other client project. And I was like, okay. I, in that case, it was like very much a zero zero sum game. Right. And so I sat down with that guy to understand his perspective and then say, well, like, you know, what would it take to make it work?

with somebody different. And we identified, what were the aspects of the role and, what other options were. And then he kind of ended up coming to the agreement with me like, yeah, I guess I don't actually need your guy. Right. so that was kind of healthy.

whenever you're running into this, I can't do so and so, just really try to ask yourself like, well, like what would it take to make it work? And all of the answers might not necessarily be feasible, but it will give you food for thought on how you could start to make some of those changes that you wanna make.

Pat Tenneriello (1:01:14)
thoughts, you were hoping to get out that we didn't get the chance to cover?

Alex Brzostowski (1:01:18)
if, people are interested in adopting new habits, I really want to recommend a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. it's a, it's a very well written book. It's very approachable. Lots of practical tips in it. found that a really helpful book from just thinking about, you know, what are the habits that I want to adopt? What are the habits that I want to break? Right.

And there's small things in there such as identifying what is the identity that you want to have. And then as you're going through your day, you can ask yourself, hey, is that action consistent with the identity that I want or not? And so it helps maintain that. But it also provides a good framework for removing cues that may tempt you towards a behavior that you want to break or putting cues in place.

to adopt other ones or trying to make it easy to do something. And we talked about journaling earlier, right? So I found it helpful to do that by having that framework, right? That made it easier for me to be able to sit down and And he talks about the idea of intention planning. So you can say like, if you can plan more clearly,

what you're gonna do, when you're gonna do it and where you're gonna do it, you're more likely to follow through with it. So I thought he had a lot of great ideas in his book if people are interested in adopting habits.

Pat Tenneriello (1:02:46)
Yeah, so we'll link down to the books that you've mentioned throughout this conversation.

one question why bother? Why make the effort?

Sometimes it's self-evident to people who already make the effort but there are a lot of people who aren't making the effort right? it's like why would I change anything

I'd like to get your thoughts on that.

Alex Brzostowski (1:03:03)
I think one of the nice benefits that can come from personal growth is that you can enjoy your life more. I think part of it is recognizing what aspects of your life you might not necessarily get full enjoyment from or might actually be like negative aspects. And it helps you remove those from your life. Likewise, it can also help you identify things that

are gonna actively improve your life. And so if it gives you like a better life experience, to me, I don't know why you wouldn't necessarily, wanna pursue those things, right? We're all only alive for a certain period of time, right? You know, we've got this gift of, know, roughly 80 years on earth. And I think trying to make the most of that time is important, you know? And another really influential book.

for me was 4000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. And in that he has this paragraph which talks about

the sum of your life experience is essentially, or your life experience is essentially the sum of your moment to moment experiences, right? So if you can, take greater pleasure from the day-to-day experiences, then you're gonna have a happier, healthier life.

Pat Tenneriello (1:04:17)
you said to enjoy life and to improve life, think improve 100 % enjoy life. I would add a caveat which is it's not always enjoyable in the short term. In fact, it could be quite hard, painful. It could actually increase suffering in the short term. But if you're if you're thinking about it in the long term, which I think is the right way to think about it.

then I think it does make life more enjoyable.

Alex Brzostowski (1:04:41)
So I agree, in the moment, the, action you might be taking might not necessarily feel enjoyable.

Every day I might necessarily feel like, you highly motivated to get out for a run. If like, know, my legs are hurting or whatever. but I try to tell myself Hey, at least this is a winning action, right? At least I'm taking a step towards, winning. I'm taking a step towards, the goals that I have in the life that I want to be having. And then I actually find sort of gets me out of that. I might not be enjoying it right now to then being more positive about it and getting enjoyment from that time.

Pat Tenneriello (1:05:12)
One thing I'm struck by in this conversation is that we talked a lot about really healthy habits and you strike me as disciplined in all the things that we've discussed, but at the same time, not rigid. you don't describe them or talk about them in a very rigid way when I've asked you about alcohol.

It's not like you're like, have like one drink like on Wednesday, like it sounds like you allow yourself some space to kind of like flow with life within guardrails and actions and routines that you've implemented that have worked for you. And it sounds like you maintain an open mind to evolve.

Alex Brzostowski (1:05:50)
totally agree with a lot of the things that you just mentioned there. And I think, you know, using the term discipline is a very negative thing because you've kind of got this idea of like some structure being imposed on you or whatever, right? But, if you go back to, you know, picking things that you enjoy, right? That just makes it kind of like easier to do, right? Or if you have it being, if it's an activity that's consistent with an identity that you want, then it's just

more inherent drive to be able to do it. So it doesn't feel like it needs a lot of like negative connotations around it. Love the term guard rails there. I think it's also important to make sure you have flexibility to also go with the flow of life.

Pat Tenneriello (1:06:32)
I realized that I meant to start with the question, what does growing up mean? And I never asked you that. Care to respond?

Alex Brzostowski (1:06:37)
Mm-hmm.

For

The first thing that came to mind is actually as well like being willing to adapt your behavior or response to a change in your context, right? Such as a change in one's responsibility or your environment or changing objectives or your body.

I think when you recognize, I really should change. growing up is being willing to go ahead and make the change that might initially be uncomfortable or might be different from what you were doing previously, but you're willingly going in to that change. All right. Another aspect I think is it's also important to, part of growing up is taking a bigger picture or a longer term view on things, right? Instead of,

Acting in a very transactional way, recognizing that relationships, all relationships, are more than just like one-time things. They're longer term things. I also think part of growing up is being big enough to take responsibility when things might not work out well or as planned. And being willing to recognize your own contribution to the problems.

Right. Like I think every party that is around a problem play the role in it. It's not to say that everybody had an equal contribution to it. Right. But it's trying to like, move away from the idea of there's one person to blame for a problem. Right. There's like, think everybody to the party contributed to it. They might not have contributed equally. Right. But, and not absolving people of it, but everyone has a role to play. and I think it's, it's also about, you know, feeling comfortable to.

genuinely apologize to the other party that you may have injured through your actions and being willing to learn from the incident. But I also think another part of in a maturity or growing up is being able and willing to make yourself vulnerable in important conversations. And that can be sharing your own emotions or perspective.

on a situation or a conversation or a relationship or whatever it is, but being willing to kind of like actually really share like what's actually like on the inside for you. finally, I think growing up is having the maturity to be able to empathize and understand the other person's perspective, right? It's about putting your own view aside for long enough to be able to understand

how they might view the world or view a circumstance. You don't have to agree with them, right? But it's being able to like understand how they view something. And I found that that has also then helped me come up with, you know, more creative ways in solving a problem, right? And if you can play back to the other person, your understanding of, you know, how it is in their own shoes.

they're gonna be a lot more, like people wanna feel heard, right? And so if you can help that other person feel heard and you can put it in your own words, then I think that's an important thing to be able to do.

Pat Tenneriello (1:09:45)
a lot of great content there in your response. Willingness to change, taking a long-term view on relationships, taking responsibility, taking ownership for your part, able to ask for forgiveness, learning from your mistakes, being vulnerable, showing empathy.

and a genuine understanding of what it's like to be in the other person's shoes.

Alex, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on. was really great. I really enjoyed our conversation. I hope you did as well, and I'm sure our listeners will too.

Alex Brzostowski (1:10:20)
Thank you very much, Pat.

Pat Tenneriello (1:10:22)
Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode—I hope it resonated with you.

I realize that, as we approach episode four, I’ve yet to have a female guest on the show—but don’t worry, that’s coming soon! In the meantime, I could really use your help. If you know any remarkable women with a personal transformation story that would resonate with our listeners, please reach out to me.

The encouragement I’ve received over the past few weeks has been truly touching. If you’d like to support the show, the best way to do so is by sharing it with others who might find value in it.

Wishing you and your loved ones a warm and happy holiday season, filled with love, inspiration, and meaningful moments.