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38:05
TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE - 7 Steps according to Brian Tracy
Join Rob as he gets fired up over coffee this morning and reflects on some thought provoking ideas shared by Sean last night in the All Around Growth Telegram Group.
Identify your biggest problem or source of negativity in life today. In what ways are you responsible for this situation?
See yourself as the president of your own company. How would you act differently if you owned 100 percent of the shares of the company for which you work?
Resolve today to stop blaming anyone else for anything and instead accept complete responsibility in every area of your life. What actions should you take now that you are in charge?
Stop making excuses and start making progress. Imagine that your favorite excuses have no basis in fact, and act accordingly.
See yourself as the primary creative force in your own life. You are where you are and what you are because of your own choices and decisions. What should you change?
Resolve today to forgive anyone who has ever hurt you in any way. Let it go. Refuse to discuss it again. Instead, get so busy working on something that is important to you that you don't have time to think about it again.
Decide upon one specific action that you are going to take immediately to exert full control over every part of your life.
All right, how's it going, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am your host. And that is how I am feeling this morning. Again, inspired, motivated, and ready to share a topic with you today. Generally focused on something that I consider to be, you know, uh along the lines of all-around growth. And what the hell does that mean, anyways? It means that we are trying to find balance in our lives in all seven aspects of life, including, but certainly not limited to financial, physical, personal development, family, spiritual, social, and career. And uh before we get into the topic today, where we're going to talk about Brian Tracy and his suggestions on how to get your shit together, because I think, you know, that's something that a lot of us out there, especially myself, we're all trying to do. But before we dive into that and how that came to be, um, it came to be uh, you know, that was a decision that was made while I was walking the dog this morning. It's a nice morning here on this uh January uh January 12th, 2023. This is episode number 488, I think. I don't know, guys. Correct me if I'm wrong. But uh while having the first cup of coffee this morning, just a boring little pour over weak sauce cup, uh, I had a just just walk the dog, you know, leisurely. Um, let him walk me rather. It's a nice morning outside, and a lot of the time walking the dog was just spent with the dog. Just kind of standing there looking at things, you know, pondering life. And right there in that moment, I kind of had a reflection of myself. And uh I think that's what I've been doing a lot lately. I think that's what we've all been doing a lot lately. And um, you know, I came to the group this morning to kind of poke around for some show topics because the you know, for those of you guys who have listened to this for a while, this show's undergone a number of changes. I uh started doing this in my truck on my way to the day job a couple years ago, back in May of last year, quit the day job, started doing things a little bit differently, uh started putting some more intention into the show, started recording from home, the audio quality got a little bit better, and recently I started live streaming. We reduced the frequency of the show to a weekly basis, doing one live stream, and you know, when I say we, I mean me. You know, let's face it. This show, it's all me, man. But I like to say we and I like to you know use words like we and our and us because a lot of the inspiration to talk about the things that I talk about comes from you guys, and in the past I know that when I've listened to podcasts, I felt some sort of connectivity with the podcast host, and I like to feel that as you guys listen to this, there's a similar level of connectivity with me, and ultimately for those of you guys in the telegram group, which is where the community within the show is most active, you know, that's that's what drives a lot of what's going on with this. And you know, yesterday got back in the saddle again, jumped back on that horse and to uh you know to get to get after it, to uh to revisit some of what made this what it is. And the episode went long, and uh previously, you know, the the shows were limited to the amount of time it took me to drive to the end of the driveway, which is a quarter mile drive, get to work, and then pretty much wrap it up by the time I got to work. So, generally speaking, most shows were around that 20-minute ballpark. And I got to thinking, well, outside of setting a timer, what can I do to kind of keep it around that time frame? So I thought, well, hell, in the mornings, I drink coffee. Uh my uh the quality of the coffee that I that I consume is has uh you know certainly decreased uh over time and with my attempts to be more frugal in many ways. And uh I know that there are people that would uh you know make arguments about coffee, but uh, and I'm one of them. I'm kind of a coffee snob after roasting beans for for a long time here and there, and you know, really becoming somewhat of a connoisseur. I, you know, I just I just drink crap now. I drink what I can find on sale, I drink what I can find cheap, and uh, you know, judge me if you will, but that's the way it is, and uh that's what happens when your income is significantly reduced by more than half. So that's where I'm at right now, and that's what we're doing. And um and ultimately I thought, well, what if I just spun these episodes into somewhat of a brief coffee talk by Rob? You know, so that's kind of what we're gonna do. I'm gonna work my way through a French press here uh this morning, and we're gonna take a topic from Sean, something that was uh in the group this morning. You know, I read this last night, and he posted something from Brian Tracy called How to Get Your Shit Together in Seven Steps. How to take charge of your life. Now, before we read that, let's take a look at who Brian Tracy is because this is a guy that I've heard of, you know, a lot of a lot of people that I've looked at, people that I look at as mentors, uh people that are highly engaged in the world of leadership and inspiration and all that jazz. Uh, they've referenced him, I've seen his name floating around, but I've never really read any of his work. So who is Brian Tracy? According to Wikipedia, Brian Tracy is a Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author. He is the author of over 80 books that have been translated into dozens of languages. His popular books are Earn What You're Really Worth, Eat That Frog, No Excuses, The Power of Self-Discipline, and the Psychology of Achievement. Now, uh Brian Tracy is the chairman and chief executive officer, the CEO of Brian Tracy International, a company Tracy founded in 1984 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It sells counseling on leadership, selling, self-esteem, goals, strategy, creativity, and success psychology. And it is headquartered in Bankers Hill, San Diego, California. Now, there is more information on Brian Tracy in Wikipedia, uh, and I'll go ahead and link to him in the show notes. But, you know, that's who he is. He is a key person in the world of you know, leadership, motivation, you know, self-development, all that stuff. And as far as I can tell, his books are applicable to our personal lives, our business lives, and uh every basically, you know, very on point and on topic to this show, you know, which is all around growth. So, according to Brian Tracy, here are seven steps and seven ways that you can take charge of your life. Number one, identify your biggest problem or source of negativity in life today, and then ask yourself a question. You know, this is this is kind of cool. Uh, we've got seven ways, seven steps, according to Brian Tracy, that you can take charge of your life. I'm gonna just, you know, for those of you who are interested in this, I'm going to copy and paste this in the show notes, verbatim, so you can see the points that he makes and then the questions that he asks. Because this is uh, I think this is a good way to approach this topic. Um, there's seven key points and then seven questions that you can ask yourself, seven questions that you can reflect upon. And reflecting in and of itself is something that's been on my mind based on a dream that I had. And I learned at the age of 13, 14 that the act of reflecting is thinking about what you're thinking about, what you're thinking about. So think about that. Alright. Now, how to take charge of your life, how to get your shit together, right? Because maybe you want to do that, maybe you've been working on that. Lord knows I have, and um I've taken steps in certain ways to do that, uh, many of which I've talked about in the podcast, some of which I have not. Uh, you know, can't share everything in the show, but I sure as hell do share a lot because why not? It's uh it's a it's it's it's a tool and a mechanism that I've used to talk through a lot of the things that we're going through in life because you know we're all very similar. We're all going through a lot of the same things, and even if we're not going through the same things, that really doesn't matter because our goals and objectives are often very similar. We want to grow and improve as humans, we want to be better people, we want to be better leaders in our own lives, better fathers, better siblings, better sons and daughters, you know. And I'm very interested in these seven steps that might provide some additional insight in how we can do exactly that. So, according to Brian Tracy, how to take charge of your life? Number one, identify your biggest problem or source of negativity in life today. Question, in what ways are you responsible for this situation? Number two, see yourself as the president of your own company. How would you act differently if you owned 100% of the shares of the company for which you work? Number three, resolve today to stop blaming anyone else for anything and instead accept complete responsibility in every area of your life. Question, what action should you take now that you are in charge? Number four, stop making excuses and start making progress. Imagine that your fa imagine that your favorite excuses have no basis in fact and act accordingly. Number five, see yourself as the primary creative force in your own life. You are where you are and what you are because of your own choices and decisions. Question what should you change? Number six, resolve today to forgive anyone who has ever hurt you in any way. Let it go. Refuse to discuss it again. Instead, get so busy working on something that it is important to you that you don't have time to think about it again. And number seven, decide upon one specific action that you are going to take immediately to exert full control over every part of your life. All right, now not every single one of these seven points had a question in it, but many of them did. So let's revisit those. What do I have to think? Or, you know, what do I have to think? What do I think about these seven different topics as I pour myself and top off my coffee again? All right, number one, we're gonna identify our biggest problem or source of negativity in life, and um, that's not always easy because, quite frankly, there's often a lot of them. But at the end of the day, what he's encouraging us to do is also identify the ways in which we are responsible for this situation. Okay, first and foremost, we're gonna look at our problems and then we are going to identify how we are responsible for those problems. Now, number two, you know, this is one that I think a lot of you know big wigs and leadership people talk about. See yourself and visualize yourself as the president of your own company. I mean, I say that in that tone because I used to think it's kind of stupid, but the reality is these are good things to think about. You know, well, what would you do different if you owned 100% of the shares of the company for which you work? How would you manage your own shit? How would you manage your people, the people that report to you? You know, many of us haven't really been in a leadership position where we were in charge of or responsible for teams. Okay? I know a lot of us have. I have, but that's not the case now. But what if it were? What would I do differently? Think about it. Number three, we need to stop blaming people. And again, like we touched on in number one, accept complete responsibility for every area of life. And the question we're asking ourselves is what actions should we take now that we are in charge? The reality is if you feel like your life is out of control, well, it is. And I believe that that can be changed. Because we oftentimes fall into this trap where when shit goes sideways, it becomes very easy to blame someone else, blame our employer, blame our coworkers, blame our spouse, blame our children, blame our parents, blame, blame, blame, blame. But it's kind of like the old adage that goes when you know when you when you point a finger at someone else, you've got three or four others pointing right back at yourself. It's totally true. You are responsible for your own life. Understand that. And you know, if you can't, then you will never progress beyond where you currently are now. So, you know, understand that too. Number four, stop making excuses and start making progress. Imagine that your favorite excuses have no basis in fact and act accordingly. Right? Your excuses, the excuses I make, they're bullshit. They're not factually accurate. A lot of the excuses that we make are a result of the blame that we put on other people and the lack of personal responsibility that we take in our lives. The sooner we understand that, the sooner we can come to the point where we can act accordingly and change. Number five. See yourself as the primary creative force in your own life. You are where you are and what you are because of your own choices and decisions. I love this. Out of all the seven points, this one is my favorite. Why? Over the past few years, over the course of doing this show, I've reached the conclusion that we all make choices. Every single thing we do in life is a result of a choice that we've made, either consciously or unconsciously. All right, and that's a difficult pill to swallow. It's a big, fat, bitter pill that most of us don't want to swallow because when we see it, we understand just how difficult it is, so we put it back in the drawer and we don't address it, and we continue blaming people, places, things, institutions for all of the problems that we have when the reality is all that we're doing is not accepting the responsibility for ourselves because we've put ourselves in that very situation that we have so much disdain for. Get it? We all make choices. Yeah, yeah, I know. Some of us are locked in a career that you know we hate, some of us work with people that we hate, some of us are married to people that we hate, some of us, yeah, whatever. Sometimes life sucks, right? What are you gonna do about it? Sit around and bitch and moan and complain? How's that been working out for you? Probably as well as it's been working out for me. It hasn't. At all. Once you reach the point where you understand that you are wholly responsible for everything in your life, you can begin to make change. Everything is a choice, and we make decisions daily. I understand that we all have situations and circumstances that are different. I understand that we all have uh problems, that we've experienced certain things in our lives, in our youth, that helped create us and helped mold us and helped shape us. But look, man, you know, everybody's got baggage. What defines us is how we carry it. Maybe something happened to you that you don't think happened to someone else. Alright, that's fair. But let me tell you something. There's a lot that's happened to me that hasn't happened to you either. Like I said, we've all got baggage. What defines us is how we carry it. I'm going to repeat this again. See yourself as the primary creative force in your own life. You are where you are and what you are because of your own choices and decisions. If you're not happy with where you're at in life, it's because you choose to remain there instead of seeking an alternative. Why aren't you seeking that alternative? Because fear and pain are, you know, driving you to stay where you are. Change is hard and it's terrifying. But, you know, if you're not willing to embrace that, then the reality is you're choosing your current set of circumstances because you prefer that over the potential alternative that lies ahead. We all make choices. Alright, number six, resolve today to forgive anyone who has ever hurt you in any way. Let it go. Refuse to discuss it again. Instead, get so busy working on something that is important to you that you don't have time to think about it again. This is another one that I love. I've spent a lot of time personally living in a world of resentment. Allowing myself to stew on these various people, places, things, and institutions that have, you know, hurt me. That have impacted me in a negative way. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be the way I am. Well fuck that. That's no way to live. I understand I'm getting a little bit passionate about this, and I understand that there's some uh, you know, some words that I don't generally use, but you know what? I feel strongly about this. Yes, it's easy just to say forgive and forget. You know. Well. Resentment is a bitch, friends. It's gonna kill you. The fact that we live in that world and we've allowed it to control us for so long, we've allowed our resentments to control us for so long, is why we continually engage in the negative habits and lifestyles that we do. Because we're living in the past and we can't let go. So, well, how do you do it? Right? There's a number of ways that this can be done. Brian Tracy suggests get so busy working on something that is important to you that you don't have time to think about it again. Now, this is a this is a this is a slippery slope here because what can happen is we get so involved in something that we forget about everything else in life, and we lose that balance that we seek so you know, so hard to find, because you know, we can we can involve ourselves in something so deeply that we table everything else, and that's not healthy either. So we've got to find some balance. We've got to find some balance. And real quick, I'm just you know, speaking of balance, you can do this, you know, if you're not sure if you've struggled with it in the past, with this goal setting guide. It will help provide some additional insight on different ways in which you can do so. Set goals in these seven different aspects of life: financial, physical, personal development, family, spiritual, social, career. I can rattle them off that quickly because I've spent a lot of time reviewing this, and quite frankly, I need to revisit it. But you know, look at that. It's a 15-page workbook that's available for free. You can download it, a link to it in the show notes, and that will give you some additional insight and perspective on how to find this balance so that when you get busy working on something that is important to you, that you so that you don't have to think about it again, the things that have hurt you, right? That you're not so tunnel-visioned on this one thing, because quite frankly, guys, there's a lot in life that's hurt us. There's a lot of people who have hurt us. There's a lot of places where we've been, worked, lived that have hurt us. Sometimes we live in a world of pain. And you know what? It doesn't have to be that way. Not anymore. But it will be if you refuse to take action and change. And speaking of action, that leads us to number seven. Decide upon one specific action that you are going to take immediately to exert full control over every part of your life. Oh yeah. How do you begin? Life is so overwhelming, isn't it? Right? I get it. You know, and I I mean I've got this tone in my voice that that that that sounds perhaps a little condescending or something like that, but look, um if you don't know where to begin, because everything is overwhelming, well, I get it. That's why this is called how to get your shit together in seven steps. Quite frankly, that's gonna be the topic of today's show. So decide upon one specific action that you're gonna take immediately to exert full control of your life. That specific action could be something as simple as what Letty shares in the Telegram group. Shout out to Letty, Liberty L Day blog. I'm gonna link to her work in the show notes as well. Um, almost on a daily basis. We get to see a mug shot from her. She's got a rad collection of mugs. Me, I just drink out of the same old stained thing that I've been drinking out of for 10 years now, chipped up, old, but hey, I don't like change. Alright. So I drink out of the same mug every day. Yeah, alright. Sometimes I wash it every once in a while, alright? But you know, join the Telegram group, t.me slash allaround growth, and see the different mugs that Letty has. And moreover, it's not just about the mugs, all right, but she has three things. Hashtag my three things that she does every day. All right, that simple thing, one action you can take to determine three things that are priority in your life today. Something as simple as that can give you enough guidance to move forward so that you can actually feel as though you have some control over every part of your life. And again, guys, you know, maybe three things is too much. Maybe you just need one thing. What's one thing that you can do today? One specific action that you're going to take immediately to exert full control over every part of your life. It's a lot, isn't it? Alright. I'm gonna again emphasize and reiterate this goal setting guide because it is perhaps one of the most profound things and impactful things, tools, resources that I've used over the past couple of years that have allowed me to look at life in a new perspective, reframe the way in which I see life, that I approach goals. I've looked at a bunch of crap over the years, you know, done past year reviews the way Tim Ferris did them, you know, set goals in all these different ways. Well, this is probably the most sensible way, the most sensible approach that I've found. And you know what? If you've got better ideas, then share them with me, man. T.me slash all around growth. Share them in the group, share them with everybody else. You don't want to share in the group, send me an email, allaroundgrowth at gmail.com. Look, the the the the the things that I talk about, I don't claim them to be like the solution. I'm just sharing what's worked for me. And you know what? I I sure as hell don't do the same things that I did when I started this show. I've changed, my approach has changed, the show has changed, and you know, even though I've talked about you know just just letting it go, part of me doesn't want to because it gives me an opportunity to reflect on the changes that have been made in life, and there's been so many things in life where I've done and I've I've stopped and projects that have started and that remain unfinished. I don't want this to be yet another one, but who knows? Maybe it will be. Fact of the matter is, I don't know. I don't know because I'm trying to get my shit together. And with that, we've got seven steps, seven ideas, seven things that we can do, questions that we can ask ourselves in order to do exactly that. How to get our shit together. So that's it for coffee talk this morning, guys. Alright. Take charge of your life. Steps outlined by Brian Tracy, questions that will encourage us to do exactly that, and ultimately, as I conclude the thoughts, or as I conclude this show, the last thoughts I have are really encouraging thoughts, and encouraging all of us to fully understand that we all make choices, and if you're not happy with any aspect of your life, it's because I don't mean you know you're not happy to like today because, you know, God forbid, like your dog died or something, all right? That's understandable. But if you've been in a consistent state of unhappiness for an extended period of time, and those reasons and you think you you the and and you you think there are identifiable reasons behind or something driving your current state of unhappiness, well I'm of the opinion that you're unhappy because it's preferable to the alternative. We all make choices. Choose wisely, my friends. This is Rob Kaiser, and thank you.
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