TL; DR
Everyone who owns a business is guilty of working more than they should and letting their work dominate their lives. But they’re not the only ones. We all do it, and for many of us, work is a journey riddled with stress, difficulty, doubt, frustration, and anger, one that deeply impacts our emotional state and may eventually send us to an early grave.
It’s a depressing thought, but it doesn’t need to be that way.
Purdeep Sangha is a strategist for businessmen. He teaches men how to be happier, more fulfilled, and more complete. He shows them how to grow their businesses, improve their mindsets, and be the person they want to be.
Here are some of the things that Purdeep Sangha recommends:
- Be Selfish: It’s important to look after your loved ones, but not at the expense of your own physical, emotional, and mental health. Being selfish in this context doesn’t mean ignoring everyone else; it means taking the time to care for yourself as well as the people you love.
- Don’t Define Yourself By Your Work: Who are you? How would you describe yourself? In answering that question, many people quickly state their names and then go into detail about their profession. But if you lose your job, you also lose your identity, inevitably leading to a personal crisis. It also means you’re more likely to stress over an impending job loss.
- Be the (Good) Alpha: Being an alpha male doesn’t have to mean being the loudest and most aggressive person in the room. It means you are the protector, the leader, and the role model. You can be an alpha without being an asshole, and that’s what you need to be if you want to succeed in business.
- Try to Be Complete: Everyone feels incomplete. We all want something and most of us will spend our lives chasing that thing. The problem is that the things we chase rarely provide the satisfaction that we crave or the completeness that we need. Reassess your goals and focus on what’s really important and what will really make you happy.
I spoke with Purdeep Sangha on This Week With Sabir, an hour-long discussion in which he provided the above insights and more. At the end of that discussion, he also provided his most valuable insight, a $100,000 nugget of advice that could make a massive difference in your life.
Watch the full video or read the accompanying guide to see this insight for yourself.
How To Balance Work, Life, And Health As An Entrepreneur/Professional
Purdeep Sangha is a child of immigrants, a child of parents who moved to the US with just $11 and the determination to create a better life for themselves. They worked hard, but it took a toll on Purdeep’s father, who descended into alcoholism and died before his time.
Purdeep’s experience of watching his father spurred him on to make a change. Far too many people live to work. They devote their lives to their profession and it often leads them to stress, despair, substance abuse, and early mortality.
For them, life becomes a marathon that has no end, is fraught with danger, and gets harder with each step.
These words will no doubt be true for many people reading this guide. Most of you are professionals or business owners, after all, and most of you are guilty of letting your work run your life.
If so, and you want to make a change, check out the following interview with Purdeep Sangha. You can also read this accompanying blog, which highlights many of Sangha’s insights.
I also recommend checking out his audiobook. He was nice enough to offer a massive 75% discount to all viewers of This Week With Sabir and all readers of this blog.
Visit https://completemanaudio.com and use code VICTORY75 to get the book that could change your business and—potentially—your life.
Be More Selfish
You need to be a little selfish when it comes to running a successful business.
Many business owners devote themselves to their families. They earn money so that they can keep a roof over their heads. They devote every minute of every day to working hard as they believe that’s what’s needed of them.
But if they were to ask their families what they actually wanted, “money” wouldn’t be at the top of the list.
As any child of a workaholic parent will tell you, they didn’t spend their childhood wishing they could afford more designer clothing or the latest must-have gadget. They spent it wishing they could have more time with their mother or father.
Being selfish also means devoting more time to your physical and emotional health. You certainly shouldn’t neglect your family, but you should remember that if you’re sent to an early grave, their lives will be deeply affected.
What’s the point of working 100+ hours a week to keep them fed and watered if you die in your fifties and leave them without a parent and with years of sorrow?
Remember That You Are Not Your Work
You’re at a speed dating event and sit down in front of a new date.
They ask you a simple question, “Who are you?”, and as you only have a few minutes, you know that you need to express yourself as completely as possible.
What do you say?
For most people, the answer will be to quickly mention their name and then talk about their career. Rather than focusing on their hobbies, they talk about their profession, the skills it requires, and the work that they do every day.
But you are not your work. If you define yourself by your profession, you’ll set yourself up for failure.
An old friend of mine spent years being completely miserable because he was out of work. He was an aspiring actor, but as he wasn’t making a lot of money from the craft, he didn’t feel right calling himself an actor.
Initially, he would try to change the subject whenever people began talking about their work. Eventually, he stopped meeting new people altogether, worried that they would ask him and judge him.
He was funny, smart, and caring. He spoke 5 languages, played several instruments, and had a lot to give. But as people kept defining themselves by their professions, he felt the need to reciprocate, and this depressed him.
By the same token, I can think of many people who defined themselves by their work, only to lose their job and experience an identity crisis.
We’ve seen such incidents more and more in recent years due to the countless job losses triggered by the pandemic and war.
Work is a big part of your life, but it’s not everything.
When you’re on your deathbed, will you regret not visiting Paris, Berlin, London, Sydney, Rome, Istanbul, and Athens, or will you regret not spending a few more hours working?
Will you wish you had spent more time with your family, hugged your parents/partner/children more, or launched a different business?
There is more to life than work and there is more to you than your profession.
Be The Protector Alpha
Being an alpha has a bad reputation these days, as the word has come to be associated with a stereotype of overtly masculine men who use aggression to get what they want.
But as Purdeep Sangha noted during our discussion, being the alpha isn’t about aggression. It isn’t about taking what you want at the expense of others and being an insufferable asshole.
It’s about being a protector of the pack, whether that pack is your employees or your family. It’s about leading by example and steering everyone in the right direction.
Be a force for good in your life and the lives of others.
Mindfulness practice is key to this, as it helps you to stay grounded.
After all, if you are the leader and protector, you may struggle to deal with the burden of responsibility.
As noted above, it’s important to be a little selfish every now and then. You have to think about your own health as well, and mindfulness practices like those prescribed by Purdeep Sangha can help with this.
ULTRA Performance
One of the things that Purdeep Sangha coaches is something known as ULTRA Performance. It teaches business owners how to develop the traits of successful people, allowing them to grow their businesses quickly in a way that doesn’t harm their health.
ULTRA is an acronym and it stands for:
- Unwavering Inspiration: Without the inspiration to learn, perform, and succeed, there is no hope of going any further. This drive is what pushes all successful entrepreneurs forward.
- Legendary Skill Advancement: This describes an ability to learn quickly, as there is a lot of information to acquire and it must be acquired as quickly as possible. There are several methods for doing this and Purdeep Sangha talks more about them in his book (linked at the top of this article).
- Tenacious Execution: You must be stubborn in your desire to succeed. Don’t relent, don’t give up, and keep pushing forward. There will be obstacles along the way and getting over these won’t be easy, but successful people don’t give up easily.
- Rapid Innovation: Successful people are creative. Not only can they create opportunities from nothing, but they also know how to spot them. They see things that other people overlook. They know how to solve problems that would stump many others, and this is why they’re able to keep a successful business afloat in the face of constant adversity.
- Active Sustainability: Achieving success is only half the battle. Once you reach those heights, you need to sustain them, and that’s what the last step of Purdeep Sangha’s program focuses on. It’s all about learning how to overcome mental, motivational physical, and emotional challenges, thus preventing burnout.
Purdeep Sangha states that it takes at least 12 months of coaching to attain the desired results. However, you will make a lot of progress on the way and can benefit from it.
Leverage Your Emotions
This is something that often affects men more than women. They are often raised with the notion that emotions are to be hidden, and not exposed. They struggle to express themselves, and that applies as much to passion, desire, and excitement as it does to sorrow and despair.
Purdeep Sangha recommends learning how to leverage your emotions as a way of motivating yourself to push harder and go further.
When setting goals for your business, for instance, don’t just write those goals plainly and then think about how you will attain them. Consider why you want them, what they will mean to you, and why they are so important.
Think about how you felt when you wrote them down. Did they make you excited and hopeful? Did they inspire motivation?
You won’t achieve anything if you are not motivated to do so, and money/success usually isn’t enough of a motivator. Think about your goals, inspire yourself, and carry that motivation with you.
Make Yourself Complete
Purdeep Sangha’s goal is to help make people “complete”.
What does he mean by this?
Well, most of us feel incomplete in some way or another.
We feel like we are missing something, even if we can’t always put our fingers on what that thing is.
It might be money, success, love, a family. We all desire something and, in most cases, that thing is either unattainable or not quite what we expected it to be.
I have met a lot of business owners, authors, actors, artists, musicians, and freelancers in my life. I’ve seen first-hand what it’s like to want something so badly and then to actually acquire it, only for it to be a massive anti-climax.
A few years ago, I spoke with a friend of mine who had tried for 15 years to make it as an author, before eventually signing a major contract. It had been the only thing he had wanted for his entire adult life. He had invested everything into achieving that goal and thought it would make his life complete.
“I expected fireworks,” he told me. “I thought that all of my troubles would disappear and I’d be the happiest man alive.”
In actual fact, he realized that his “dream” came with responsibilities, doubt, and sleepless nights. He went from being depressed that he would never make it, to stressed that his success would disappear.
“It was like getting sober from heroin after 15 years, feeling really proud and happy, and then instantly becoming an alcoholic. I had swapped one issue for another, and while it was better, it definitely wasn’t everything I’d hoped”.
When you’re in that aspirational phase, aiming for the stars, you see your goals through rose-tinted glasses.
You see the fame and adoration of becoming a pop sensation, but you don’t see the endless practice or the constant criticisms. You see the glory of owning an 8-figure business but overlook the inevitable insomnia, anxiety, and stress that comes with keeping such a business alive.
Not only are your dreams rarely what you expect them to be, but the vast majority of you will never get there. In both cases, you’ll end up miserable, stressed, and wishing you had done things differently.
Focus on why you want those things, whether they really matter, and if the lifestyle you seek actually exists.
The $100,000 Question
At the end of my discussion with Purdeep Sangha, I asked for his most valuable insight, one that could provide over $100,000 worth of value to business owners.
He told me that it all comes down to changing your environment.
If you want to change behavior, you must change your environment.
That doesn’t just refer to your physical space, either. It could also reference the work that you do and the people that you spend time with.
Think of it in the context of drug addiction.
If you want to break the cycle and get sober, it helps to mix in different circles. If you have been using drugs for many years, you may be surrounded by people who facilitate your habits. You’ll also be surrounded by temptation and it will be hard to break free.
The clarity and change of pace provided by rehab can help, but when that ends, you return to the same people, the same home, and the same streets, and before long, you relapse.
Such is the case with personal and business changes. You must seek a new environment and new people when the old ones are holding you back.
So, if you find yourself stuck in a rut; if it seems like your career is going nowhere and your health is deteriorating, change your environment. Switch to a new office. Go on a long vacation. Make new friends. Acquire a new hobby.
It’s hard to be motivated when you are stagnating; it’s hard to see the opportunities in front of you when you’re trapped at a dead end. Even the smallest of changes could blow some of those cobwebs away and give you the push you need.
ABOUT PURDEEP SANGHA
Purdeep Sangha is widely known as “The Strategist For Businessmen” and teaches men how to become THE COMPLETE MAN. His personal mission is to help men grow their businesses massively, increase their personal fulfillment in life and improve their relationships with their wife and kids. He is the founder behind the movement of men becoming mindful alpha males. Men who experience complete victory and have it all! Visit him on the web at https://purdeepsangha.com and follow him on Twitter https://twitter.com/purdeepsangha.