The Cincinnati Bengals Fatal Flaw

And more importantly how to avoid this mistake in your life.

You’ve probably heard that tons of lottery winners go broke within just 5 years after hitting the jackpot.

But you don’t need to win the lottery to experience this phenomenon. For most of us, we’ve already fallen victim to it.

Tons of people have talked about this idea, but I think Ed Mylett's analogy is the best I’ve heard on this topic.

He’s got this analogy that your core identity is the thermostat of your life. The basic idea is that your identity is like a thermostat on the wall in a room. It literally regulates the temperature of your life. Now think about how a thermostat in a room…actually works. External temperatures might temporarily enter the room when you open a window, but the thermostat will always bring the temperature back down to where you set it. Our internal thermostat works the exact same way. Both good and bad external things will happen, but before long, you'll always return to the default temperature on your thermostat.

Have you ever experienced short bursts of greater-than-usual success but failed to maintain it very long and then dropped back down to normal?

Have you gone through hard times but always seem to bounce back and get back to the level you were on previously?

That's the thermostat principle in a nutshell. We progress or regress back to the mean.

Now, in math, the mean refers to the average of a set of numbers. Or, in this case, the temperature set on your thermostat.

So if you wanna avoid being like my Bengals. You have to raise your internal thermostat.

The Bengals are my favorite football team and have been for over like 20 years now. When I chose the Bengals, I was so young that I didn’t pay any attention to how an organization was run.

It's pro football; every team has money and smart people running it who will do whatever it takes to win. (The thoughts of a kid who didn’t know shit!)

The Bengals have a history and a reputation for being cheap or 2nd rate; that’s just a fact. A lot of this came about back in the 90s when they had players wearing used jock straps to save money. (I swear I’m not making this up.)

Quote from Ashely Ambrose, Bengals cornerback (1996-98)

Don't get me wrong, the team has progressed over the years. As a fan, I’ve been happy with a lot of the progress they’ve made.

But I’m starting to notice that my Cincitti Bengals are a lot like those lottery winners we talked about at the beginning.

They hit the lottery with Joe Burrow and Ja’marr Chase, LSU teammates who broke records and won a championship. When these 2 first arrived in Cincy, they were the external temperatures that temporarily entered the room through the open window, and the temperature of the room went up.

The problem is the Bengals never changed their internal thermostat. The temperature rose for a moment; we signed some free agents, got an indoor practice facility, and put in some new turf. They upgraded the locker room and made some other much-needed changes, all things that as a fan, I was really proud of.

But before long, the thermostat started to cool them back down to the same old 75 degrees they were always at before. They’ve failed to retain any of their true defensive stars, allowing key players like Jesse Bates and DJ Reader to walk. They refused to pay Tee Higgins, which I thought I understood. You had to pay Ja’marr Chase and spend money on defense. Welp, not only did they underspend/mis-spend on defense, these fools didn’t even pay Chase yet. He’s Ja’marr Chase, PAY HIM!!!

So now, in a quote-on-quote “championship window,” you let two different star defensive players just walk. (Jessie Bates and DJ Reader)

Then you let two team leaders walk (Joe Mixon and Tyler Boyd) and pissed off 3 of your remaining stars going into the season. (Chase, Higgins, and Trey Hendrickson)

You have cap space and would have a lot more if you ran your books like a modern NFL team. But you continue to operate like a lifelong broke man who hit the lottery but still has a broke man mindset, and broke man habits.

So enviably, you will yourself back into a broke man, bro.

Your thermostat is low. The trade deadline comes, and you see Joe, Jammar, and Trey are playing great football, but the team is still losing.

The problem is we run a system on defense that was built with All-Pro Jessie Bates and All-Pro caliber DJ Reader. We replaced those All Pros with solid to good players, but without the All Pros, the scheme doesn’t work as well.

It’s like taking a nice car that runs extremely well and replacing all the high-end parts with parts with bargain bin pieces. Maybe some of those pieces are worth more than meets the eye, but they're still not as good as the high-end pieces you let go of.

Of course, it’s not gonna run as well. It can run ok, but what are your goals? To just be ok or win a Superbowl? That’s determined by your internal thermostat.

No matter what quotes they put out, the Bengals have an internal thermostat that is set to whatever temperature that represents mid. Their true goal, based on the way they move, is not to be a perennial Super Bowl contender. Their true goal, based on the way they move, is to avoid being amongst the sorriest teams in the league. These 2 goals are extremely different.

If they are competitive and have a shot at making the playoffs, then my Bengals are happy, it seems. We have some evidence of this from the Marvin Lewis era.

This is not a shot against Marv, but just hear me out.

Marvin Lewis was the head coach of the Bengals from 2003 to 2018. During that time, we made the Wildcard seven times and won a grand total of zero playoff games.

• 15 Years

• 7 Wildcard Appearances

• 0 Playoff Wins

Any organization whose true goals are higher than wildcard appearances is not keeping a coach with no playoff wins for 15 years.

My main point is actions like this, or I guess the lack of action in this situation, show you exactly where the Bengal's thermostat is set.

Now the Bengal’s low thermostat has regulated the room with Joe Burrow and Jamar Chase back down to a mediocre temperature.

A high-temperature team makes that trade for Max Crosby and/or Marshon Lattimore; they make big moves to get results. But the Bengals organization’s, (and I say this with love) core identity is that of a mediocre team. So even with great players, we manage to fall into mediocrity. It’s pretty much just science at this point.

Here’s what I want you to take away from this piece:

Don’t be like the Bengals.

Raise your thermostat and set higher, more challenging goals for yourself.

You’ll need to actually change your behaviors and mindset to do this.

If you don't, despite short spurts of success, you’ll be destined to fall back down to the level you started at.

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I can’t tell you exactly how to raise your thermostat, but I can tell you exactly how I intend to raise mine.

Now, this is important and maybe needs its own video (because I could spend a lot of time talking about just this), but those higher, more challenging goals I just mentioned need to align with exactly what YOU truly want.

When I started YouTube, I wrote my goals on the mirror, and I hit every one of them except 1,000,000 subs. (I’m currently at 940k on the main channel.)

Those goals were good enough to get me moving in the right direction, but as I started to achieve them all, I should have set new ones. Instead, my thermostat stayed at the same temperature, and I eventually lost the crazy amount of momentum I had around 2021.

Now notice I never had a goal to become wealthy. I’m not built like that. I’m not a greedy person. I just want my fair share. Enough to live life how I want to take care of the people I love and to work only on things I’m passionate about or believe in.

But follow me on this…

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown to know myself a lot better. At 36, I know exactly what I want in life. It all falls in with the above paragraph, just more specific within that same framework.

I want:

• To live on my own terms. I still only want to do - what I want to do - every single day - for the rest of my life.

• I want a spacious house with a big yard in a somewhat secluded area. (I have my reasons, but I won’t go into them here)

• I want time and energy to spend with my family, where I’m in a good state of mind, present, and fully enjoying those moments. (That’s real life.)

• I want to be able to do work that I feel is important, with a flexible schedule and soft deadlines. This will allow me time and space for ideas to come to me naturally. (This is when I’m at my best)

• And I want to do all of this without money ever being a problem or something I have to stress about.

The best way to achieve all of this beautiful, holistic, and genuine shit… is to achieve what I’ve always thought to be one of the most superficial goals in the history of man.

To become rich. Yeah, I know.

Here I am, mister never cared about getting rich, realizing that at this point in my life, it’s finally important. I've finally reached a point of maturity where I can pursue wealth for actual non-shallow reasons. I will use it to facilitate a life where I’m the best version of myself and can actively give back to the world.

I don’t have to be bothered with the BS daily hustle and bustle of meaningless work in order to take care of my family.

Please understand that what's meaningful to you might not be the same things that are meaningful to me. That's the beauty of being individuals; we don’t all want the same things. I'm convinced we've been tricked into believing we do.

The things I want mostly involve peace. Me living life on my terms, not bothering anyone. The only thing I wanna do, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, is give thoughtful, meaningful stories to the world for people to enjoy and learn from and see positive themes play out. I want my fiction to be an allegory for real life, something you can use as a guide when you’re lost. That’s what my favorite fiction books, shows, and movies do. And guess what? That’s pretty much all I watch/read.

But to live that life, I need financial freedom. With my personal cost of living, my wife, and my son. I need to make a lot more money in a more efficient way to make that happen.

So just like that, attaining wealth has become a priority where it honestly never was, not until I made these connections.

That’s a new goal that can be dangerous for some, but it’s wrapped up in genuine things. It’s not motivated by greed, and I’m not going to steal or scam my way to the top. I wanna do this the right way, I wanna be proud of it. I wanna be genuine when I help others achieve the same thing.

These goals are big for me. My thermostat has never been set this high. I can tell cuz I’m literally sweating every day. (I’m working hard behind the scenes, I’m in a glorious Hunger Stage)

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Now that I’ve laid that out, let me explain the 3 steps I’m taking to raise my internal thermostat. You can implement these steps in your own life and get what you really want out of your time on this earth.

Step 1:

Identify your life’s work

(or at least a business that you're passionate about.)

For me, it’s writing. I’d never seen myself as a writer until a few years ago, but the truth is I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I filled up tons of composition notebooks with lyrics, poems, and stories.

I even wrote out a fake identity when I was in middle school to help me fit in with my classmates better. I put all the qualities that I deemed necessary for popularity into one character and then played that character. It worked like a charm, I became a mainstay in my friend group and even hooked up with the most popular girl in the school. At the time, it didn’t seem like a big deal and obviously, I couldn’t tell anybody about it. But it’s kind of crazy thinking back on it. My very first character was a massive success.

On YouTube, I wrote every word of every video you’ve seen from me. I researched stories and put them together using philosophy to entertain you and teach you life lessons. (Also to learn and reiterate these things for myself.) I’d frame the stories around a theme and then stick to that throughout.

Despite all of that, I still didn’t realize I was a writer until I was in my mid-30s. I guess that’s just how it is sometimes. But everything I did before taking this current leap developed me as a person, and I use those insights to inform my writing.

So basically, every day I’m alive, everything I do feeds back into what I believe will be my life’s work.

• When I’m watching TV, I’m writing.

• Listen to music, I’m writing.

• When I read, I’m writing.

• When I’m chillin I’m writing.

• When I’m smoking, I’m writing.

• When I’m lifting in writing.

It’s just what I do, I’m always developing some idea in my head. It’s so fun for me; I just can’t help it.

I used to think I was nuts, but now I know I’m just a writer.

Here’s my advice If you haven’t figured out what that is for you:

• Watch back the “film of your life”.

• Connect the dots of your past.

• Go for walks every day while listening to lofi beats and ponder on this. I promise you the threads will start to connect.

Once it does, you’ll be able to draw a parallel from nearly every stage of your life right back to whatever your thing is. Once you do this, not a moment of your life will feel like a waste. It brings a new perspective that embeds purpose into your life.

THIS FIRST STEP CANNOT BE RUSHED. Live. Read. Think. Repeat.

Good Luck!

Step 2:

Find a Physical Leisure Activity

This is massively important. Without it, I can guarantee that you will burn out way before you get to the finish line.

Leisure is key for every one of life’s difficult pursuits. (I just made that up, but in my heart, I know it’s true.)

Leisure can help reduce stress, increase creativity, and improve overall mental health. It can also help reduce depression by increasing positive mood.

It rejuvenates your body and, more importantly, your mind, providing you with a consistent reset button to allow the creative/business side of your brain to shut down for a while each day.

Then, even when you're done, it leaves you with so much dopamine that the good mood stays with you and carries over to other areas of your life.

I burnt out in 2022, and honestly, I never was the same. I ultimately climbed out of that and got to a clear state of mind. There, I zoomed out and realized burnout was the only option I gave myself, given the tough path I decided to not only take but to maintain.

I sat every day for hours on end, researching, recording, and editing. My mind grew tired, and my body grew weak. The thought process was I’d work my ass off until I got to the point where I didn’t have to. Then I’d catch up on my health and relationships and get back to living my life like a real human being.

Needless to say, that never happened. But the experience is the only reason I can give you these insights now.

For me, my leisure activity is Pickleball.

Of course, that’s not my only leisure activity, but it’s the main one and currently my favorite.

It’s easy to learn but damn near impossible to master. That's the perfect blend because the barrier to entry is low, but once you're in, there’s always something you can improve on.

Also, there are tournaments everywhere along with open play areas. These days it’s easier to find a “pickup pickleball game” than it is to find a pick-up basketball game. That’s crazy.

I’m just an okay player, but I was trash in the beginning. The journey to get better has helped give me the appropriate distraction while I go through these growing pains of rebuilding other areas of my life.

And because I’ve been having so much fun, I didn’t even notice how much great exercise I’ve been getting during those 2-hour sessions. It motivates my other workouts because it gives me some structure and something to work out for or build towards.

Your leisure activity will help to sustain you during the dog days of adjusting to your new thermostat setting. It will keep your body and mind balanced, and you know how I feel about balance. Its everything. Balance is everything.

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Step 3:

Formulate a plan with multiple arms

The last step is tricky. It’s gonna grow and evolve as you figure things out and learn new information.

I decided that I wanna be a writer. Not just any writer. I don’t want a boss to tell me what I have to write about. I don’t want to chase genres or try to write something that’s gonna go viral.

I want to create dope shit and say something meaningful with my work. But, to hit the other goals that I laid out earlier, I need to attain a level of wealth as well. So my plan needs to take all these things into account while not straying away from my ultimate goals or the things I truly want.

If I get distracted by the pursuit of wealth, which is just a path to my real goals, then I won't be happy or fulfilled once I get there.

The main thing has to stay the main thing or none of this is gonna lead you to where you want to go.

I'm not gonna give you my whole plan here, but I’ll give enough to make the point. (Some of this stuff’s already public.)

So the first idea was to write a fiction book. There’s this story in my head that nobody has told, that I felt I was uniquely qualified to tell. That’s the Fiction Book Gridiron City. And I’ve already finished the first draft of the book, I'm making great progress.

Another arm I added to support that goal was the Gridiron City gaming series over on my second channel. The series isn’t the story from the book, but I’m introducing the island and some of the themes from the story.

Remember when I said once you connect the dots, nothing in your life will feel like it was a waste of time?

So here, my writing and my time as a gaming YouTuber came into play. These were 2 skills I’ve developed over the years, not knowing how they’d be used in the future. But now they are both coming together to make something that I’m proud of.

The series is helping me to create excitement and a fan base around the book before I’m even fully done writing it.

Those go on one side of the plan with the fiction novel that I’m hoping I can turn into a big hit.

On the other side of the plan is my nonfiction writing. The self-help side of my new approach. I’ve dabbled in it on this channel really since the beginning.

But, here is how I like to think about it. I used to make sports videos through the filer of real life. Now I make real-life videos through the filter of sports.

• Natural progression

• makes perfect sense

• and ties in perfectly with my new career as a writer

I’m growing the email list, and there are already over 100 subscribers after mentioning it at the end of my last 2 videos.

Here you can read these scripts before the videos come out. You get to see them in written form, their original form.

Plus, there’s gonna be another arm of the plan coming here to this newsletter once we hit a certain milestone. That’s gonna be dope, but I need to be patient; I'm already doing a lot at one time.

The newsletter is called A Playbook for Life.

It's a nice blend of what I talk about, life, and sports.

The best ideas from that will eventually turn into a book. Then I’ll be a legit author in both fiction and nonfiction.

Once I’m a legit author, the next phase of the plan kicks in, and I’ll see where this leads me over the next five years. To be clear, I’m aware that these steps may not lead directly to wealth, but they will get me doing the work I’m passionate about and allow me to take control of my income. That is the first step in attaining wealth, at least in the way I want to do it.

I believe it, along with a few parts that I left out, will help me to facilitate my true goals and permanently raise my thermostat so I don’t fall back into mediocrity or mid-level complacency like I believe my Bengals have.

I still love the Bengals because it’s unconditional love. I’ll love them no matter what. I feel like I’ve earned my stripes as a fan, and I can be honest about my thoughts on the team and organization.

I hope this little lesson helps you out in some way, and if it did, consider subscribing to my newsletter.

Thank you all for everything. I’ll catch you in the next one.