Latest / The Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome Podcast by Brad Young / Win Before the Day Begins

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Win Before the Day Begins · The Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome Podcast by Brad Young

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome podcast. There is
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: a book more than 2,000 years old that has quietly
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: shaped generals, leaders, and champions for centuries. And yet most
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: people who read it walk away, thinking it only applies
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to war. My name is Brad Young, and today I
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: want to change that for you. I want to take
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the principles from Sun Tzu and his masterpiece, The Art
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  Speaker 1: of War, and show you how they apply not to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: some distant battlefield, but to your ordinary Tuesday, to your career,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: to your habits, to the person you are becoming. Because
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  Speaker 1: the truth is that Sun Tzu was never really writing
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  Speaker 1: about swords and armies. He was writing about strategy, about
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  Speaker 1: the human mind, and about how to win the daily
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  Speaker 1: battles that decide the shape of a life. Let me
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: start with the single most most powerful idea in the
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: entire book, and it is one we have circled before
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: but never truly unpacked for daily living. Sun Tzu said
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  Speaker 1: that the victorious warriors win first and then go to war,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: while the defeated warriors go to war first and then
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: seek to win. Sit with what that means for your
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  Speaker 1: actual day. Most people wake up and go to war first.
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  Speaker 1: They stumble out of bed, react to whatever hits them,
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  Speaker 1: fight their impulses in the moment, and hope they can
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: somehow win. win. The strategist does the opposite. You win first.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: You decide the night before what your morning will look like.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: You lay out your clothes. You plan your first hour.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: You remove the friction that would defeat you later. By
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  Speaker 1: the time the moment arrives, the battle is already over
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: and you already won it. Here is where the science
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: backs Sun Tzu up beautifully. Researchers who study habit and
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: self-control have found something that should genuinely encourage you. The
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: people who appear the most disciplined are usually not the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: ones grinding through constant willpower battles. In studies tracking people
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: through daily life, those with the highest self-control actually reported
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: facing fewer temptations because they had designed their environments to
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: remove the fight before it started. That is winning first
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and then going to war. Described in a modern lab,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: your discipline is not really about how hard you can
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: push in the moment. It is about how wisely you
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: positioned yourself before the moment ever came. Let me give
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: you the second principle, and this one will reshape how
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  Speaker 1: you spend your energy. Sun Tzu taught that the way
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  Speaker 1: to avoid what is strong is to strike at what
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  Speaker 1: is weak. He wrote that you should attack where the
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  Speaker 1: enemy is unprepared and appear where you are not expected.
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  Speaker 1: Now bring that into your life. So many of us
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  Speaker 1: throw ourselves against our points of greatest resistance. We attack
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  Speaker 1: our worst weakness head on, over and over, and we
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  Speaker 1: exhaust ourselves against a wall that will not move. The
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: strategist finds the opening instead. If you struggle to build
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: a huge new habit all at once, you do not
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: charge the fortress. You find the smallest possible entry point,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the two-minute version, the tiny first step, and you win
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: there first. The research on this is some of the
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: most practical wisdom I can hand you. Behavioral scientists have
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: shown that habits form through repetition and consistency, not through intensity.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: One well-known study found that it took an average of
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: around 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: with plenty of variation on either side. Notice what that
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  Speaker 1: tells you. The person who tries to storm the wall
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: with massive effort for a week and then collapses will lose.
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  Speaker 1: The person who attacks the weak point, the small and
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: repeatable action, and simply keeps showing up for two or
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: three months wins the whole campaign, and you do not
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: need more force. You need a smarter angle and a
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  Speaker 1: longer patience. Now let me give you The third principle,
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  Speaker 1: and it is the foundation beneath everything else. Sun Tzu
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  Speaker 1: wrote that if you know the enemy and know yourself,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
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  Speaker 1: We have touched this before, but today I want you
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  Speaker 1: to apply it as a daily practice, not just an idea.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Your greatest strategic advantage in modern life is honest self-knowledge,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: knowing when your energy peaks and when it crashes, knowing
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  Speaker 1: which people lift you and which drain you. knowing the
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: exact moment in your day when your discipline tends to break.
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  Speaker 1: Most people never gather this intelligence on themselves, and so
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  Speaker 1: they keep losing the same battles for years, calling it
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  Speaker 1: just the way I am. There is a powerful piece
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  Speaker 1: of psychology that connects here, and it is the idea
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  Speaker 1: of cognitive load. Your mind has a limited amount of
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  Speaker 1: mental energy for decisions and self-control in any given period.
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  Speaker 1: Researchers have found that when your mental bandwidth is overloaded
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  Speaker 1: with too many choices and too much friction, your ability
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  Speaker 1: to make good decisions drops sharply. This is why willpower
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  Speaker 1: fades as the day wears on and why exhausted people
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: reach for the easy escape. Once you understand this about yourself,
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  Speaker 1: you gain enormous power. You stop scheduling your hardest work
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  Speaker 1: for your most depleted hours. You reduce the number of
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  Speaker 1: trivial decisions draining your reserves. You know yourself, and so
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: you protect your own mind like the valuable terrain it is. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I want to give you the motivational heart of this
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  Speaker 1: because principles without belief behind them rarely move anyone. Here's
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  Speaker 1: what I need you to understand. Sun Tzu was not
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  Speaker 1: describing a rare talent reserved for military geniuses. He was
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  Speaker 1: describing a way of thinking that any one of us
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  Speaker 1: can learn. The strategist is not born. The strategist is
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  Speaker 1: built one deliberate choice at a time. Every time you plan,
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  Speaker 1: Instead of react, you are training the mind of a strategist.
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  Speaker 1: Every time you find the smart angle instead of the
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  Speaker 1: brute force, you are becoming the kind of person who
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: wins quietly and consistently. You already have everything you need
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  Speaker 1: to begin. You simply have to start seeing your daily
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  Speaker 1: life as the battlefield where your character is being forged.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: And here is the truth that gives me the most
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  Speaker 1: hope for you. The reason this works is that the
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  Speaker 1: vast majority of people never think this way at all.
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  Speaker 1: Most people drift. They react. They fight their days head
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  Speaker 1: on with no plan, no positioning, and no self-knowledge. And
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  Speaker 1: they wonder why they feel so exhausted and so stuck.
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  Speaker 1: And that means the ground is wide open for anyone
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  Speaker 1: willing to think like a strategist. Your competition is not
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  Speaker 1: some brilliant rival. Your competition is your own temptation to
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  Speaker 1: drift through your days on autopilot. Beat that even a little,
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  Speaker 1: even imperfectly, and you will rise above the noise of
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  Speaker 1: a world that refuses to think before it acts. Let
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  Speaker 1: me connect this to something the Stoics understood because they
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  Speaker 1: were the perfect companions to Sun Tzu. The philosopher Epictetus
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  Speaker 1: taught that some things are within our control and some
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  Speaker 1: things are not. Within our control are our judgments, our choices,
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  Speaker 1: and our responses. Outside our control are events, outcomes, and
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  Speaker 1: other people. This is Sun Tzu's terrain applied to your
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  Speaker 1: inner world. The strategist does not waste energy fighting on
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  Speaker 1: ground that cannot be won. You release the outcomes you
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: cannot control and pour everything into the choices you can.
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  Speaker 1: That single shift made daily will save you from most
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  Speaker 1: of the frustration that drains ordinary people dry. Let me
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  Speaker 1: make all of this concrete because philosophy without application is
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: just entertainment. I want to give you three moves to
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  Speaker 1: practice starting tomorrow. First, win before you go to war. Tonight,
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  Speaker 1: decide one important thing about your morning in advance and
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  Speaker 1: remove one piece of friction that would defeat you. Second,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Avoid strength and strike weakness. Take one goal you have
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  Speaker 1: been battling head-on and shrink it down to the smallest
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  Speaker 1: version you cannot fail at, and simply repeat it. Third,
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  Speaker 1: gather intelligence on yourself. For one week, notice when your
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: energy is highest and schedule your most important work there,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: guarding that time like sacred ground. Three moves, position, angle,
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  Speaker 1: and self-knowledge. That is Sun Tzu walking beside you through
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  Speaker 1: an ordinary day. I want you to see your whole
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  Speaker 1: life through this lens now. Every morning you wake up
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  Speaker 1: onto a field of small battles. The battle to rise
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  Speaker 1: instead of scroll. The battle to focus instead of drift.
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  Speaker 1: The battle to respond with wisdom instead of reacting with emotion.
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  Speaker 1: You will not win them all, and you do not
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  Speaker 1: need to. You simply need to think like a strategist
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  Speaker 1: more often than you did yesterday. Position yourself well. Choose
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  Speaker 1: your battles wisely. Know your own terrain and watch how
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  Speaker 1: a life that once felt like constant struggle slowly transforms
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  Speaker 1: into a series of quiet victories you set up long
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  Speaker 1: before they arrived. Think about who you become when this
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  Speaker 1: way of thinking becomes second nature. You become someone who
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  Speaker 1: moves through the day with calm intention instead of frantic reaction.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Someone who wins by being wise rather than by being exhausted.
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  Speaker 1: Someone who builds lasting habits through patient repetitions. instead of
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  Speaker 1: doomed bursts of force, and most empowering of all, someone
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  Speaker 1: who has taken command of their own life. No longer
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  Speaker 1: a passenger carried along by circumstance, but the strategist quietly
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  Speaker 1: shaping the outcome of every battle that matters. That is
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  Speaker 1: available to you starting with the very next choice you make.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Let me pull together what you learned today. The first
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  Speaker 1: thing to remember is that you win first and then
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  Speaker 1: go to war, because the strategist decides the battle in
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: advance through planning and positioning. Remove the friction tonight for
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the fight you will face tomorrow. Second thing is that
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: the people who look the most disciplined are usually the
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: ones who design their environment to face fewer temptations, which
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: means your discipline is really about smart positioning, not endless willpower.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: The third thing is to avoid strength and strike at
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: weakness because habits form through consistent repetition rather than intense force.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: So shrink your goal to the smallest version you cannot
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  Speaker 1: fail at and simply keep showing up. The fourth thing
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  Speaker 1: is that knowing yourself is your greatest strategic advantage because
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: your mind has limited bandwidth and your willpower fades As
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: cognitive load rises, so protect your peak hours and reduce
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: the trivial decisions that drain you. The fifth thing is
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: to fight only on ground you can win, releasing the
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: outcomes outside your control and pouring your energy into the judgments, choices,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: and responses that are always yours. And the last thing,
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  Speaker 1: the one I want you to hold tightest, is that
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  Speaker 1: the strategist is not born but built one deliberate choice
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  Speaker 1: at a time, so start seeing your ordinary days as
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  Speaker 1: the battlefield where your character is forged and begin winning
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  Speaker 1: the quiet victories that shape an extraordinary life. That brings
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  Speaker 1: us to the end of today's episode. Thank you for
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: spending this time with me and for giving your attention,
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  Speaker 1: which is one of the most valuable things you own.
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  Speaker 1: Remember that the wisdom we explore here means nothing until
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  Speaker 1: you carry it into your life and put it to work.
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  Speaker 1: So position yourself with intention, choose your battles wisely, and
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  Speaker 1: know yourself deeply enough to win the small daily fights
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  Speaker 1: that decide who you become. This has been the Strategize, Adapt,
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  Speaker 1: and Overcome podcast with me, Brad Young. Until next time,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: keep strategizing, keep adapting, and keep overcoming.