In this episode, we discuss how we should be doing the hard things in life in order to get our easy life.
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, the Les Brown Quote, “If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. If you do what is hard, your life will be easy.” This quote is similar to another one of my favorite quotes and that’s “Easy choices, hard life, hard choices, easy life.” Both convey the same message, it just depends on how you want to hear the lesson.
I think it is easy to do the easy thing if you only look at things in the short run. I’m constantly doing hard things because I ask myself, what type of future do I want, and what is required. What’s required is usually doing something that is hard.
And I think doing hard things that cause you to go through adversity and have stress are a good thing. It’s not a good thing if it’s all the time though. There needs to be a break. Our immune system actually gets stronger when we have acute stress but if the stress is for too long, then our immune system will get weaker.
And after making a lot of hard choices like going into the Marines, moving across the country, starting my own business, and living overseas, I feel like I’m a much better person because I tested myself and I proved to myself that I can get through tough things.
Now that I’m sitting through covid-19 and reflecting on my two-month quarantine, all I have to say it’s not that bad. There are days where I’m sick of it but I know it’s the right thing to do while we wait for the pandemic to end. It is easy to be short-sighted by the easy choices because they feel good right now but we’ll feel the pain one day. That pain might not come for a long time but when it does come, we won’t be prepared for it.
It’s kind of like saving up for retirement. It harder to save then it is to spend. So if you constantly wait until you’re ready to start saving, you might be too late. A lot of people get on social security disability because they lose a job in the 50s and are unable to find another job. Now their restricted by what social security gives them. Social security is not meant to cover all your retirement needs and was created as insurance to provide income for retired folks. So it’s there to help but for a lot of folks, this all they have.
There are a lot of things that the world doesn’t teach us so it’s important that we understand the world on our own. I spend a lot of time reading and listening to podcasts so that I can create these podcast episodes. It’s a lot of hard work but I enjoy it a lot because I feel like I’m leveling up. Then the hard thing becomes something that is easy. But when I learn these new strategies, it makes me more prepared for the world and the future that is coming. Life is going to suck at times but if you constantly train yourself for moments that suck, then while everyone else is scrambling on what to do, then you can easily navigate the situation and come out a winner. A lot of the biggest companies that we know about knows like Amazon and Uber, came out of recessions where it was hard for many businesses to operate. In every crisis, there is an opportunity to come out ahead, but you have to be prepared for the moment, and doing hard things beforehand will help you come out ahead.
During covid-19, I read a lot of books, took some courses, did my MBA, and worked on my business. I event created my course during this time. I was prepared for this moment and I didn’t really struggle. I did take some days to binge on Netflix and play on my phone but overall, I feel like I did really well. So when we come out of this situation, I’m going to hit the ground running and I’ll keep pursuing my easy life by doing hard things.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, “If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. If you do what is hard, your life will be easy.” So as you go through your day, make sure that you’re doing something hard. And something hard doesn’t mean you have to physically do something hard like climb a mountain. If you want to do that then that’s fine. Some of my proudest moments have been when I hiked these huge landscapes and saw some amazing scenery. Hard things can be studying, learning something new at work, marketing yourself, and exercising. Do this over a long period of time and when hard times come, then they will be easy for you. You can also practice hardship like Stoics by wearing poor quality clothing and eating something like beans and rice. The idea is that your training yourself to get an easy life and for the most part, the easy life doesn’t come to those that take it easy.
So in your journal, ask yourself, are you taking it too easy? What is a hard thing that you’ve meant to do, but haven’t yet? Are you going too hard on one thing? Do you need to take a break and do something easy? Life is not black or white, it’s grey and we need to have the self-awareness to know what we should be doing and what we should not be doing. And by doing these journal exercises, we are just reflecting on what we should be doing. You don’t have to be the next Jeff Bezos, but look at your environment and ask yourself, is this what you want? If it’s not, then you probably need to do something that is difficult to change the situation. To identify it and start living your life.
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.
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