Don’t let stuff get in your way. When I say stuff I mean anything. Usually the way most people work is they have a goal, be it if they consciously actually designed it or they got the idea from someone else and they’re simply pursuing it but they have a goal. Every single one of us has goals and they go for it. The problem is that they don’t go for it for as long as it takes to achieve it. They go for it until something distracts them.
So business I think is the most relevant and easiest example, because so many people, especially in this area are trying to create new businesses, trying to create new projects and they’re going for it, not for as long as it takes to actually build one and sustain one and to make something that actually works. But until their family starts to get upset or until their bank account manager starts to get upset or into someone draws their attention to something else until they put on too much weight because they work instead of exercise. So something distracts them.
Proactively manage things
The easiest way to make sure that things do not distract us is to try to proactively manage every single area of our life. For example, if I am going to learn and very soon I’ll teach you how to plan a day, for example, how to plan a week. If I have one goal in my mind, if I want to create a business for example. If I want to lose weight, it doesn’t matter and I plan with only this one goal in mind. It will never work in the long term. There is a very small percentage of people. Very, very small percent of the population who can be very happy by doing one thing. It exists. It’s very rare, but it exists. For example, some athletes can play their sport every single minute of the day and be incredibly fulfilled. And that’s fine. If you are this kind of person, forget what I’m about to say.
But for most people, in order for us to be happy, we must have everything in check. We must have our family in check, we must have our health in check, we must have our hobbies in check and we must have our career and finances in check. We must have everything in check. If one thing is out of balance, we’re not happy. If our career is amazing, our health is amazing and my marriage starts to decline, most people will be depressed, deeply depressed. If their marriage and family is amazing, their health is amazing but their career starts to break off. They’ll be deeply depressed. If their career is amazing and their family relationships are amazing but their health sucks. They’ll be deeply depressed. So for most people, we must manage everything proactively. We must have everything in check for us to be happy and you should know yourself.
Are you the type of person like 99.9% of the people who needs everything in check? Then you should pay very close attention to what I’m going to teach in the next 10 or 15 minutes. Or you are the type of person who can do one thing and be incredibly happy and then it’s perfectly fine as well? But most people need more. So we must proactively manage everything, every single area of our life, we must make sure while we chase our business goals, for example, while we do everything to start a business, we must make sure that we proactively approach our well being, our health so that the doctor won’t call us in six months and tell us we must come to a [inaudible 4:18].
We must proactively manage our relationships so that we won’t start having difficult conversations with close family members we truly care about because they will think our business ruins us. We must proactively manage everything if we want to lose weight, we must still proactively manage what we’re doing for a living so that the bank manager won’t be pissed at us. Makes sense? So you should be as proactive as possible.
For some of you the question, “What should I do right now?” The question we discussed is still in your head and in order to give this part of our brain some peace of mind, some quiet, some silence. The best way to do it is to have your days, your hours, your time planned. For me, when someone asks me I’m rarely asking myself,
“What should I do right now?”
Because I did my best to detach this question from my mind. But still, sometimes some people ask me this question because then you go,
“What are you going to do next? So what’s your plan for today?”
I always have the same answer. Let me check my calendar. I’m not busy thinking about what I should do next. I have a device that helps me to make sure I do what they have to do and that’s it. It gives me a lot of peace of mind. So in order for this device to be able to tell me what to do, I need to put the plan in it.
Plan days based on long term goal
So let’s do it. Let’s go for it. The first issue is, we did discuss it today but I want to go over it again. That our days are meaningless, that our daily plans are meaningless as long as we have no long term goals. If we don’t know, if we don’t have a plan for our life, if we don’t know if we don’t have a vision of what we actually want to achieve in the long term, our days are actually meaningless.
For example, if I’ll tell you that today I’m going for a yoga class and then to have a few hours to rest by the beach and then I’ll go meditating and reading. I’ll spend a few hours reading and then I’ll go home, eat some food, maybe stretch it a little bit and go to sleep. Was it a productive day? Or wasn’t it? Depends on what? What are your goals?
If, for example, I see myself as a yoga instructor. I want to have yoga as a major part of my life and the books I’m reading are about yoga. Maybe this is the best day I could possibly plan for myself. Maybe it’s a non productive day if I have other goals. Makes sense? Maybe I should live like this for 90 days or 180 days in a row, if this is what I want, if I want to be a yoga instructor and let’s say I’m young and have no family. Makes sense? So we have to plan our days based on our long term goal.
