In this episode, we discuss the importance of preparing our bodies and minds when our lives get turned upside down.
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 are going to talk about how life can come at your fast. Before the covid-19, I was having the time of my life. I was five months into my two-year sabbatical to learn Spanish and living in Colombia. I had a really good month for financial planning where I was able to onboard five clients in February. I was going to the gym every day and I just got a new tattoo. Then all of a sudden I was in quarantine and people wanted to wait to do financial planning. We all got punched in the face with covid-19 but the key thing is when we get knocked down in life, get back up.
At first I was feeling lazy and just wanted to watch Hot Ones on YouTube and play on my phone. But then I started a new semester of school for my MBA and I also bought some new online courses to help me out in my business. Then once I started to take those online courses, I started to feel motivated again to get back to work. Good thing I already had a bunch of podcast episodes made so I didn’t lose momentum in that area.
When life comes at your fast, the easiest thing to do is get stunned and either shut down or panic. Sometimes the best thing to do is to take a timeout and reflect on what is going on. I still wrote in my journal and reviewed my goals. Then I just started listening to podcasts and consuming more information. This helped me understand what is going around me and which direction I needed to go in. So I decided I was going to move into a different Airbnb with more privacy so I could work on my course and do more Facebook lives. I finished my course and now I’m working on promoting it. The way I see it, people are at home and doing online learning. Might as well learn from me too.
I’m just glad I’ve been working digital marketing for the last year by reading a lot of books and buying different software programs to help me out. So I feel like I’m prepared for a moment like this. And that’s another key point when life comes at your fast, you want to be prepared for it. You don’t want to be like the grasshopper who didn’t prepare for winter. You want to be like the ant that did. And you have to be constantly preparing for winter. On average, every 90 days something will go wrong in your life and then you just have to figure out what to do. You have to ownership of the situation by being a problem solver.
Even though covid-19, is not really a problem that you created but it’s at our front door now. And what makes things like covid-19 tricky is that you’re interacting with a lot of different players that you don’t have control over. It would be nice if everyone was rational and did what they were supposed to but we’re never going to have a world like that. So what we need to do is create a reality with we have control over our situation. I’m not going to go outside, but I can do other things to better myself during this situation. William Shakespeare wrote King Lear while he was in quarantine during the black plague. He was able to control his mind and his hands to write. That’s what he could control during the situation while the outside world was healing. And this is what we can do at the same time while the world is healing, find a way to get better.
I remember when I was diagnosed with herniated disks in my lower back that caused me to leave the Marines. The doctor told me not to live more than 45 pounds. I was upset but I figured that I can go to the gym and just focus on getting stronger because this is the same strategy I used to come back from my torn ACL in high school. What I could do before what a lot different but in a second, my life was changed forever. Before my ACL tear, I could touch the rim playing basketball, and now I can’t play basketball without hurting my knee. I still love the game but I find other ways to be involved by like playing fantasy basketball and focusing on my new life.
If one this is one constant, it’s change. Something is going to happen in the future that’s going to punch the world in the face again. The key thing is to just prepare as much as possible and not get complacent. Then with everyone else is panicking, we can take advantage of the situation to become stronger from the chaos. If you know how to do this, that you’re going to be anti-fragile and have more control over your life.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, life comes at you fast. I got this topic from the Daily Stoic, so make sure you follow that account as well. Every 90 days, something is going to go wrong in your life, it might be severe or mild, but you need to make sure the setback doesn’t keep you down. So take time every day to get one percent better physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Do this and you’ll be able to recover from these punches in the mouth. Don’t and you’ll be wondering what happen and might not recover. The world has diminishing returns, so you can’t keep doing the same thing forever. So keep learning on how to get better so you can get stronger from uncertainty and chaos. Do this and you’ll be unstoppable in your own right.
So in your journal, ask yourself, we’re you prepared for covid-19. If you were or you weren’t, what can you start doing today or a minimum this week to be prepared for the next event? When covid-19 happened, what were you feeling? How did you respond? Did you respond the right way? As always, take time to reflect on your situation and figure out if you need to change anything. Most like you do have to change something. I wasn’t completely prepared for the moment but I feel like I did a pretty good job and I’m working on somethings now to help me prepare for the next event. It might be a global thing but most likely it’s going to something more local and personalized but whatever happens, I’m going to be prepared for it as much as possible and hopefully and listening today’s episode, you’ll be more prepare for the next time life comes at you fast.
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.
*Music outro
