996. Resist The Urge To Become A Narrow Person.

What if the reason you feel stuck… isn’t your situation—but how narrowly you’ve defined yourself?

In this episode, I share a simple idea that hit me hard: most of us don’t need a new life—we just need to stop becoming a narrow version of ourselves.

We get comfortable. We lock into an identity. We do the same things, think the same way, and slowly lose our curiosity, creativity, and edge.

I’ll walk you through how to recognize when that’s happening, why it leads to burnout, and how to start expanding again—without blowing your life up.

This is about using what you already know as a tool… not a trap.

Listen in, challenge yourself, and ask the question:

Have I become a narrow person?

Episode 996 — “Resist the Urge to Be a Narrow Person”
Listen on your favorite podcast app, YouTube, or at marshbuice.com

Transcript

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I just love life. I really do, and I just love because I love what it brings, the freshness that it brings. Every day and every day I wake up with something new to learn, and this morning I'm walking the dogs and sometimes man, I walk in silence and sometimes I pop my earbuds in my ear and listen to a podcast. And this morning I was listening to Steven Bartlett's podcast, diary of a CEO, and he said something that I just had to come home. And initially I was just gonna jot down. Because I thought it, it, it made for a good quote, but the more I stared at it. After I wrote it, I was like, man, this is, this is way deeper. It caused me to challenge myself to make sure that I'm not becoming a narrow person. And so this is what he said. You don't need to go to Peru to orchestrate your life in such a way. Like a lot of times people think that, oh, I gotta go live somewhere else to design the life that I wanna live. He said that's not true at all. He said, you need to be intentional. These are key words. Intentional about resisting the urge to be a narrow person. And to identify too much with one's identity. So again, you've gotta be intentional about resisting the urge to become a narrow person. To identify too much with one's identity. Your identity is who or what you are. And I think a lot of times what leads to burnout in our lives is we establish too rigid of an identity and we anchor ourselves on these. On this thing and we become a narrow person. And the reason being is, is because you had this vast amount of opportunity and just with society and obligations and family, and then you just, you get into this routine of learning, you know, let's, let's just say a profession.'cause that's a lot of times what your identity is. And, and you become this one thing and nothing else, and so you kind of, you lose a sense of yourself and you lose a lot of your wonder and a, and everything just becomes shades of gray. You just getting up on Monday, working until Friday. Occasional one week vacation, holidays off, and I mean, just on the grind. I'm just trying to make it work, and this was like a real gut check for me that said, you've got to be intentional. That's key. That means you have to have an awareness. That means you have to be the one to power your ship, so you've gotta be intentional. About resisting the urge. If you're intentional, you have an awareness, you're less likely to just slide into these pillars, columns, silos, I should say, of an identity. And this, you know, when I wrote this, the first thing I thought about. Was the documentary that I watched on Netflix about Eddie Murphy. I think it was called Being Eddie. And Being Eddie. There's a lot of faces to Eddie Murphy and when you go back over his life, and that's what they did. Basically how he started, he started off as a comedian. He really was kind of the wedge buster of a black comedian. Becoming an actor. I mean, Pryor did some of that, but really, Eddie Murphy took it to a whole nother level. And so he was an actor and a comedian, but then he made an album. He's a singer and he's also a musician and he likes to write. And you know, when you, when you watch the doc, it, it's interesting because, and I think somebody even said that, they were like. As soon as you think you have Eddie Murphy typecast in the one thing, boom, he's off doing something else. He always keeps him guessing. And it just, it really made me think about have I become a narrow person? And I've gotta, I've gotta resist that. That's the easy part. The easy thing is, is just slip into complacency and just because it's familiar, it's what you know. But this really caused me to challenge and, and really analyze where I'm at. Same thing with Matthew McConaughey. And, and ironically, I picked out his book this morning to read from before I even wrote this quote down, and before I even cracked open the book, I remember him telling the story that he turned down $14 million. He, he turned that down. They kept throwing money at him. Because he was tired of being typecast as a romantic comedy actor, a romcom actor. And so they kept upping the, the, the upping the pay, and he was like, no, I'm not doing it. He resisted the urge. And said, I, I want to do other things. And so in the back of his mind, he was like, 'cause a lot of times, a lot of people said that he signed his death warrant. Like you shun Hollywood, they'll just close the door on you, lock it. And he knew there was a possibility of that. Yet he walked away from that. He resisted the urge to become the narrow person of a rom-com actor while they threw money at him. It was tempting. But he started thinking in his mind, okay, well if this shuts down, what else can I do? I could be a professor. I could be a wildlife agent. I mean, just all kind of. So he started thinking about other things outside of being a rom-com actor. And he really distanced himself from that. And Matthew McConaughey. I really think he's become more of a broader person now. So not only does he do different roles in acting, he's gotten away from the rom-com, but he's also a professor at the University of Texas and he just, he just tries different things and you know, so you look at examples like this with people and you're like, man. What a colorful life they have. Absolutely. Because they're intentional about having a colorful life. You too have the opportunity to have a colorful life. Yet you've gotta be intentional about resisting the urge to be a narrow person and anchoring too much on your identity. I don't want to be known. There are guys that I played football with, man. That was like the only thing they've done. They played college football and that was it. They really haven't done much else since then because their identity was football. Football don't last forever, I don't wanna be known as an athlete, a former athlete. I don't wanna be known as a podcaster. I don't wanna be known as a salesman. I don't wanna be known as a sales manager, uh, as a writer. I, I just. I don't want to be just labeled in these things, and I think one thing, and I gotta resist that urge. I think one thing that really helped me was back in 2017, 2018, when I got demoted and so I lost my big title that I had and was. Busted back down to assistant manager. I wasn't even a full fledged manager anymore. And so I got, and I, I, you know, I thought that titles didn't really mean anything, and then they got the title taken away from me, and I really, I had no identity because I, my identity was in the title, but when it got stripped away. This really caused me after a lot of dark times to really re-search, re-search who I was. What I do and broaden my, my horizons is when I started a podcast like try new things. Annie Duke calls Explore and Exploit. I did an episode on this sometime back, and you have to, she used the analogy of an ant and ant explore and exploit. So they are constantly looking for new food. And new materials, I guess, to build an ant bed but they also exploit things. So there are things that you're naturally good at. There are things that you're naturally skilled at, but here's my challenge to, you see those as tools, not trophies. And so the skills and talents, like for me, I've amassed a lot of skills, the power of persuasion in sales. I've been in sales for 28 years. And so I've learned how to communicate. I've learned how to be curious and creative. When I didn't have the exact thing or the, the, the, the objections came at me and I had to, I didn't, I didn't have the perfect solution. I had to figure something out. So I've had to cultivate that creativity. Confrontation is key in sales and you gotta be a continuous learner. There's new technology, there's new buyer tendencies. There's all kind of things that are constantly moving. So even though I've been in the profession for 28 years, okay, I want to have a a 28 day mentality, meaning I'm always looking for fresh things. I don't want to be pigeonholed into doing things selling. Using this in just the same way. And there's a lot of salespeople that I've worked with and they're using the same techniques that they used 20 years ago, like they haven't adapted new skills. So you use your skills and your experience, you leverage that, but you use those as tools to lean into unfamiliar territory. I mean, think about it like this, like if you're, you're going in into some unknown wilderness. If, if you have in your backpack and own your, own, your person, like you have a gun, you have a knife, you have matches, you have food, like you have enough supplies that you can go into this unfamiliar territory, comforted, at least to know that, although this is kind of scary. I've got some protections. I've got some things that I can navigate through, and so that's what these skills and talents and techniques that you've and experience that you've developed over the years, that's what's good. But don't just use those as a trophy and anchor where you are. Use them more so as tools to navigate into new territories. This is one reason why I'm a fan of random reading. I, I like to pick something new every day, but reading this quote, be intentional to resist the urge of becoming a narrow person. This made me actually take a gut check and be like, make sure you're not just pulling. Certain books off the shelf. There's a whole wide range of books on my shelf and in my Kindle library. Are you looking at other ones too, that are outside your field, that are outside of your comfort level? I mean, when's the last time you grabbed a Neil Degrass Tyson book? About astronomy. Space or whatever the hell he talks about. Like this made me kind of think about that. Like, okay, I gotta, I gotta be careful with that. And so you're, you're almost like an archeologist. Okay. You go into this new territory, you know, those archeologists, when you look at 'em on National Geographic, they have a little brush and a little. You know, they're brushing things away and they're using these little tools to carve, they're, they're, they're, they're carving and they're, and they're exposing new things out of the rock. That's what you do in your life as you venture out into a. Unfamiliar territory, new territory. Just have fun with it, man. Like these are two-way doors, right? So you can try some things and come back. You could try some things and come back. And so leveraging the skills, like the skills I have of communication, curiosity, creativity, continuous learning and action, and productive confrontation and skills of persuasion. I can use those skills, but it's not just to be pigeonholed as a salesperson. Okay. These are familiar. I, I'm, I'm armed with these and now I can try other areas, but understanding too, or comforted to know that I can lean on these. Also use them to kind of pic ax into new territories, I think a lot of your unhappiness comes from, things have gotten boring, things have gotten kind of stale for you because not knowing. You, you've just become a narrow person. And so all you talk about is your job. All you talk about is what you do day in and day out. And I'm not saying like you just become an inch deep on everything. There are some things that you're going to go deep on that's good, but don't, don't, don't get so entrenched that you just anchor in on those things. Use those to anchor or to leverage into other areas in life. And so when it gets a little bumpy, you can anchor right there. Kind of like if you're climbing a mountain. I'm full of analogies today. Kind of like if you were climbing a mountain. The the, the territory may get a little. A little bad, the weather may turn bad or something. So you anchor in for the night, but then the next morning you start so soldiering on again. Same thing for what you do in life. Maybe. Maybe you start venturing into something and it gets a little rocky or whatever. Just be patient, anchor in the storm you, you have these skills you've already amassed. Stay right there for a minute and then. Start easing into unfamiliar territory. They just try things. I mean, this is so back to the random reading, this is why I like the random reading because it kind of gamifies life. I can, I can read something and they just go out there and try to live it and see how I did that day. If I blew it up, bombed it, okay. I get something new the next day. And you know, these just become kind of the Lego blocks. In my life and there are things that I've, I've I've read about, didn't do anything with 'em, and then years later, remember that and okay, let's try it. And so it's resisting that urge. Uh, to be a narrow person and the only way that you're gonna do that is be intentional. Just make the choice today. Like, and really that's all I want you to, to do is really question yourself right now. Like, have I become a narrow person? Like what is it you talk about? What is it? You watch, what is it you're listening to? What is it you're reading? Have you, have you kind of n narrowed the lane so much when you first started, or maybe even just 10 years ago, you were like this wide and now you've become very, very narrow. And maybe that's the spotlight you can put and say, this might be a little reason why I'm a little frustrated, right? Why I just sit in the backyard and just stare over the fence because. I'm like, this is all life is. No, that's not. This is not all that life is, and it doesn't cost you an ass load of money, nor do you have to move to Peru to orchestrate your life. Just have fun with your life, man. This is a fun life. Have fun with it. Life is super simple. Uh, it's not easy, but you can make it simple and it's by just. Broadening your horizons. Life is a big sandbox. Go have fun with it. All right, I wanna hear about it. Remember, keep it simple, keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough p