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#29 - Define Your Minimum. Live Savage.
37 Plays3 months ago
Your baseline defines your life—it's what you do without fail, especially when it's hardest. In this episode, Mike cuts through the excuses and exposes why most people settle for mediocrity. Discover how intentionally raising your minimum standard can transform you into someone unbreakable. Stop coasting. Stop hiding. It's time to build a baseline that makes you savage.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Challenging the Status Quo
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Mindset Mutiny Podcast. I am your host, Mike Ivanov. Join me as we challenge the status quo, break free from self-imposed limits, and redefine what's possible. What's up, everybody?
Understanding and Defining 'Baseline'
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome back. Today, we are going to talk about baseline. So I've been working with a lot of young guys. We've been doing some coaching, ah really focusing on mindset. And what keeps coming up is baseline.
00:00:48
Speaker
I always mention it, but I always need to make sure that I define what that is because we are only as good as our baseline. Your baseline is your personal operating system. It is the bare minimum you execute every single day, no matter how you feel and no matter what life throws your way.
00:01:09
Speaker
It's not your peak. It's not your best day. It's your floor. It's your minimum. And most people Their floor is continually crumbling.
00:01:21
Speaker
Their baseline is receding. They're living in fucking chaos, reacting instead of executing.
00:01:30
Speaker
They've never really taken the time to define their baseline, let alone raise it. But if you want to evolve, if you want to really grow, you have to track the floor, not just chase the ceiling.
00:01:47
Speaker
I realized
Starting Simple: Personal Growth Journey
00:01:48
Speaker
that four or five years ago, one day it kind of hit me and I was like, fuck, my baseline is everything.
00:02:02
Speaker
It's what I do without exception. It defines who I am without effort. At that time, my baseline was fucking trash. So I said, I got to find a way to move that baseline forward in an attainable, in a few attainable steps, right?
00:02:22
Speaker
So my minimum that I decided to enforce upon myself was to show up to work, ready to grow and ready to crush it. And in addition, I was going to drink a gallon of water a day.
00:02:35
Speaker
That was it. That was the standard I set. That was my very minimum. Now everybody's probably sitting there being like, hey, that's a great job, dude. You showed up to work with a positive attitude and you drank a gallon of water. Here's a fucking prize,
The Role of Consistency in Development
00:02:49
Speaker
bud.
00:02:51
Speaker
You got to start somewhere, man. You know, if I look at where I am today, you know, you can laugh as much as you want. But what it did is it taught me the steps I needed to take to continue to move that baseline up.
00:03:10
Speaker
right So yeah, it started with showing up ready to grow with an open mind. Most people can't even show up to their job with an open mind ready to grow. So right off the bat, that's a huge bump in baseline. Just to show up ready to raise the bar, ready to listen, ready to grow.
00:03:23
Speaker
And I said, all right, one more thing. I need to do something for my health. Not only do I need to have a better attitude, I need to do something for my health as well. So I'm going a gallon of water a day without fail. And that's no easy task if you've ever tried it.
00:03:36
Speaker
But those were things I was going to do because I was in a shit spot. So I needed to do something. And those are two things I thought that were attainable that I could at least focus on and lock in. All right. So that was my very minimum.
00:03:49
Speaker
And when I proved I could do it without fail, without compromise, even on the hardest, darkest soul crushing days, that's when I became second.
00:04:00
Speaker
So then I was like, all right, what more can I do? Because once you master consistency, right, the hunger for that consistency will follow. So I said,
The Power of Small Changes
00:04:09
Speaker
right, I'm going to tighten my diet up.
00:04:12
Speaker
So I dial in the physical training. I forged my mind with relentless discipline. Every addition, it took time. It was hard. I didn't want to do it, right? All that shit that we all go through, right? Happens to me too.
00:04:26
Speaker
I may talk, you know, here, make it look easy, but fuck, every single day is a struggle. But I lock it in. So I cement it as my new normal. This is who we are now.
00:04:38
Speaker
And then I relentlessly pursue the next level.
00:04:43
Speaker
It's that fucking simple. Pick a few things, lock them in, make them part of who you are, part of your identity, and then add more. And you just keep doing that, like compounding interest.
00:04:55
Speaker
ah You don't just lock a few things and be like, all right, yep, we've arrived. All set. I'm drinking a gallon of water a day and I'm showing up at work with a good attitude. We're done. We're done here. All right, everybody packed their fucking bag. You know, give me a raise. Give me a fucking high five, a hug. Tell me how great I'm doing. No, fuck that shit.
00:05:10
Speaker
That's the beginning. That's like amateur hour, right? It's slow, man, but it's got to be sustainable.
00:05:19
Speaker
I have ruthlessly elevated my baseline at all costs. And now I'm sitting here five fucking years without missing a single day of drinking a gallon of water.
00:05:32
Speaker
Right? So at some point,
Deliberate Strategies for Growth
00:05:33
Speaker
it stops becoming about willpower and it becomes your identity. But you will get nowhere until you can master that consistency first.
00:05:44
Speaker
Then you earn the right to optimize. Then you earn the right to become obsessed.
00:05:52
Speaker
optimizing is a whole different beast, right? It's a game for people that are absolutely relentless, the driven, okay? It's not for somebody that's just stepping in, right? So you got to be able to lock in these basics before you can start to optimize.
00:06:05
Speaker
And I'll tell you this right now. I am the fucking king of optimization, period.
00:06:13
Speaker
But before I get too far ahead, I got to get one thing clear. I have poured my entire life into deliberately stacking habits and ruthlessly locking them in.
00:06:28
Speaker
There's no accident that I'm sitting here talking to you. All right. This isn't luck. It's calculated. It's intentional. It's assault on mediocrity. I have a deliberate strategy to push my capacity higher, relentlessly raising my baseline over and over again.
00:06:48
Speaker
Open up your fucking ears. You can raise yours too. And if you're sitting here thinking, I don't need to raise my baseline. I don't want to be brutal, but stop being a fucking loser.
00:07:01
Speaker
Stop letting your ego tell you that you don't need to get better. We can all do better. At our highest points, there's still more to achieve.
00:07:11
Speaker
And you need to understand that nothing happens without intention. Nothing worthwhile just shows up. You have to master intentionality. And when you do, you can drop massive weight on yourself and you can still find a way through it.
00:07:27
Speaker
You can become unstoppable at accelerating your rate of adaptation,
Discipline, Habits, and Identity
00:07:33
Speaker
which in turn will catapult your growth. You can 10 times the rate at which you grow. If you can learn to intentionally raise your baseline, you got to stop bailing on yourself.
00:07:46
Speaker
When you start getting fucking overwhelmed, that's when you're growing. That's when you're starting to learn to lock these other things in. In the last six months, I have evolved at a rate that's got to be fucking 10 times faster than any previous stage in my life.
00:08:03
Speaker
That's a fact. It's undeniable. It's visceral. You can read my journals as fucking proof. And one day, was telling somebody this the other day.
00:08:14
Speaker
I'm going to publish those fucking things. I got five years of journals. of showing the map, plotting the course, and then showing my achievement of the things that I wrote down that I was going to do.
00:08:26
Speaker
But there's also proof of all the struggle, proof of the tears, the crying, the the wanting to give up, right? that the The belief that the process doesn't fucking work.
00:08:38
Speaker
Okay, that's all there. And it's all beautiful. Like I've said before, my journals are my prized possession. So one day you guys will get a look at them. I'm to start maybe publishing some pages. If you think that's a great idea, send me a message.
00:08:53
Speaker
All right. want to hear from you. You all need to be journaling too. So I'm stacking monumental challenges on myself, right? To see if I can break.
00:09:04
Speaker
And each time I just keep coming back stronger, unbreakable. These fucking shoulders, right? They're conditioned to carry immense weight.
00:09:16
Speaker
My mind forged to savor the pressure. I crave the fucking strain. I don't ask myself if my schedule can handle it. I don't care if I'm tired.
00:09:27
Speaker
My focus is purely on the savage adaptation waiting on the other side. How will it physically change me, emotionally, spiritually condition me into that unstoppable force I want to become?
00:09:43
Speaker
I am a fucking savage that demands reckoning.
00:09:49
Speaker
Let me just define my baseline as we sit here today, right? My baseline is forged from iron discipline mixed with relentless intention.
00:10:05
Speaker
It's not about my habits. It's about my identity. it's about waking up and immediately demanding excellence from myself. I refuse to let excuses or comfort enter the equation.
00:10:20
Speaker
It doesn't get a fucking vote.
00:10:24
Speaker
If you let emotion dictate your action, you're fucked. You're so fucked.
00:10:31
Speaker
And then you're like feeding into this, telling your brain it's okay to fucking bail on responsibility. even with the littlest things, I was telling somebody the other day that if you look in the mirror, right?
00:10:47
Speaker
And you notice you have some scruff on your face and you're and you're like, all right oh, you know, I need to shave. You like tell yourself in your mind, like, hey, need to shave. If you don't do it then and now, like right when you have that thought and you walk away and you give it two days and you come back to like God, geez, I should really shave, right?
00:11:06
Speaker
that time to like forge the mind to like when you don't want to shave, you shave your fucking face when it tells you to do it, right? If you walk away from that and then come back to it and then bail again, it's like, I know it's simple, but I have to bring up the simple tasks because I built all of these simple tasks and then they became greater things, right?
00:11:26
Speaker
I don't want to sit here and and give you this grandmaster task, you know, to be like, you have to just do it. It starts with the little shit. It starts with the discipline. It starts with going in the pantry, seeing the bag of chips and making a conscious decision to say, no, not going to eat that.
00:11:41
Speaker
All right. It's the same thing as walking away from shaving your face when you know you fucking need to. All right. You have to do the things you don't want to do when your mind tells you you don't want to do them. From the simplest task to the biggest task.
00:11:55
Speaker
All right? Stop making the fucking excuses. Stop letting emotion get involved. I have built my identity around constantly raising the stakes, doing those little small things, refusing to settle.
00:12:07
Speaker
I am always hungry for more. It's raw, it's brutal, and it's the primal essence of self-mastery. My baseline is never fixed.
00:12:18
Speaker
It's a battlefront that I can continually start advancing. Every challenge I stack on myself isn't really about seeing if I'll break. Because I know that I won't. I've proven that to myself a million fucking times and I trust myself.
00:12:33
Speaker
But it's about discovering how much stronger I can become once I survive that.
00:12:40
Speaker
My baseline, as I mentioned, is conditioned shoulders and an unbreakable mind. hardened by the trials that I have intentionally chosen. The spiritual resilience, the emotional grit, and the physical dominance all conversion into a single relentless force.
00:12:57
Speaker
My baseline is fucking savage because I've deliberately designed it that way.
00:13:04
Speaker
I'm not playing fucking games, man.
00:13:09
Speaker
not sitting in here talking one thing and going and living another. This is a message to myself. I am documenting my journey of who the fuck I am.
00:13:21
Speaker
I'm redefining it. I'm constantly daring myself to evolve faster, adapt quicker, hit harder.
00:13:30
Speaker
Coaching, mentoring, podcasting, speaking engagements. running operations as a director for a massive company, founding mindset mutiny, maintaining a locked-in diet, relentless physical training, disciplined mental conditioning. These are my fucking minimums, my baseline.
00:13:55
Speaker
What does yours look like? This isn't a comparison game. It's not a fucking competition, but i but I need you to take a look at yours.
Balancing Roles and Embracing Challenges
00:14:07
Speaker
Somebody asked me the other day, how do you have time to balance all this stuff, Mike? I couldn't answer the fucking question. I just said, i don't know, man. I find a way.
00:14:18
Speaker
You can take that however you want.
00:14:22
Speaker
I find a way. There's no real fucking hacks. Like I'm sure people want hear, well, I got this schedule or I use AI to help me schedule my shit or I use this person help me this. Nope. don't do any of that fucking shit.
00:14:33
Speaker
I just find a way. I prioritize. This, what we're doing here, is extremely important to me. This is helping people.
00:14:47
Speaker
That's what drives me.
00:14:53
Speaker
I'm not here to play games. I'm not here to try to build a big social media following. I'm documenting my journey, and I hope that it helps you. And if it fucking grows, it grows. If it doesn't, it doesn't fucking matter.
00:15:07
Speaker
I am a practitioner of intentional hardship. An architect of ruthless accountability and a master of controlled chaos.
00:15:19
Speaker
This isn't here for motivation. This is who I am at my core. A relentless, unstoppable force hardened by choice and fueled by obsession.
00:15:35
Speaker
Most people they stop at that first level of change. They hit that one goal and they start to get comfortable.
00:15:47
Speaker
But I know that you truly do not understand your potential until you suffer, until you bleed, until you add more weight.
00:16:00
Speaker
I grow by stacking the unbearable. I raise my baseline by doing what feels like it might break me and surviving it. You gotta fucking try it, man. If you really lean in, you'll see what it feels like to be truly alive.
00:16:18
Speaker
That's why I do this shit, man. Like, this is all I live for. The relentless pursuit of being 1% better every single day. And that applies to everything.
00:16:29
Speaker
Not just the gym, not just running, not just jiu-jitsu. It applies to making my mind better. to becoming a better person in all aspects, in everything I do.
00:16:41
Speaker
That's what makes me feel alive. I'm building a better person and I'm trying to share with others how they can do the same. So let's get one thing clear. Your baseline is not your best self.
00:16:53
Speaker
It's your real self. It's who you are on the worst day. It's the raw, unfiltered version of you that still shows up, still performs, still executes without applause.
00:17:05
Speaker
without motivation, without needing to be in the right mindset. Your baseline is the standard you operate from when everything is going wrong.
00:17:16
Speaker
When you're tired, when you're stressed, when you got nothing left in the fucking tank, that's when the truth comes out. That's your baseline. That's who you know who you really fucking are.
00:17:29
Speaker
And here's the problem. Most people are living A baseline of survival.
00:17:38
Speaker
Barely getting by. Hitting that snooze button three fucking times. so Scrolling endlessly for empty dopamine. Eating like shit.
00:17:49
Speaker
Blaming your circumstances.
00:17:53
Speaker
That floor is rock bottom for people that are doing that. And a lot of people have accepted that as normal.
00:18:03
Speaker
but a savage baseline, which is where you need to fucking be.
00:18:08
Speaker
That's different. That's showing up rain or shine, whether your emotions are aligned or not. It's lifting when your body hurts. It's making
Habits Beyond Observation
00:18:18
Speaker
the hard calls when your brain is all foggy.
00:18:21
Speaker
It's doing what must be done, not because you feel like it, because it's who you are. It's your identity. Most people confuse goals with identity.
00:18:33
Speaker
They think their ambition will carry them, but it won't.
00:18:39
Speaker
Your life isn't built by what you want. It's built by what you do every day without fail. And that's why baseline matters. Because when shit hits the fan, and it fucking will, you don't rise to the level of your vision board.
00:18:53
Speaker
You fall to the level of your training.
00:18:57
Speaker
So what's your fucking baseline? For real. Be honest.
00:19:04
Speaker
What do you do without fail when no one's watching?
00:19:10
Speaker
I'll pause right there. What do you do without fail when no one's watching?
00:19:23
Speaker
Think about it.
00:19:28
Speaker
you If you're doing nothing, or if you only do shit when people are watching, you're fucked.
00:19:36
Speaker
What habits are you having locked in?
00:19:40
Speaker
Do they happen no matter what?
00:19:48
Speaker
So all of that, you might be doing good, you might be doing bad. Whatever it is, whatever that minimum is, that's the floor you're standing on.
00:20:01
Speaker
And if it's weak, the foundation is at risk.
00:20:07
Speaker
but you don't get to skip this. If you want to become something more, it starts with raising that floor.
00:20:16
Speaker
I can promise you a strong baseline. It's not sexy, man. It's not flashy. It's just non-negotiable.
00:20:30
Speaker
And your baseline will be hard to raise if you crave comfort.
00:20:38
Speaker
and the reason that is, is comfort's a fucking liar. It whispers. It tells you that you've done enough, that you've earned it, that you can take your foot off the gas. But that voice, remember, that's the same voice that kept you stuck, soft, and average.
00:20:59
Speaker
So what used to feel hard, those early wake-ups, the workouts, the discipline, it all becomes easy if you stick with it long enough. And that's exactly where the trap is.
00:21:09
Speaker
Once something becomes easy, you start coasting. You stop climbing. You start confusing stability with success.
00:21:19
Speaker
The human mind craves stability. But if you want to be great, greatness lives in volatility, intention, and choosing struggle on purpose.
00:21:31
Speaker
Because when you stop chasing growth, your baseline starts to slip. You stop pushing. You start coasting. And before you even realize it, the floor you work so hard to build starts to rot beneath you.
00:21:47
Speaker
Most people don't think they can handle more. I get that.
00:21:53
Speaker
I think that all the time for a second. I used to think it for days. I used to think it for weeks. I used to think it for months.
Growth Under Pressure and Conclusion
00:22:02
Speaker
But as I worked deeper on myself and really looked at where I wanted to go, I would be able to so to kind of slow that down, right? and I'd be like, yes, I can handle more.
00:22:13
Speaker
And I'd have those conversations and I'd start to do things to prove to myself that I can trust myself, that I can do more. And then when that more comes, I can handle it. Right. So when it used to take me a month to get over that, now it takes me minutes where I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm trying to see comfort here.
00:22:29
Speaker
I'm making excuses. I'm feeling bad for myself. Right. So I identify that quickly now. And that's the whole point that we're trying to do here is I'm trying to get you to reflect on your life and look at where you've been blocking yourself.
00:22:39
Speaker
All right. We all block ourselves. So this is hopefully to try to wake you up that, hey, listen, if you're having a great like few days and you're really doing a lot of shit in two days, three days, and then you fall off for a week, that's not what's going to get you there.
00:22:53
Speaker
That's not raising your baseline. You have a little fucking blip in your radar, right? Oop, oop, here we go. We did good. And then we shut it back down again. No, man, it's it's difficult and it's got to be consistent.
00:23:04
Speaker
This could be some days that you you think everything's totally fucked. You know, I just, that's that's sometimes how i operate. I'm like, man, i don't I'm get through this day with everything that's stacked on me, with how I'm feeling, you know, but I love that because at the end of the day, I'm like, all right, fuck yeah, we got through it.
00:23:20
Speaker
And then I build a bigger day the next day. Right. So it's just, it's kind of cool to see that growth um in myself. And I just know that everybody else can do it. I know you all can do the same thing.
00:23:30
Speaker
You know, I'm not special, you know, I'm not super talented can just grow. You know, I just, I am just refusing to take fucking no for an answer. And a lot of you take no.
00:23:42
Speaker
I don't know why. Well, do know why. Cause I was that guy at some point and it was just easier. you know, it was like the path of least resistance. You know that, that like temporary comfort, but man, that temporary comfort built a, built a lot of pain, lot of anxiety, depression, shit like that, you know?
00:24:03
Speaker
Um, so yeah, like I said, most people, they don't think they can handle more. It's a limitation they put on themselves. It's a story they're telling themselves. It's not true, but that's why they never become anything more.
00:24:15
Speaker
They live under the illusion that they are at capacity.
00:24:21
Speaker
but your capacity will not expand in peace. It only expands under pressure. You grow by doing the things you swear will fucking break you. Most people will be like, I can't handle any more things. I got to wait for everything to calm down before I add more.
00:24:39
Speaker
Add it anyway.
00:24:41
Speaker
Stack the pain. Stack the struggle. Stack the pressure. And here's the secret.
00:24:49
Speaker
It doesn't break you. It builds you. You suffer, yes, but you survive. You adapt, and then one day, you wake up and realize that weight you once feared is now part of you.
00:25:02
Speaker
The extra burden is now your normal. That's how the baseline rises, period. You want to evolve? Start adding the things that make your nervous system panic.
00:25:15
Speaker
Start loading the bar until your legs shake. Because the moment you stop chasing what's hard, you stop chasing what's real. Your old limits, they're waiting to be crushed under the new standard you set if you're willing to bleed for it.