In this episode, we discuss the importance of never taking a day off when it comes to your self-development.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista, where my goal is to give you quick 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 we’re going to talk about why you need to keep growing as a person. First off, I want to tell people, that your biography doesn’t determine who you can be in the future. I was overweight as a kid, I grew up in a mobile home, and I was extremely shy. I say the best thing I ever did was to continuously invest in myself. First I invested in my education by focusing on getting good grades in school and then to voraciously consume books and podcasts after college. Then I invested in my body by making sleep a priority, working out on a routine basis, and to watch what I eat. Then I invested in my emotional self by going to therapy and reading books about emotional intelligence. And then I invested in my spiritual self by writing down my principles and values for life and then putting down goals.
First, you have to understand that time and decay move in the same direction, meaning you don’t put any energy into something, then it’s just going to start decay with time. If you look at a house, where for 30 years no energy was put into, how is that house going to look like after 30 years of neglect? It’s going to look like a mess! The lawn is going to look like a jungle, it’s probably going to have rats and snakes in there, the roof is collapsed, so dusty, and it’s not going to be very valuable.
But imagine another house where for 30 years energy was put into the house. It was cleaned routinely, it was remodeled to fit the times, the lawn was landscaped on a weekly basis, and the roof was replaced before it became a major problem. This house is going to look better than it did 30 years ago and it’s going to be more valuable.
We need to treat our bodies the same way as that house where energy was put into it. How many people do you know who have rats and snakes in their lives because they take care of their mind or body? I know some and it just gives me more motivation to put energy into my body.
There is a saying in business and that if you’re not growing you’re dying, there is no in-between. So when it comes to ourselves, are we growing or are we dying.
I know for myself, I don’t want to be dying. I’ve seen people who don’t put energy into growing themselves and it shows. They are not strong people who can’t take care of themselves. And I’m a big believer that we should work harder on ourselves than we do anything else. We need to learn how to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first.
If you can’t breathe, what can you do in life? You can’t do anything and you will have to play the victim card and wait for somebody to save you. As I said, the worst thing you can do is play the victim card and wait for somebody to come to save you. It’s most likely not going to happen. If I was to wait for somebody to kick my butt into shape, to tell me to study my books, and invest in myself. I might be waiting for a long time.
I do have to mention that I grew up in an environment where there weren’t many distractions that prevented me from getting an education and wasn’t constantly stressed out from a lack of resources. I’m blessed but I could have easily coasted in life and just work at the same grocery store from when I was a teenager but I decided to go into the Marines and pay for my education and learn some leadership skills because I wanted a better future for myself.
Even I graduated college and never read another book again and took another training, I guess I would be fine but I know there would come a point where my lack of investment in myself, would come back to haunt me. I might have high blood pressure and high cholesterol and then have huge medical bills. Or I could have bad relationships with friends and family. Or I might not have saved up for my retirement.
Just because you finished high school or college, doesn’t mean you’re done learning. We have to learn like we are going to live forever. But I feel that the current education system is suited for this new economy. It’s a factory setting. You learn these things in class, they tell you what is going to be on the test, you memorize some facts, and then you brain dump all the materials. In biology, I can’t remember all the terms that I had to memorize, but I can remember how the ecosystem is dependent on different species to perform their roles and how they can interact with each other.
I remember we had to play this one game where the class was split into four groups and we were given a budget and a boat to go fishing. As a group, we could bid on getting one extra ship, and then we had to decide if we want to fish in shallow seas or deep seas. At the end of the round, we got a profit based on the amount of fish we caught, minus our expenses. So what happened is that groups bought more boats and just blitzed all the areas with the most fish. Then what happened is that the fish started going extinct in the areas real quick and what happened is that we all went bankrupt because there were no fish in the seas but we had these ships we had to maintain.
That’s a valuable lesson to learn, it tells you that there are finite resources and that human greed can cause some serious effects. And this is what happened on the East Coast with fishing companies in the past. Those are much better things to learn in school than memorizing certain things. And this is why people hate reading and school because they are forced to learn in a factory setting but I digress.
There is so much good stuff to learn out in the world and it can help up become stronger individuals. I know I don’t want to wake up one day in my 50s and 60s and realize that I wasted a lot of my time not growing myself. I have a choice to focus on myself and I shouldn’t be afraid to tell people I’m taking care of myself. If someone is going to give you flack for taking care of yourself, you should just tell them that your self-care is important to you and it has to be done.
If you don’t take care of yourself, then you will become a burden on somebody because you won’t be able to take care of yourself. You might have to rely on government or charity programs to help you out, friends and family to stop by and help you out for a long period of time. It’s okay if you need help but the problem is when it turns to decades of help and support. We should know how to carry ourselves for the long haul. This will make the world a better place and a more prosperous one. We can start by taking the time to put energy into growing ourselves as people.
Thanks 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.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
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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.
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