Put yourself in this scene. Imagine you’re there. There’s a business owner at home, and he can’t find his keys. The power’s out so it’s dark in his house. What he does is he looks out the window and notices the streetlights are on. A light bulb goes off. He walks outside, goes under the streetlight, and starts digging through the ground and just trying to see if he can find his keys. The light’s there. He’s looking, he’s looking, he’s looking. Then a neighbor walking his dog is coming by and says, “Hey, what are you doing?” He said, “Ah, I lost my keys.” The neighbor nicely goes down and starts looking, and looking on the ground too. The neighbor looks, goes, “Well, where’d you lose them?” The business owner goes, “Oh, I lost them inside my house.” The neighbor goes, “Well, why are you out here?” He’s like, “Well, that’s where the light’s on.”

Now, this is a funny story. I got this from Dr. Wayne Dyer, but I really like what it talks about. How often do we do this in business? Or how often do we do this in our own lives? We actually look outside of ourselves, or outside of the problem, to find a solution, when really if we just went into the house, where the actual problem is, and oftentimes this is within ourselves, that’s where the solution lies.

Another great story that’s talked about is just imagining you go to the doctor and you’re having chest pain. You’ve had this agonizing chest pain for several weeks and it’s driving you nuts. It’s keeping you up at night. It’s just, you can’t focus. This chest pain has just really, really got you. You talk to the doctor and he says, “Ha, I know exactly what to do.” He takes out his prescription pad and starts writing a prescription, peels the paper off, and sets it down. Then he repeats that process five times. Now he has five prescriptions in front of him. Finally, you just go, “Hey, I know if I take these prescriptions I’m going to be great.” You reach for the prescriptions the doctor wrote and he says, “No no no. This one is for your wife. This one is for your neighbor. This is for your colleague. This is for your mentor. And this is for your son.” You’re like, “Well, how’s that going to help me?” It’s the same idea. Those prescriptions wouldn’t help you. You know why? Because it’s outside of you, and the problem still is within.

Now, this is the exact same thing I talk to when I talk to business owners. As many of you know, I’m a business lifestyle coach. That’s just a fancy way of saying, “I help people live the life of their dreams, but I use the business as the vehicle because I’ve done it successfully myself.” I help them live the life of their dreams through that.

I have a client recently, and he was just like, “Doug, give me the tips and tactics. I want the shortcuts. I want to know exactly what I need to do. Do I need to do stand-up meetings? Do I need to scale my business? What do I need to do to be successful? You’ve done it before. Tell me.” What I told him was something very simple, and I’m going to share that with you. Nothing I tell you tactically is going to help you run your business successfully over the long haul until you work on your inner game first. Now, it took me a while to figure this out myself, and I’ve spent tons of time, and tons of mon , and tons of resources to learn and to develop and work the inner game. That’s what I’m going to tell you.

The best tip I can give you on your business is make sure you’re working on your inner game. Where does that start? That starts with your 5 to Thrive. That is a holistic process to make sure all the wheels on the bus, all the wheels on the successful journey that you’re on, are inflated fully. Now, it’s five wheels, I get it. But it’s five because that’s the holistic number, but the analogy of making sure everything’s moving smoothly. If one part of those five, your relationships, maybe it’s your body, maybe it’s your mind, your spirit, if one of those falters, the whole things eventually crumbles. Just like a car running down the road, one tire blows, yeah, you can still move forward. It’s going to be bumpy, but eventually the axle breaks down and that car just breaks down. Now, that car is you, or your business for example. That’s why the inner game is so important. Don’t be like the business guy who loses his keys in his house and then goes outside to try to find them. Don’t do that.

What I want you to do is pull out your journal, grab your 5 to Thrive. Write it down. Your mind, your body, your soul, your relationships, and your business. Where in those 5 to Thrive are you looking outside of yourself? Not for information. Information and mentorship and guidance is great, but where are you looking outside yourself for shortcuts, for tips, or just really things that aren’t going to align you with your vision? Where are you looking for just tactics when you should be looking on your inner game? Now, I want you to write that down, and then come up with an idea. Come up with a strategy. Come up with a strategy to actually help you find your car keys, or fix your heart pain, or whatever it is, that you can actually work in that inner game, and work on it systematically.

This is a journey. This is not just a destination. This is something that you always do. That’s why I have a coach. That’s why I continue to take classes to keep bettering myself. That’s also why we’re offering the Author of Your Own Story University, where you’ll have a structured system that you can go through each and every month, focusing on one topic so it can be hyper-focused and guided, to continue you on your journey working on your inner game. Yeah, there’s tactics. Yeah, there’s things that get to get done. There are things that have worked that are better than others that I have found with communication in business, with meeting structures, with finance, whatever that mean. Those things still get to get done, but really what gets to happen is your inner game.

Now, if you’re not a business owner, this still applies to you. This applies to you if you’re a student. This applies to you if you’re a stay-at-home father or mother, or whatever’s going on in your life. Take these same applications. I use business. It works for me, it works for my clients, and that’s what I use to create that lifestyle for them. I’ll keep using those analogies, but take whatever analogy you want and apply it to your life, because this is your story. You are the author of your own story. You have the opportunity of writing into that story whatever you want. But I’m also can tell you, based on all the people that I’ve worked with, and I’ve worked with thousands of people over the years, that working on your inner game never hurts. It always pays dividends over time. There’s no risk. You just work on yourself. You’re bettering yourself. Sometimes there’s financial or time obligations that come into that, and that’s up for you to decide. But working on yourself can only pay dividends in the future. It can only help you on your path to becoming truly the author of your own story.

If you like these daily growth hacks, it would mean the world to us if you would take a moment to subscribe and review us on iTunes!

Just yesterday, I was on a call with one of my competitors and it’s a younger version of myself is what I would say. It’s a younger man and he’s a hustler. He’s doing a great job and he’s running a marketing agency. He’s actually running a marketing agency that’s targeting the niche that one of my businesses is going after. Now, this is a competitor, but at the same time, I’ve always believed in synergies and building synergies with competitor’s and with other people. When we were talking with him, he stopped me, and he said at the end of the conversation, he said, “Doug, let me ask you one more question if you don’t mind. I’m building my team. I’m building my team all over the world, and you’ve done this successfully. What is one piece of advice? What’s the best piece of advice you could give me?”

I thought that was interesting. I thought for a second and, of course, initially, I was like one piece of advice. I have been doing this for 15 years. I don’t have one thing that you should do and I actually told him that. But if I were to pick my biggest learning lesson, my biggest learning lesson in building a team and not only remotely, but a team in person would be one thing. That would be communication.

What I mean by communication is as business owners, especially entrepreneurs, we have a tendency to set a vision, put our heads down and just get to work. We get to work day in, day out, we can grind it out like no other. Then we pick our heads up, we look around and we’re suddenly confused that maybe somebody on the team has a question or they’re not as clear on the vision. See, that’s the constant communication. As business owners, we see the vision so clearly. We see it in our heads and maybe we communicate it clearly, but we forget to keep communicating it to our team over and over again because it’s not their vision.

Now they may have a shared vision or something similar, but the vision in our head isn’t theirs. As a business owner, what I was suggesting to him is, “Hey, look. Yes. Build your team. Build the systems. Build everything you need in business. Business fundamentals apply whether you’re running a virtual business or a brick and mortar.” One thing that’s a little bit different virtually is it can be a little bit more difficult to communicate on a regular basis.

Now especially if you’re working with a virtual team across multiple cultures, because now you have cultural differences, language differences, and religious differences, right? Then, of course, time zones. How do you do that? My solution is over communication. What I told him specifically, because I said, “Treat each person on your team like a person.” All too often when I work with business owners or somebody that’s running a virtual team, now they may have one virtual team member and that virtual team member could be just down the street or it could also be someone from another country. They treat them like a commodity. They treat that person like a dollar sign and they really don’t think about what’s going on in their lives. They don’t know anything about their families, the relationships, or what’s going on in their hometowns.

I sent alerts for all our virtual staff where they live and so I’m reading the news. I get an alert if there’s some kind of catastrophe or something happens in the news so I can reach out to them. I also try my best to communicate to my team what the vision is and running multiple businesses, a lot of times, things are pivoting on a regular basis. I might see another opportunity or something else might open up, whatever it maybe. My job is to communicate them. Now I don’t communicate everything to them because I don’t need to dump five businesses worth of information on them every single week, but I do need to communicate to them the general vision and where they play into that future. Not only will they play into that future, but how does it relate to them as individuals and allowing them to be the author of their own story.

I hope everybody on my team stays with me for the rest of their lives and we have a great working family. I also realize that may not be their dream and so I’m here to help them be the author of their own story. Now sometimes it’s hard because when you go that deep into a business relationship, it gets really personal and you start to miss people. If somebody leaves, it hurts your feelings. It’s like a bad breakup. But at the same time, if you’re communicating with them on a regular basis and you know that individual’s goal, maybe their two-year plan is to transition and start their own business.

Now if you heard me before, you know I don’t think most people should run their own business. It is just something that it’s been sold to us over and over again, but for the average person, it’s really just going after their dreams inside of a business, being an intrapreneur and that’s really what I try to promote. But even if someone was trying to be an entrepreneur and start their own company, I’d want to help them get there. Of course, they have to do their work and is a part of the communication. But what I was telling this gentleman was … I was like, “Look, you need to set the standards, set your systems, but also communicate on a regular basis.” Yes, put your head down, get your work done. You’ve got to. At the end of the day, you’re an entrepreneur. You’ve got to get stuff done.

Now this applies if you’re a student too, right? If you’re a student, you need to get your work done as well. I know I have a lot of students that listen to this, but as an entrepreneur and a business owner, really what you want to do is look up, communicate with your staff on at least a weekly basis, if not a daily. Now obviously standup meetings are kind of the norm for virtual businesses of scale, where you have a quick meeting where you meet via video and just talk real briefly. It’s a yes-no type situation, where are you, are you stuck, move on.

I’d like to take it a step further. I have my staff file, what I call, a 5-15 document. In that document, it’s supposed to take 15 minutes to write, five minutes to read. In that document, I ask them what’s going on, what’s the biggest struggle, what are they doing to better themselves. I read every single one of them. Often times it brings smiles to my face and sometimes some tears. I had one the other day. It was a tear of joy because the daily growth hacks that we record here, our staff was listening to, and our staff was applying them to their lives not only to just do what they were doing within their business, but also what they were doing outside with their families and things that they were nurturing, and sharing with me their visions through the Author of Your Own Story Brand.

Now these are people that have worked with other companies of mine, so they weren’t even involved in the Author of Your Own Story brand, but really they shared in the same vision that I have of providing information and making the world a better place by allowing others to live the author of their own story. In short, if you’re running a business right now, most of us, most of the listeners here are business owners or someone who wants to become a business owner. If you’re running a business now, where are you not communicating, where are the gaps of communication? Does everybody in your company understand your vision? Equally as importantly, do you know their vision? Do you know what they want out of the job? Yeah, they want money. Got it. Yeah, they want time off. Got it. [inaudible 00:07:01] whatever. What do they really, really want and what’s going on in their lives?

You and I know just as much as anybody else. If our relationships are going bad, our work goes bad. If our health goes bad, eventually our work goes bad. But if our work goes bad, all those others, you know, it’s the five to thrive. We chose the five to thrive for a very, very good reason. It is it’s extremely holistic. One of those five could fall out of place, the other ones topple down too. Knowing and communicating with your team on a regular basis really helps you not only better them, but also your own business. Do it from a selfish reason if you want to. For me, it’s selfish only because my goal and my passion is helping other people, and teaching them to be the author of their own story. That’s what drives me. That’s what gets me up early in the morning. That’s what … Really, the passion that enlightens me is teaching and sharing what I’ve learned with other people.

Anyway, that’s a rant, but I hope you get something from it. George, if you’re watching this, again, man, you’re doing a great job and I look forward to creating some synergy with you, but pick your head up, look around and make sure you’re communicating with your team on a regular basis and treat them like people. Love them deeply, cherish them. These are people just like anybody else and they deserve your respect as well as your time. That’s it for me today. As always, go over to AuthorOfYourOwnStory.com. If you haven’t gotten our newsletter, there’s tons of great advice, tips, and tricks that are coming out on a daily basis. I love hearing the responses from each and every one of you that write back. It absolutely fills me up, so I appreciate it.

Remember, build your tribe, build your tribe, your community. Share this with, at least, three other people today. Just share it with them and start the conversation. Start having conversations at a higher level, so you can not only better yourself, but better those around you. That’s it for me today. Go out and be the author of your own story.

If you like these daily growth hacks, it would mean the world to us if you would take a moment to subscribe and review us on iTunes!

So protect your time. One of the things that commonly happens is you get more and more successful, as you become more and more the author of your own story and are actually out there producing results and people are watching this happen, you’re living your life. What happens is people want more of your time. They want more of you. They want more of what you have. These are the demands upon your time are gonna become greater than ever. If you’re a business owner, this is very, very true, because people not only want your lifestyle they always want to know how to do your business. And so your demands are gonna be great, not only from your staff and your team but also the people around you. So, that can be friends but acquaintances, I mean, I get messages all the time and I’m not popular by any means.

So, by being your author of your own story, this is gonna happen to you too. And what I want to do is, you want to make sure you have a sacred time, a sacred hour. I call it the hour of power that I got from Tony Robbins and I just call it that now, it’s totally different. But, having that sacred time and I’ve actually expanded my sacred time quite a bit. So as of this recording I actually don’t communicate with people via chat or email any time before 10 a.m. or any time after 4 p.m. and I’ve condensed that with my team from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. is when they can bring issues to me. Now, of course, emergencies are totally different. They all have access to get emergencies. I’ve gone another step where I’ve actually put on my iPhone, and I’m sure you can do this Android, the do not disturb. So I have the do not disturb setting set to do not disturb me before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m.

Now, the reason I did this is I wanted to get away. I was having Facebook on one screen. LinkedIn on another screen. I had HootSuite, which is monitoring all my social profiles. I had email messages streaming in. Text messages. Phone calls. This was taking up my whole day. I estimate that I was spending about 90% of my working day putting out fires for other people and at the end of that time, then at the end of the day I had time to myself to focus on me. And even worse than that I was burned out and then I’d go see my family and it just didn’t work for me. So I put this protection in place and my energy is abundant, my focus is abundant. Now, I work before 10 a.m., I get up at 5 in the morning. I love what I do. I love producing. So, I work but I have focus time now. I take my hour.

So, a dedicated hour. This is where I’m gonna ask you to start with. Just an hour. Carve it out. Wake up an hour earlier. You can do it, all you have to do is go to bed an hour earlier, it’s not that difficult. I heard this all the time as an excuse in the fitness field but it really isn’t hard to do. So, wake up an hour earlier and set aside that time. That is your sacred time.

Now, what I will also want you to do is communicate this with the people around. So if you have a partner, you’re in a relationship, your family, let them know you’re doing this and just say, “Hey. This is something I’m testing out for myself.” And I’m not asking you to stick to this but test it out. What I say, just make sure it works for you and that’s what I always do when I get advice or opinions from experts, is I test it out. Some things work for me and some things don’t and that’s great. But, test it out for yourself and I think you’re gonna find that this hour of sacred time, an hour of power, or whatever you want to call it.

Your protected hour is an hour where you’re gonna get massive clarity on things that have been circling in your head. You got time to meditate. Now, and if you don’t meditate just take time in silence to think or time just to sit and be still. You can do a walking meditation, which is something I’m often doing and read something, listen to a book. This is a great time to get the daily growth hack out that we’re talking about and your journal. So you can write down the thoughts you have, what those action steps are, and take action. Stop being one of those people that just listens and listens and takes in information but never acts. You know, there’s too many of those out there and I used to be one of them. So, I’m asking you to take massive action and part of this today is take that hour.

Take that hour and put things in that hour that fill your soul up. Fill you up. That can be going outside, that can be meditating, it could be exercising. I try to keep my exercise outside of my hour for power because I think it’s so important but also exercise gives me so much more and that hour of sacred time gives me that focus that I can’t really do while exercising. You know, it’s just a different kind of focus. I can’t produce or write while I’m working out. If I could that would be a pretty lame workout, but you get the idea. So set aside that sacred time, that sacred time for you and communicate with everybody. Communicate with your loved ones and let them know you’re not setting them aside you’re simply set aside an hour for yourself so you can come back better and fill them better.

I can tell you, my staff, my coworkers, my friends, my wife, they can all tell you that I’ve expanded this hour of power or this sacred time to multiple hours and when I talk to them or when I help them, I am able to pour into them at such a greater level. I’m able to be present. I have ideas. I’m able to sort through their problems quickly and it’s also trained them to figure out their problems on their own. You see, what happened is my messages from me got cut down. People that knew I was setting aside this sacred time all of a sudden stopped messaging me. At 10 o’clock, I got on at 10 and I expected a hundred questions to come my way immediately and they didn’t. You know why? ‘Cause they had to power themselves. They were empowered by me not being available to solve their problems to solve them themselves and took care of them. And guess what, my team is way smarter than I am and so the things that they were taken care of just became better. They weren’t just my ideas or my solutions to issues.

So, in your own life, you could be the manager of your family. Same thing. What are the other solutions they can solve by you taking time for your sacred time?

That’s it for me today. Have a great day and remember to go out and be the author of your own story.

If you like these daily growth hacks, it would mean the world to us if you would take a moment to subscribe and review us on iTunes!

Today’s topic: listener Q&A. .Now, this question comes in from listener Keith. Keith asks, “Hey Doug. I love the podcast. I’ve been listening to it since the very beginning and I’m all caught up. I listen to them during my workouts and absolutely love them. Keep them going.” Thanks, Keith. “My question is, I am actually wanting to get my family involved and have them listening to this, but I just can’t get them engaged. I recently found that you have these videos on YouTube and they’re actually extremely dynamic. I want to get these videos to them, but I don’t know how to show them other than getting them all around the computer. Any suggestions?”

Well Keith first of all, thanks for listening. These videos created, I have this, this is my office, so it’s a blank background and I try to shoot these while I’m traveling, so I really got to give it to my team; to Darcy, to Billy, to Ken. They make this actually worth watching and yes, they are on YouTube and other channels as well because we want to give everybody the ability to watch or listen or read these wherever they want to, so you can get the most from it. What could you do, to answer your question? Well, there’s a couple things. One is you can go over to YouTube and actually cast it to your TV. If you have Chromecast, that’s what I use. I actually use my iPhone and I will go to YouTube and I’ll select the videos that I want and select them in a playlist and I’ll cast them to the TV.

Now, oftentimes when I’m with my wife or with some other people, we’ll actually come up with a whole playlist that we want for that evening and cast it. The reason we do this is, well one, is we don’t like traditional TV as much. Two, we want educational stuff playing in the background whenever possible if it’s not music or something lively. Something else you could do is get an HDMI cord. An HDMI cord connected to your laptop or your computer, and plug that into your TV set or your sound system depending on what you’re doing. There’s Apple TV of course, and Samsung’s got some smart TVs you can do.

Something some other people have done in the past, and I’ll say other people, but what some people do is they actually download the videos so they can make sure they’re in high definition. I’ve been guilty of this in the past. In fact, I download a lot from YouTube so I can take it traveling, or if I have something that I’m learning or if there’s a particular person that I’m following and I want to catch up or go back and listen or watch something on my own terms so I don’t have to worry about bandwidth issues.There’s a couple

There’s a couple websites you could use, and I’m just going to throw out ones I’ve used. No endorsements for any of these. I’m sure I’m violating some YouTube rules of engagement here maybe, but I’m not sure. Ther are Chrome apps you can use. One I use is KeepVid. I use that, it’s a website you can go to and you can actually take the YouTube URL, pop it right in there. Also, Clip Converter. I use Clip Converter quite often. If you know anything about coding on a website, you can pretty much grab any video. Now of course, don’t steal videos. Only use videos you paid for or are free that are out there. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, at least for me, to download a video and watch it later, if it’s a free video or if it’s a video, you purchased a course or something.

Again, to answer your question, what I would do personally, if you want to use these Daily Growth Hacks for example, and use them with your family, I think that’s awesome and it really touches my heart that you’re doing that. What I would do is get the video, get people ready, get them on the couch, and then cast it from your phone. Chromecast is what I use. Of course you got Apple TV. I don’t think you can use Amazon, but check that out. I don’t use the Amazon, I think it’s the Amazon Fire adapter you can do. Of course, you got HDMI cords. You could also hook up an HDMI cord if you get there if you don’t have a smart TV and get them.

When you get your family around and you get people talking about this, talk about the subjects. Do the work. Do the exercises at the end, and ask your family how are things going in their Five to Thrive. Teach them the holistic portions of life. This is a great chance for you, it sounds like you’re a father, for you as a father to be a mentor and a supporting husband as well. If you’re a mother listening to this, it’s the same thing, but anybody bringing your clan, your tribe together to grow, whether it be these Daily Growth Hacks or something else, I think it’s extremely important. I think that’s what brings community together and it makes our world just a better place.

Great question, thanks for writing that in, and we’ll try to do more of these Q&As. I get tons of them. I probably get about 10 to 15 of these a day, and I’ll try to answer them. The best place to ask these is the Author of Your Own Story group on Facebook. That is just the absolute best place, because not only I will get to them so I won’t be the stop gap, but we have an amazing team, and that team can get to them.

As well, there are tons of other coaches that are in that group contributing, other experts in the business community, the fitness community, you name it. We have a couple meditation teachers that are in there. If you have questions, ask them in there and you’re going to get some expert advice and get advice from the community. That’s what really, this is all about and that’s what started me on this mission. Really what I want to do is impact over one million people in a positive way to make our world a better place. That’s my goal. One way you can do that is by just contributing and being part of that.

I’m going to ask you to do this, and Keith this is for you too. Just share this with three people you want in your tribe. Three people you want to have deeper conversations like we’re having right now. Three people that you want to share this with, and just talk to them about it. Maybe just, “Hey, check this out, I’m listening to this or I’m watching this or I’m reading this, and I want your opinion.” That would mean a lot to me and it would mean a lot to me to bring your group together. It’s something we’re working on internally of how we can establish these conversations in a community environment to help you and hope that works.

If you like these daily growth hacks, it would mean the world to us if you would take a moment to subscribe and review us on iTunes!

The topic of finances and money causes a lot of stress for most people, and we haven’t talked about a lot in these daily growth hacks, but we’ll be talking about it a lot more, and the reason is is because I want you to have the freedom that I’ve experienced around finances, and it took a long time, but one of those things was determining my financial legacy, and I’m going to ask you what yours is.

When I talk about your financial legacy, I’m not talking about a lump sum of cash that you leave behind after you pass this world, not at all. What I’m talking about is what is the legacy you want to leave where you’re able to do things with other people and the people that you love. You see, we just had a newborn. My wife wanted to get out of town, just to get out of the house. Here we are at a beautiful beach house overlooking the ocean, and we’re here for a week.

Another example I can give you is Lisa Nichols tells a story. Lisa tells a story about her and her son, when they didn’t have a lot of money, and they would get in the kitchen and cook together and make it fun because they couldn’t afford to go out, and she would be his sous-chef, and when she started working and coming up with this vision of her financial legacy, she was actually able to take her and her son to Italy to Cordon Bleu School and cook with master chefs where he was able to learn the tools and techniques to become a professional chef, and they laughed about it, looking back and remembering those days in the kitchen. Maybe you want to go out to the islands and sail on your yacht and take your family.

These all require financial assets or financial stability, so what is your financial legacy? What’s a legacy you want to leave? What do you want to be able to do with your family, your loved ones, your friends? Where do you want to take them? What options do you want to have? I have friends that actually take their families on vacations every quarter, and they always fly first-class. This might seem like an extravagance to some and just every day to others, but the reason they do it is they want to experience that luxury together and have that time where they’re relaxed by the time they land. First-class to them isn’t about just champagne and watching movies. It’s about being rested by the time you land at your location. In order to do that, he had to create a financial legacy, a way of having enough finances so when his family of five wanted to travel, he could just go online and buy first-class tickets and not worry about what the price was.

To me, having a financial legacy means financial freedom. I’m going to ask you today, grab your journal, what is the financial legacy you want to do? Do your kids want to play soccer and you could take them to professional soccer matches in Europe? Does your daughter want to be a ballerina and you can take her to the ballet? You want to take her friends all to one concert and sit VIP? I don’t know. It’s up to you. Remember, this is your story. Financial legacy to me simply means the ability to do those things that I want when I want to do them and be able to take my loved ones with me.

Write down what your financial legacy is. I want you to get clear on it because that’s how you achieve the results. Write this down and post it someplace that you can look at it every single day. By having a financial legacy, this will allow you to step into your story and be more of the author of your own story.

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Now today I had an interesting conversation. Just like I coach people at high levels, I have my own coach that I work with. Now, this coach allows me to see the forest from trees and often in conversations a lot comes up. You see, I always am interested in canceling because I got it all handled. In this conversations, what came up for me was the topic of self-sacrifice.

I was talking to my coach, and we were talking about what was going on. I’m building a new business. I’m here in Santa Barbara traveling with my family. I have a lot going on, and I’ve been waking up early in the morning to answer other people’s questions, to answer your questions for the daily growth hacks, to help Author of Your Own Story University not only get off the ground but excel and make it the best program possible. The one thing I haven’t been doing is taking care of me. Now with all this talk and coaching that I’ve been doing, I’ve neglected myself. Now, this has happened before, and it’s going to happen again. It’s a pattern that I need to break. It’s a pattern of self-sacrifice.

For me, I want to make sure you’re happy before I take care of myself. I want to make sure my wife has what she wants before I think about what I need. This goes with my friends, my staff, everybody around me. It’s in my nature, but what this prevents is it prevents me from operating at my best and filling their cups and filling them out of me. You see, what happens is I’m answering emails. On the other hand, I have a cellphone answering a phone call and putting out other people’s problems while trying to get dinner ready for friends coming over and taking care of something else, and it stresses me out.

Not only does it stress me out, but it ends up with me resenting the people around me because they’re not helping me do it. That’s not their fault. I trained them to do this. I was self-sacrificing, subconsciously but still self-sacrificing, and then resenting the others. When it came time to have time with my friends that were coming over and with my family, I had nothing left. I was completely drained. Yeah, I solved 50 problems within an hour, good for me, but the reality was I was self-sacrificing and then when it came down to what I really needed or what I wanted to achieve, which was a connection with the people that I care the most about, I was drained. I had nothing to give.

Now it reminds me and as I share this story with you about myself, how often are you doing this? Are you a mom that’s self-sacrificing because you’re trying to take care of your kids and your family? Maybe you’re a father who is working his tail off at work, going into work early, staying late, so he can take care of his family so they can have everything they want, but you’re missing out on those magical moments. Maybe you’re a student. Maybe you’re a student who’s self-sacrificing for your roommates and making sure you’re driving them around or taking care of them. Maybe you’re just doing this for your friends.

Maybe you don’t want to go out on Friday night because you want to better yourself, but you know your friend is lonely. You go out to the bars. You go out to the clubs to take care of them while neglecting yourself. You see, I believe we all do this to some levels, and we’re all working on this, and we’re all working on bettering ourselves, just like I am. That’s why I have a coach, and that’s why I coach people. This is a pattern that we can get into, and seeing that pattern for itself allows us to escape it. I’m going to ask you today is grab out your journal, write down your five to thrive.

That’s your mind, your body, your soul, your relationships, and your business, and where in those areas are you self-sacrificing? Where are you draining yourself to fill other people up rather than filling your own cup so it spills over into others? I can tell you from my personal experience that this is a habit that I need to break and something that I keep going through in a normal cycle. Every time I break out of this cycle, everybody around me is happier. I’m able to achieve at a greater level, and I’m able to help them at a larger level because I’ve taken care of myself. You know they say you can’t love anybody else till you love yourself, but that’s the same with actually helping people. You can’t help others until you’ve totally and fully taken care of yourself.

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