In this episode, we discuss how being inactive with your decisions can be the wrong decision.
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 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 if you didn’t make a decision, you still made one. I’m big in understanding the decisions we make as people and the ones we don’t. I feel that life is 80% up to you and 20% up to luck. So long as you do everything right, at least you’ll have an average life. And for most people, if you do everything, you will get the 10 percent luck that will make you an above-average life.
But it starts with making a decision and knowing when not to make a decision. If I’m on the fence about releasing a podcast episode because I’m not confident in it and I’m not making a decision about releasing it. Then I still made a decision to not release it because it’s still not out yet. You might now you need to do something, but you even haven’t done it yet. So you make a decision to stay the same person you are now. While I was writing this, I was on the fence about boosting a Facebook Live I did because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen and I thought it was going to be expensive. The video I made was about being a federal employee vs being in the private sector and how the federal benefits match-up against the private sector. I believe it is very valuable information for people to know and while I was writing the thing podcast episodes, I quit after the first paragraph and decide that I was going to boost my Facebook Live.
It only took five minutes to do and it was only going to cost me a dollar a day to reach 100-150 people a day. This was my first boost and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen and I was surprised by the cost and how many people I could reach. I don’t know what is going to happen but I’ll see if my five-dollar investment is going to be worth it. If it isn’t, then I should keep trying because if I want to be successful, then I need to focus on marketing. I know I want to grow my business and that is going to require me to make specific decisions that will change my future.
If I don’t make those decisions than I made a decision to be the same and I don’t want that. Some decisions can be really uncomfortable to do. Like studying for that final versus going to hang out with your friends. This could be asking for that pay raise at work versus just waiting for people to recognize how well you’re doing. A majority of things don’t happen passively. They happen by taking an active approach. So when you take the passive approach, you’re really taking the control out of your hand and you’re putting control in somebody else’s hands. And from what I read, people are more likely to look out for themselves first and then give people whatever is leftover. If someone gives you a promotion, they either need you on a higher level so you can help them out or they don’t want you to go to another competitor. It’s not really about you, it’s about them and you being beneficial to have around.
Yes, you’re worthwhile to come around but it’s not because you are you at the root cause. They might like you and they are comfortable with you, but they can get someone else if it came down to it. I know I rather have the control in my hands because that is how I’m going to live the life I want to have. So I need to make decisions that will help me be that person. As I look at my life right now, I am where I am right now mostly because of the decisions that I made avoiding the decisions that wouldn’t help me grow as a person. There is some luck I had to get here in Mexico City like with my parents but that was only 20 percent. I still had to do the other 80 percent of the work.
There is decision that I should make a decision on, I should just let it play out on its own. I can’t control things like social injustices in the world because I’m spending so much time on my Grow With Joe Business. The way I see it is, if I can generate a lot of revenue for this business, then I can donate money to the folks that can actually make a difference. They will have more passion and will get the job done. So just realize that you should focus on that the things that will generate the greatest amount of good for yourself and the world, and you should be fine with the decision you made.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it if you didn’t make a decision, you still made one. So look at your life and try to picture what decisions in your life got you to this point. You’ll probably notice there was some luck but that lucky still require you to take some type of action to leave the couch. If you want to have a great life, you have to make the right decisions that will give you some type of return on your time. Getting an education is a decision and it has a payoff in the future. Going to the gym is the same. Remember that life is about choices and you’re the sum of those choices. So make good choices and start living a good life.
So in your journal, ask yourself, what is a decision that you need to make but you haven’t made yet. What is making that decision so uncomfortable to do? Are there resources that you can use to help you make the right decision? Just realize that if you want a better tomorrow, you have to do things today to get that better future. So make the right decision and if you want a different life, then stop making the same decisions every day.
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 only 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
