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?
That meaning equals emotion. It triggers some kind of emotional response within you. For example, if what I’m saying excites you, you get excited, you get the emotion of excitement. Hope probably, enthusiasm. That brings energy inside of you. It not only brings energy inside of you but also radiates out. You can see if somebody’s excited about something, and it’s contagious, right? That emotion, that emotion is part of life, right? You can also say that the emotion is that what brings somebody a truly magnificent life. Not just an ordinary life where you’re humdrum going through your days, it’s actually the emotion that brings the character, the good stuff to life. It’s love, it’s passion, it’s energy, it’s excitement, it’s hope, it’s really getting in there.
You know, also it’s the sadness. Unfortunately, you have to see the valleys and go through the valleys to actually recognize the mountains. If you’re always happy, they call that crazy, right? No one ever is always happy. Now, but you can control things, to a certain degree. That’s the way you associate the meanings to those things that control the emotion. For example, the other day I was hoping to get an email from a client. The client did not email me. Now, I had an option there. I got frustrated, upset, and then I started saying, “Well what does this mean? Is the client mad at me, are they upset, do they not like the service that was I providing?” It was very easy for me to get frantic, anxious, and maybe even depressed, and scared, right?
But I didn’t associate that meaning. The meaning I took from that is, “Hey, the client didn’t get back to me, and therefore I got tons of space and time to do everything else that I wanted to do.” Everything else that was in my journal that I planned on doing that day, and I got excited about it. I flipped it around. Turns out, the client had an emergency. They actually had a tragedy in their own lives that they had to take care of in order to get back to me. Everything worked out fine.
Now, if I would have associated that meaning, so the meaning of despair, “The client isn’t getting back to me ’cause they don’t like me, they don’t like the work, they’re not happy.” Whatever it is, that would spill over to my whole day. I would start panicking, maybe even trying to contact them, trying to figure out what’s going on, talking to my team. I’m like, “Hey, pick up the phone. Hey, what happened? Did something go wrong? Did you hear back from them?” Going back and forth, and then being stressed out, and going and hanging out with my wife, and my child, and just having that stressed out energy that nobody wants to be around. Trust me, nobody wants to be around it ’cause I’ve been in that for years as a young business owner.
I could have gone for that story in the back of my head, and just really been worried about it, consumed. Which also means I wouldn’t be present with anybody I interacted with. Instead, I made it mean nothing. I made it mean, they didn’t email me, that’s just a fact. Okay, whatever. I moved on. I decided to not create a story about that, and then I got excited about the free space that I now had to work on other projects and things that I wanted to work on. I did, and I took that excitement, I took that energy, and I applied it throughout my businesses. I also was able to hang out with my wife and child, be fully present and happy, and joyful about it.
That’s what life is about. Remember when you have to mean, it’s whatever you make that mean, equates to an emotion, and then emotion equates to having an epic Author Of Your Own Story life. What I want you to do is write this equation out in your journal, and write it in big, bold letters, right? Meaning equals emotion. Emotion equals life. Now what I want you to do is think about things that are going on. How are you reacting to what I’m saying right now? What are you making it mean? Is that serving you? Is that serving you as the Author Of Your Own Story? Is that serving you as the person that you want to be, and the person that people want to be around? Does it serve your story?
Now, you can do this through your five to thrive, but what I would really like you to do is every time something is happening, catch it. When you’re writing in your journal, and you should be journaling daily. Most successful people journal on a daily basis, throughout history. In fact, if you go over to the Author Of Your Own Story Facebook page, we shared an article that somebody else wrote. It was shared by one of our members, it’s fantastic, and it talks about people throughout history that are actually using journaling on a daily basis as one of their best ways to get their ideas out of their heads. Like Leonardo Da Vinci for example, or past presidents, or people that you just think about throughout history have been very successful, life changing individuals.
With that said, I want you to be one. I want you to be one of those individuals if you choose to be. I think you are. If you’re taking your time to go through this, you should. You gotta do the work. What I want you to do is when you’re journaling and you’re coming up with something like, “He said this, she said that. He did that, he did this. Someone didn’t do something. This happened to me. I got Doug’s Daily Growth Hacks for Author Of Your Own Story, and we’re almost at episode 100.” I think episode 100 comes out on the 28th of August. Maybe you haven’t been doing the work.
Well, if you haven’t been doing the work, you could feel bad about yourself, and get depressed, and get down, and do whatever it is you do when you get down. Or you could say, “Hey look, I haven’t done the work, but I’m making a choice right now. I recognize this, now I’m going to do the work.” Then get excited about that. That is two different lifestyles. The meaning, emotion, life, right? Meaning equals emotion. Emotion equals life. What I want you to do is start writing it down. Go back to your journal in the past, if you have it. And look at some of those things that you’ve written, and look at the meanings that you’ve associated with those, and then the emotion that’s tied in with that meaning.
Then if it doesn’t serve you, I want you to flip that around. All right, that’s it for me today. Remember, build your tribe. This is your life, you are the Author Of Your Own Story and you need people around you. You need a bigger tribe. Share this with three people right now, right now. Don’t wait. Share it with three people right now that you think could benefit from this, and then go out and be the Author Of Your Own Story.
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