Learn how to reach self-actualization by focusing on your inner circle success.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, where my goal is to give you 10-minute lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones.
In today’s episode, I’m going to talk about the importance of working on your spiritual self and this the last thing that comes together official. And when I say spiritually, I mean self-actualization. You know who you want to be as a person, and you’re being the person you want to be because you know your goals, your values, and your principles. Once you reach self-actualization it really is a life-changer. You’re able to persevere through adversity, you won’t feel aimless about life because you’ll know your purpose, and you’re going to live a much more fulfilling life.
When it comes to working your spiritual self, the first thing you need to do is figure out who want to be as a person. This comes from experimenting with your life and I did a lot of experiments with my life. I grew up in a small town in Oregon with lots of farms so I wasn’t expose that many different jobs. I don’t even remember what my friend’s parents did for the most part. All I knew was that I wanted to get a good paying job that can provide me a good living since I had two parents that worked blue collar jobs and money was tight at times, so I want to put myself in a position where I had to expose myself to those type of times. So I worked hard at schooling and knew I needed a college education to give me an advantage in the workforce. So this caused me to go into the Marines to pay for my educations.
In the Marines, I was exposed to a lot of different people, especially Latinos. I’m half-Mexican and didn’t really know that much about Latin culture except for my ocassional trip down to Oaxaca, Mexico to see my abuelos but didn’t really learn that much since I didn’t speak Spanish. So I made some friends that were Latinos and I learned the ways of the Marine Corps and learned their leadership principles and how environments can become political, I also had the chance to travel to Okinawa, Japan and Iraq. Being in those cultures exposed me to how people can live outside of the United States. I remember Iraq being so hot and wondering how people can live here. People are born into that situation for the most part.
Then I went to college and got a degree in public health because I thought I was going to become a physcial therapist, then that didn’t work out because I didn’t do well in Chemistry. Then I thought I was going to become a economist because I sucked at my GRE. Then I got into financial planning. The reason I got into financial planning was because I took a personal finance class in high school. Once I was exposed to stocks, it taught me that I need to start investing for my future. Money has been something I’ve interested in because I went to a school where some kids were really well off, way more than me. I wanted to have what they had one day, I also knew that I didn’t want to be broke in retirement. My parents went bankrupt while I was in high school and it served as a lesson that I need to do something to improve my finances in the future, so I was always interested in reading Kiplinger Magazine and keeping a budget, but I also liked to spend so my budget always looked weak but I’ve been investing since I was 20 years old. Then when I got to DC and started to meet other friends that were Latino, I asked them about their 401ks and they didn’t know what they were doing. So that why I choose financial advising. I love it because I get to help people out so they don’t get to retirement and become a burden on their kids. This is something that I saw that created a lot of stress on their kids, especially when they have their own children to think about. After a while of doing financial planning, I realized that you need to be strong in other parts of your life, in order to start taking care of your finances, like have a good job so you have money to invest. Or be strong emotionally so that you don’t waste your money on useless stuff, or mentally strong so you can get a good job. There are many different factors that cause financial success. So that’s why I am in the process of turning Grow With Joe, into a Fee for Service financial planning firm that combines financial planning with development coaching.
It took me a lot of experimenting to get to this point but I feel really good about the direction that I am heading in. But to get to this point, I had to say yes to a lot of uncomfortable things to help me be the person I want to be. Working on your physical, mental, and emotional self will help you stay on the path for being the person you want to be. Stop focusing on those areas and the path becomes less clear. It really is a fulfilling life to work on the things you want to work on and to be the person you want to be. I was miserable when I was working at Safeway as a grocery bagger, I was miserable when I was in the Marines, I was miserable as a Federal Employee, and was starting to feel miserable to at my last financial planning firm. Now I am so much happier. When I started those jobs, I was excited but as I learned more, I realized that they didn’t fit my long term goals and I had to live. It would be great if I knew the path that I wanted to go down cause it would save me a lot of time but all those experiences just served as stepping stone for my next adventure.
Reading and listening to podcasts have been amazing in helping me realize what I want to be in life because they expose me to new ideas. Once the idea is my head, I get to decide if I want to keep that idea as a value or principle of my life and see if I need to make some changes for the better. I didn’t realize that it would be so easy to start my own financial planning firm, but if it wasn’t for the Michael Kitces Podcast, I wouldn’t have known it was a possibility. So I take time every day to learn something new and see how I can implement that idea in my life at some point.
Once you reach self-actualization, you can be hit by a bus tomorrow and be fine with it because you did everything you could with the amount of time you were given. I am maximizing my life because I’m doing all the things to get a good life. From here on out, I’m going to give you tips on how to grow yourself as a person and hopefully it will help you on your journey towards self-actualization.
I want to thank you for listening to today’s episode.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
