Ever wondered how life's twists and turns can alter our aspirations? How the birth of a child can shift our focus from money to love? This episode comes straight from the heart as I share my personal journey, how my perspective changed after the birth of my son, and why I now value love and fulfillment over material possessions. Witness my recent encounter with an old friend whose life is dominated by wealth creation, and realize - money and things don't bring lasting happiness.
We delve into the challenge response mechanisms, stressing the importance of relationships and embracing kindness to combat adversity. Key to our discourse today is the concept of time as the most precious resource - it is ours to decide how to utilize it best. We also explore the impact of others' words on our life trajectory, and how kindness can help us reclaim our power. Instead of 'faking it till we make it,' why not 'fake it till we become it'? Join us on this reflective journey as we dissect the power of purpose and the importance of choosing your own path.
Ever wondered how life's twists and turns can alter our aspirations? How the birth of a child can shift our focus from money to love? This episode comes straight from the heart as I share my personal journey, how my perspective changed after the birth of my son, and why I now value love and fulfillment over material possessions. Witness my recent encounter with an old friend whose life is dominated by wealth creation, and realize - money and things don't bring lasting happiness.
We delve into the challenge response mechanisms, stressing the importance of relationships and embracing kindness to combat adversity. Key to our discourse today is the concept of time as the most precious resource - it is ours to decide how to utilize it best. We also explore the impact of others' words on our life trajectory, and how kindness can help us reclaim our power. Instead of 'faking it till we make it,' why not 'fake it till we become it'? Join us on this reflective journey as we dissect the power of purpose and the importance of choosing your own path.
Magnificent, magnificent, magnificent, magnificent. Hello, magnificent Ones. It is so great to be recording another episode of the Magnificent Ones podcast and this is more of a reflective piece. But I've learned that, you know, our stories are a mirror, you know, for others, and when we tell our stories we see how much we have in common with other people that maybe we didn't realize before.
Speaker 1:
So in today's episode, I wanted to explore and dissect, you know, certain situations in our lives, such as our goals. For example, when I was transitioning from high school through college and you know, everyone asked you like what's your plans for the future? You know, what do you hope to accomplish? I've always been an extremely goal-oriented person, a person that wanted to just achieve everything, and I've always been a planner, a planner and an executioner. So plan, execute, plan, execute and so forth. When I was in high school, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and the person that I wanted to become, and my dream was that after high school, I was going to go to an amazing university and graduate, you know, as, with as many accolades as I possibly could, after which point I would join, you know, the United States Armed Forces so that I would be an officer and after that, transition into intelligence and have an amazing career and after that, you know, go into politics. So that was, you know, my life goals in a nutshell, and the thing that grounded me in altering those choices was my son, because my son is my greatest accomplishment, or was my greatest accomplishment at that time, and I have a daughter Now. They're both my greatest accomplishments of my entire life and they've changed my trajectory in life for the better, because I was going for the money, but now I'm going for love, and you can have both, because you can do what you love and make money. Or you could just do something for money and not love it and then be burnt out and stress and end up divorced and so forth.
Speaker 1:
Long story short, I chose love and I definitely chose correctly, but I, you know, I ran into someone recently that you know has known me for a very long time, and they said to me they were like man, like why don't you, you know, go into intelligence? It's like the money's there and a laundry list of things, and everything in that conversation was just about money, money, money, this money, this money, this money, this. And when I was looking at this person, I saw them as a former shell of who they were, because everything was just heavily influenced by the material world. And when I looked at them, I mean they don't have kids, they're not in a relationship, they don't have stability. They have the stability of routine because of what they do, but they don't have stability in the sense of they have a life and they're operating on an extreme, and the extreme is high performer with no life, but also no, no end goal. Right, there's no end goal to what they're doing. It's kind of like the person that makes a lot of money but just puts it in the bank and doesn't live life with their money. That's who this character was, and if this was five years ago, I would have been extremely offended that this person would be pushing this idea that, like I needed all this money to be happy and so many other things, and I probably would not have been polite about it either. But because of the person that I am today, you know I was able to just have a meaningful discourse and that when you have purpose and you feel fulfilled, it nothing else matters.
Speaker 1:
Because my rebuttal to the money situation was this and I said listen, Do you have to have a teaching degree to be a person that teaches? And the answer is no. I said that so long as you fulfill in the things that you do, that's the only thing that matters. So if I have a teaching degree, sure I could be a teacher, or what have you right? But at the same time, if I teach someone how to tie their shoelace, I just taught someone something. If I'm a teacher by nature, then I will just naturally teach people and I'll be doing the thing that I love and I don't need to be paid to do the things that I love. All things will work out in the end.
Speaker 1:
When you do things with purpose and intent and if you have goals and an idea of how you're going to reach them, then it's just a matter of time before you reach your destination. Sometimes you have to go through the parts of life that suck so that you can appreciate the destination when you arrive there, because the people who just chase the money they have blinders on. They don't see how many bridges they're burning in the process. They don't see how many friends and relationships they've ruined along the way. But sometimes, when you take the slow and steady road, you don't miss out on life I get to be with my kids, I get to have dinner with my family every single day. I don't miss out on anything. Yes, I don't spend 24 hours with them, but most people don't spend 24 hours with their families.
Speaker 1:
So what have I missed? I didn't miss my kids' first steps, their first words. I got to be a part of that, and that's beautiful. I could never get that back. I can't get this time back either. I'm getting older, they're getting older. They're going to reach a point in which they don't need me, especially when they're older. So why not just embrace the thing that I could never get back, which is time Time with them, these moments, these first steps, these first conversations, the first sentences, the things that I can't get back, that are so valuable. That's what I chose. The thing that was most valuable is what I chose.
Speaker 1:
The money has a value, which means anything that has a value. It could either diminish it or it could appreciate, with time, human beings, once they've reached a certain point in life, how much monetary value can they actually accrue? So I'd rather just accrue life value in my relationships with my friends and my family. Those are the things that we take for granted Now. Steve Jobs was one of the wealthiest human beings in human history. When he was diagnosed with cancer, what could he do? He couldn't buy more time with his money. He couldn't extend his life with his money. He couldn't repair whatever broken relationships. He didn't have enough time to do those things because time was not on his side.
Speaker 1:
The journey is just as important as the destination. We have to define what success is for us and not what other people say. Success is. That's important, and to know that we have purpose and what our purpose is. It takes time to be confident in who we are. Yes, it's not an easy task.
Speaker 1:
However, when other people try to put you down, you don't have to say something negative to combat their hostility or their words that were meant to cause harm. Kindness kills that. You can kill a person with kindness, but again, remember that you have to believe in yourself and you have to know your worth and you have to know that you have a sense of purpose. So that way, when you say something positive as a rebuttal, what can that person do? It's kind of like the whole M&M thing, where M&M will rap about the things that is wrong with him. So what are you going to use His words against him to win. It doesn't work that way. You have to bring the thing that the person said it was supposed to be your kryptonite and show them that it's actually your greatest weapon. So not all things that have been lost are truly lost and not all people that we think are lost are actually lost.
Speaker 1:
Some of us know exactly where we're going and because we know where we're going and we know the destination and where it leads. If I know that, regardless, as long as I'm alive and I'm working, I'm going to make money. So what? I'm going to chase something that I'm naturally going to get because I'm a working member of society. But you know what A lot of people forget along the way. They're family. Next thing, you know they miss out and they're like, oh, my grandma passed away, my grandpa passed away, and how much time did they spend with their grandparents. And they're like, oh, if only I had more time. That's always the thing. If only I had more time.
Speaker 1:
It's not that you didn't have enough time Is what did you choose to do with your time? What was truly valuable to you? The most valuable things in life, naturally, are the scarcest. That's what makes them valuable. Time is your most scarce resource, your most valuable resource? What gives something value? The lack of availability of it. It's not like you can buy more time. So if that's your most precious resource, that's the thing that you have the least in abundance of. How are you going to spend it? What's it truly worth to you? Are you going to let other people dictate how you spend your time and what you do with your time and what you choose to value with your time, while you lose it each and every day that you wake up?
Speaker 1:
I think that so many of us makes the mistake that time is something that we have. We have so much of it. If you're 15, you think you have forever, but then you blink and you're 30. If you're 50, then you're like man when I'm 80, I'm old, but then you blink and now you're 80. It doesn't work in your favor unless you're truly living it. You get to be present and be available to the ones that matter to you and have meaningful conversation and just call and say hello. You've truly got something that is irreplaceable, the most valuable thing. You're using your time to make yourself valuable.
Speaker 1:
So, with this little life that I have, I try to maximize my time. So, yes, I call my friends and say, how are you doing? Because maybe if I was making $200,000 a year, I wouldn't have the luxury to say, hey, how are you doing? How are your kids? Oh yeah, by the way, I'll be at the birthday party this weekend. Maybe that wouldn't have been a possibility, but with this life that I have, I get to do that. Oh, let me just request some time off. Yeah, I mean, you can definitely go on a trip next week. I love that.
Speaker 1:
Living life is a beautiful thing, but what also makes it special is living life with the ones you truly love and care about. Place value on that. I think and I'll always say this I really do think that no matter what I have accomplished in life, it will not ever outshine the birth of my children. That is just, to me, my greatest accomplishment. If that's my greatest accomplishment and the thing that I value the most, that's. All I ever want to do is just give them Not what I didn't have financially, but to give them all that I have emotionally, spiritually, mentally. I want my children to be good human beings and I Can't determine who they become in the end, but I would like to be a force for good in their lives, and the only way I can do that is by investing my time in them, something that money Can't possibly really give me.
Speaker 1:
You know the people go. Oh yeah, you know the money. You know what money will do. The money will will give you, give you freedom so you can spend more time with your family. It's like no, like no. It doesn't actually do that.
Speaker 1:
I mean, you could go to a country that is not as developed and not as Affluent as the United States, and you know what those people are happy. They stay, live with their family, they enjoy their family's. You know company. They're a part of every activity that their family is a part of, and in America you can have a bunch of people living in the same house and everyone could be making six figures or more, but no one has time for each other. So when are they gonna have time for each other when they retire? You know, I Think that's just so jarring that we chase the things that we already have. You know you'll have someone that says, man, like I wish that I had love. You know, and you know, like love is right in front of them, right, they're just closed off to it because they're idea of what they think they want and what they actually want are not the same thing. And you know you have to be humble enough to realize that. You know, the things that are marketed to us are exactly that. It's just marketing. You know.
Speaker 1:
You think that, oh, if I have $200,000, you know, like, yes, this life is fancy or whatever. But it's nothing. You know, the $80,000 life is beautiful too. The $60,000 life is beautiful too. It's what you do with the money. It's not how much you make, it's how much is left, kind of like that. It's not how much you make, it's how much you left.
Speaker 1:
And just like with anything else, if we value our time and if time is scarce, it's also good to make yourself scarce to certain people as well. You know people who you know are going to say things to you in a nice way, but it's really just a double-handed you know backhanded compliment, or however people want to phrase it. You know those people are never good and also, we don't always have to play on their terms and react in the way that they think we're going to react. Well, of course, in the guise of oh, it's because I care about you. That's why I'm saying these things. When someone says something out of love, even when it makes us unhappy, we still can feel the love. So I told one of my friends that in the next episode that I record, I was going to tell the story that changed my life and my way of thinking.
Speaker 1:
When I was in college I was watching a TED Talk and it was of this renowned college professor that she, when she attended Harvard, she was in a tragic car accident and she'd lost her motor skills so she couldn't speak the same way that she did before. She couldn't walk or really function. She had to move back home with her parents and her parents had to take care of her while she went through rehabilitation. So she eventually did regain all of her motor functions. She could eat on her own, talk on her own, dress herself, and the whole story was that after her accident she became depressed and she lost her will to live.
Speaker 1:
The moment that she could walk again and regain most of her oral skills, she decided to jump back into college and she did not do well because she didn't take the time to learn who the new her was and that she had a mental strain in computing information. The way she understood information prior to her car accident was not the same after her car accident. So she became furious, she became extremely depressed because she wasn't the person that she was before and she wanted to function exactly how she did before. And she was at a loss and she was in a very dark moment and someone I believe it was her college professor at the time said don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it. So you're not that person that you were before and you'll never be that person again, because you had a new experience that changed the person that you are, and that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:
So if you've told yourself that you were worthless, if you've told yourself that you were not valuable, you've told yourself that you'll never amount to anything, if you've ever told yourself that that was obviously a lie and you've programmed yourself to believe those things, right, that wasn't true, and then maybe you did things that made them true. So if you can do that, if you can lie to yourself that way, why can't you fake it till you become it? Why can't you lie to yourself that you're an amazing person, that you're a person that can achieve anything? Why can't you tell yourself those same things to make them true. If you think it, you can become it. I love that quote. I think, therefore, I am, and so whenever I find myself not knowing something or trying to accomplish something new, I go back to that memory of you. Don't fake it till you make it. You fake it until you become it.
Speaker 1:
If someone, if I, were to say that I was not bothered by the comment that was made or the underline, you know jab that was with that comment, that would be a lie. But I faked it and I killed that person with kindness, because I wasn't going to let someone that I didn't value have that power over me. And as my day went on, I gradually became happy that I had that experience, because I confronted it. And I didn't confront it on the terms that they thought I would have. I confronted it on my terms, which was kindness. Kindness is something that's taken for granted today. We don't always have to respond the way that people expect us to respond. They often find the greatest victories are when you react and respond with peace. So you get to choose your trajectory. Do you let the words of other people determine the direction of which you go, or do you take your power back and you don't fake it till you make it. You fake it till you become it. Thank you so much for listening.