Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
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. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how we should treat our lives like we are going on a deployment. To live life like today is your last day can be exhausting. It is true that today might be our last day but most likely we are going to live another day. So don’t rack up all your credit cards and go on that all night alcohol-induced binge because if you do this enough times, then you’re not going to have that great of a future.
What we should do is treat our life like a deployment. I was in the Marines and when I heard this saying, it made so much sense to me. I went to Iraq for seven months, and we had to do a lot of things to prepare for the moment. We had to go through training, we had to make sure our medical and dental information was up to date, we had to make sure our legal stuff was taking care of with our insurance, wills, and power of attorneys, and then we got to go see our family for two weeks before we headed off to Iraq to make sure that we saw them and tell them that everything was going to be okay.
Before you go on a deployment, want to make sure you’ve tied up all the loose ends because if you don’t come home, then you made sure that everything is taken care of and your family can spend more time on grieving than worried that they can’t access their bank accounts to pay for things.
After everything was taken care of, I went on my deployment to Iraq, did my work, and then I came back. Nothing happened to me over there but if something did, I was prepared for it. And this is what you should do with your life, make sure that you’re doing your training and tie up all loose ends before you go on your deployment to accomplish your goal.
I feel like I live a very boring life for the most part. I wake up, I read, I go to the gym, and then I work on my business. This is what I do a major of my days and I love it. But I also make sure to reach out to an old friend for a quick chat over text and I try to make sure I do everything else that I need to do. I have my goals for what I want to accomplish and then I go out and do them to the best of my ability. This gives me a lot of satisfaction and if I was to get hit by a car tomorrow and died, then at least I didn’t everything I could and lived life on my terms with no regrets.
Yeah, it’s cool to go out and party and drink, but you can only do that for so long. Then what happens when the good times end and you have nothing to show for it. Then you’re going to struggle. When it’s time to party, party. But when it’s time to work, then work, which is going to be most of your day. This work can be with handling your family, but it’s your duty to do so. If there is something that needs to be said to someone, then make sure you say something because you might not get that chance again to say it.
You will go out on your deployment, which it could be a day, half-day, or much longer, and for the less than one percent you don’t come by, then at least you did everything in your power to make sure that things are in order and there will be less stress for the ones you leave behind. It will also make sure that you’re doing what you actually what to do in life. I hated working for other people and I’m enjoying my life so much more now. I would hate to end my life while I was working for someone else. I would have died with so many regrets but since I’m doing what I actually want to do in life, then I’m doing all that I can do.
So when you go through your pre-deployment checklist, you will take notice of things that are important and not important based on your time restraints. When I got to see my family before going to Iraq, I only had to weeks to see them, so I had to make sure I closed all loose ends for them. So as I go through my day, I look at want I want to accomplish and to see if I need to do anything important like reach out to the family. Then once I got everything done on my pre-deployment checklist, then I go out and do my mission. This is all we can do.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, treat life like your going on a deployment. Don’t live life like today is going to be your last day. This will give you more discipline in your life and will help you accomplish the things you actually want to get done and deal with less of the stuff you don’t want to do deal with. This will also help out your loved ones if the unexpected happens and they are left without you. We don’t live forever so we might as well and make sure that we are closing up all the loose ends and making sure that things will be okay if we’re not around. Most likely you’re going to make it to the tomorrow and next year, but you just want to be prepared and make sure you’re not wasting any valuable time.
So in your journal, ask yourself, what needs to be on your pre-deployment checklist? It is that you reached out to family? Is that you scheduled that date night with your partner? Is that you actually going to start that project finally? You get to decide how your life is going to be. You’re the director and producer of your script, so make sure it’s a good one because otherwise you’re going to have a stinker, and do you really want that?
Thanks for listening today! 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
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
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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.
