Meaning Equals Emotion and Emotion Equals Life
Now, when you think about it, every day we make things mean something. Listening to this Daily Growth Hack, or watching this on video, you’re associating a meaning. A meaning not only to what I’m saying, but a meaning to you, and to how you’re interacting with this audio, video, or what’s coming out. What does it mean to you?
Accountability Partners and Rocket Booster Friends
Rocket booster friends, as Lisa Nichols calls them, who I love by the way, and if you get a chance look up Lisa Nichols if you’re not familiar with her. Also, accountability partners. That’s a word I use in my coaching and just in my daily life. What’s the importance of having these people in your life? Well, accountability partners are those people that are going to keep you on the path. They’re the people that are going to give you encouragement on your journey to becoming the author of your own story.
What’s The Deal With Daily Affirmations?
This is a reader’s question or a listener’s question, I should say. One of the questions that came in was, “Doug, what’s the deal with daily affirmations? Are they a joke? Are they real? Should I be doing them, or should I just throw them out the window? There’s so much conflicting information out there.”
What Are Your Rules?
So I was at an event many, many years ago, and a gentleman came up on stage, and he was talking about how lonely he was. In fact, he was so lonely that he had contemplated committing suicide. Obviously, nothing to joke about, and I’m certainly joking about it here. But what actually turned out as result of his feelings was funny. What happened was they were talking to him, and they said, “Hey look, why do you feel so lonely? Why do you want to kill yourself?”
Rainmakers Always Have a Seat At The Table
I was recently talking to a tech entrepreneur, and they were doing great. But the problem that they were having is, they didn’t have a consistent cash flow coming in. They’re marketing was working, their processes were working, but sales just didn’t seem to be happening. It seemed to be happenstance. And when we were having a conversation I asked him, “Do you have a rainmaker on your team?” And he said, “What is that?” Well, a rainmaker in business or in sales is commonly someone who is able to make it rain. They’re able to consistently bring in new business, new leads, and new sales consistently to your business line.
Giving Birth
Not too long ago, my wife was pregnant, and I saw her carry our child for over 10 months. Now, this was a long journey, and my wife is so incredibly strong. For all you women out there that have had children, I have nothing but respect for you.
I mean, it was a painful process. Here she is, and she’s got extra weight. She happens to be incredibly fit, but she’s got extra weight carrying around. Her hormones are changing, and now she’s going to give birth to this baby that’s inside of her. It’s just an amazing process. It still blows my mind today. Then after this birth, the love, the absolute love and admiration for our little boy, which is so huge. Right? It’s so worth it. The sleepless nights, the last month almost, where both of us aren’t sleeping much, and right now not sleeping very much as it is because we have a 14-week-old. But still, it’s just absolutely amazing. Wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
Good is the Enemy of Great
Hey, how are you doing today? What most people will respond is, “I’m doing okay,” or “I’m doing good.” I’m here to tell you, as the Author of Your Own Story, good is the enemy of great. Why? Well, you already know that your physiology affects the way you do things, right? If you’re slumped over, you’re down, it makes you depressed. They’ve done studies that just by putting your shoulders back and smiling for over 30 days can clear depression. Now, how crazy is that? Of course, yeah, you can take drugs, and there are all kinds of things to cure clinical depression, but they did a study, just your body’s physiology.
The Art of Dabbling
The art of dabbling. Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not an art at all. When you dabble, you actually don’t go anywhere. You can’t focus.
You’ve heard that saying, jack of all trades, but master of none. Well, that happens in our lives too, our careers. We seem to always dabble at that shiny new object. And if you’re an entrepreneur like me, it’s easy to get caught up in that. But how often are we dabbling in our own lives? I realized this in school, and you see this often, while you’re taking a history class has no relation to the English class you’re taking the next hour, which has no relationship to the math class you’re taking the hour after that. There’s no linear progress, you’re just dabbling in these subjects, year after year, as you’re building them on.
What’s Your Frame of Reference?
A frame of reference. What it is, is what is your frame of reference of what’s acceptable or what your standards are? Now, oftentimes, we set our standards subconsciously a lot lower than we think. It really takes some diving into, some deep diving to see what that is. Now, something happened to me the other day. I told someone, “You know, I’m going to get up. I’m going to go to the gym because that’s what I do.” They thought, “Well, man, Doug. You’re just not sleeping as well. You got a new born. You got a new business. You got other businesses that you’re running. You moved your location. Give yourself some slack. Something’s got to give.” Well, you see, their frame of reference was different than mine when it comes to the body. My frame of reference was, “I’m going to get up, and I’m going to do this,” because, for me, it’s not acceptable not to
Someday
Someday, I’m going to go to Africa. Someday, I’m actually going to travel overseas. Someday, I’m going to run a 10K. Someday, I’m going to start my own business and it’s going to be millions of dollars coming in. Someday, I’m going to meet the perfect man or woman. Someday, I’m going to take time out of my day and meditate and really center myself. Someday, I’m going to be present. Someday, I’m going to meet the President of the United States. When is someday?
Taking Responsibility for the Way the Other Person Feels
Today I’m gonna talk about relationships. And what I’m gonna talk about are more romantic relationships, although this can be applied across the board. This could be applied to friendships and co-workers, and business, an employee, or maybe a boss depending on where you’re working, and also just friends. So just any interpersonal relationship.
Often times what happens, especially in our daily life, we have things coming at us all the time. We have text messages, phone calls, emails, the TV’s on, the radio’s on. We’re always constantly being stimulated. Often times, that affects our communication. The reason it affects our communication is often times things are said and misinterpreted. This can happen by text messages or chats, often, because you can’t hear the emotion that somebody is sending through. You can really misinterpret that.
Who Takes The Final Shot In Your Life?
I was watching a video by Eric Thomas and if you haven’t heard Eric Thomas speak or watched him before, go do it. Search for him on YouTube, he’s also got an album on Amazon Music Unlimited, go check it out, I highly recommend it. Eric was talking about Steph Curry and taking the final shot. Now I’ll try to relate the story to you the best that I can. I’m going to go for this from memory, so excuse me if I get some of the stats wrong, but the general point, you’ll get it.
Changing the Way You Look At Things
Now, when you change the way you look at things, the way you look at things actually changes. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, if you’re always a grump person, or if you’re always assuming things are gonna go bad, you start to notice all the bad things in life. All the bad things are happening in your mind, your body, your soul, your relationships, your business.
Conversely, if you always expect the best, you’re always looking for the good in people, you see the good in your Five to Thrive as well as all around you. Now, I know this sounds a little abstract to many of you, so let me use an analogy that I use time and time again that really, I think, drive it home. Have you ever found yourself really interested in a car? Now for me, several years ago, it was Sprinter vans. I wanted a 4×4 Sprinter van so I could convert it into my ultimate off-road lifestyle vehicle. Where I could work from, I could play from, and travel the world.
The Business Owner and The Lost Set of Keys
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.”
Business Advice To My Younger Self
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?”
Patience
The question came up today, for me, and it was actually from one of our staff members. They were saying, “Doug, I’d love to hear a daily growth hack on patience,” and what they meant by patience, once we got some clarification, was patience regarding waiting for something. Maybe it’s a baby, or a relationship, or a promotion, or something along those lines, like, “I’m just working on my patience, what can I do?”
Now, when thinking about patience, there’s a lot of things to consider here. One is expectations versus possibilities. Now, a lot of times when your patience is wearing thin, so you’re not having patience, things aren’t coming as quickly as you’d like to, that’s because your expectation is up here. You’ve set an expectation really high. You expect something to happen by a certain time, so that expectation isn’t being met. Therefore, you’re running out of patience. You’re running out of time. You’ve expected something. You’ve expected the cable guy to get there by 2:00 PM. You’ve expected to get that promotion by your 30-day review. You’ve expected to have a child with your partner within the first year.
Permission to Fail
As you are becoming the author of your own story you really need to give yourself permission to fail and permission not to succeed. Now, of course, you want to succeed and you should be striving for that, but you need to give yourself permission to fail because if you don’t you won’t jump. You won’t jump forward. You won’t take that great leap or even that first step that’s necessary to become the author of your own story.
Now, almost all the clients I’ve worked with when I’m coaching them they all have this fear. They all have a fear around something; something around their five to thrive. Often times that’s business and relationships, but it could be something different, or whatever it is for you. The body comes up often as well. What it is is a fear the fear to actually take that leap, to take that job, because you what if I fail. What if I don’t succeed? What are people going to think of me? What are people going to say? Am I ever going to be able to show my face in this group or with my friends or my family again? Or am I going to lose my house? Am I going to lose my money?
Demands On Your Time
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.
