In this episode, we discuss the importance of taking action with the information you’re receiving.
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 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. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how you need to take action on your goals. When it comes to solving problems, there are really two types of people, there are warriors and then there are librarians. See warriors actually do something with all their training. Librarians just continue training and what this world needs is more warriors.
You see librarians all the time on social media. They say something should actually be done and might post an article somewhere but they are not really making a difference. Kind of like putting a bumper sticker on your car and hoping it will change someone’s mind. It’s not. You have to remember this, a person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still. To actually change someone’s mind, you have to take an active approach to make some serious change and to make the change is hard. You have to overcome a lot of obstacles and have to have the will to endure those obstacles.
If I want to change something, I try to go out and figure a way I can actually change something. If I can’t something, I’m not going to spend time reinforcing ideas out there because it’s just noise. I want to raise awareness for Latinos that they can put energy into growing themselves and that where they are in life doesn’t determine who they will be for the rest of their life. I went to some schools and spread my message. I’ve haven’t spoken at a school in a while but that’s because I’ve been so busy trying to get my Grow With Joe Business off the ground.
My goal is to move to Colombia by Jan 2020. Once I’m there, my goal is to learn Spanish and learn how to translate all my content into Spanish. So part of that process is to find as many speaking opportunities as possible in Spanish in Colombia so that I can become a master in my field, and a by-product of that training is that I’m spreading my Grow With Joe message about financial planning and self-development coaching to the people of Colombia. I remember when I spoke at one school, the teacher said there was one student who never paid attention in class, but after I was done speaking to the class, he had a page full of notes. I don’t know who that kid is or what came of that student, but hopefully, it was the message that they needed to hear to start working on creating a more fulfilling future.
It took time to go speak to that school. I had to travel an hour to get to the school, I took a day off from work to do it, and I spoke to six different classes. I also had to spend time working on my presentation beforehand. It was a lot of work but if you want to make a change, you have to take this type of action. This required sacrifices from doing leisure activities but it’s required. Are you going to focus on doing important things in the world or are you going to take it easy?
The easy way is the slackavism route. You right about child labor laws but you write them on your smartphone which probably had a child somewhere on the supply chain to make your smartphone. Yeah, it’s important that children aren’t taking advantage of but a post on social media is really not going to change anything. You have to go out and take action. You also have to remember that you can’t save the whole world, but you can save a slice of it. So which slice are you going to save?
There are only 24 hours in a day, so you can’t do everything. Plus you don’t have to give all of your time to the thing you’re going to save. You can donate money to the right people, or actually go to your town hall and get some laws in place. Talk to the right people who can make a difference. You don’t have to do everything, but you can do something but this requires taking action and being a warrior, not a librarian.
Yeah, it’s important to get information but you can get too much information. There is a concept in economics called the law of diminishing returns. It means the more you do something, the less and less value you will get from each additional hour you focus on something. So if you spend all your time gather information and not putting that information to use, it’s kind of the equivalent of not learning that information in the first place. You would be better off just watching reality television. Yes, you’re informed but now what? Nothing is going to happen actually. Don’t do something so you can feel good about yourself, do something so that you feel good about actually improving the situation. The thing you worked on might get 1% better, and sometimes that is all you can do, but you helped get the ball rolling in the right direction. Getting momentum in the right direction is crucial and if enough people build up that momentum, then some positive change can happen.
I don’t want to be a hypocrite so I’m going to live up to these standards and what I’m working on will probably take me decades. I want to help out a hundred thousand Latinos with their finances and the self-development and this is going to take me a while to do but I have the endurance to keep going. If I fail though, at least I know I tried my best and took action. That’s all we can really ask from ourselves, that we did all that we could do and that we actually did all we could and left nothing in the tank.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it if you want to see some type of change in the world, then you have to take action. You have to be a warrior who uses their training and not be the librarian who just accumulates information and doesn’t actually put it to use. We need to take more action in the world. There are a lot of problems that need to be solved, and if we all did our part, then the world would be a much better place to live in.
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]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
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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.
*Music outro
