In this episode, we discuss how we need to look at our activities to make sure they align towards getting the life that you want to live and not an okay one.
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.
In today’s episode, we are going to talk about how once you take a lick from the lollipop of mediocrity, you’ll suck forever. This is especially true in this new economy and most of us are not prepared for this new economy and I believe a lot of that has to deal with the relative age of the economy that we’re in.
Back in 1900, 60% of the population lived in rural areas and 40% of people lived on farms. Today that number is 20% in rural areas and 1% of folks live on farms. That is a huge difference over just 100 years, and our school systems haven’t changed to this new economy and I still think that a majority of people have that factory and farm mindset. I do X and then I get Y.
This mindset was fine back in the day when the United States didn’t have that much competition internationally. Especially after World War 2, when Europe was recovering and the infrastructure of Europe and the rest of the world, had a lot of catching up to do. You could just go into your factory job, and just do what you were told, and made a pretty good living.
Doing that same type of work today is mediocre. This just means average, and since I’ll never be able to outwork a factory worker in China, I need to develop my skills to move up the value ladder. I need to know how to make decisions and sound judgment, that produce a lot of value. This requires me to learn a lot and to experiment with my life and business to see how I can put value out to the world that the world will gladly pay for.
I feel the education system is set up for a factor mindset, where you do X and you’ll get why, which turns to if you can memorize these facts for an exam, we’ll get you an A. And the real world doesn’t operate like this for the most part. You need to figure out how skills from class a, class b, and class c can interact together and use that tool to help you make you and your team more productive. And you have to be okay with your experiments not working. School doesn’t really allow for experiments to go wrong and you can get penalized for it.
This is a mediocrity life to live. If you want to make a living, then get a formal education. But if you want to make a fortune, start getting a self-education, where you’re reading books outside of class, listening to podcasts that give you ideas, watch YouTube videos that do the same and take courses that will sharpen your skills. What got us here, won’t get us there, so if you want that good life, then don’t take a lick from that lollipop of mediocrity. And based on the life you want, will basically tell you which lollipops are mediocre and which ones are greatness.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, once you take a lick from the lollipop of mediocrity, you’ll suck forever. So don’t do it. And school is a place that tailors their content to the least common denominator. So we need to learn outside of school if we want to stay ahead in life. And this doesn’t require us to spend all of our time learning. I basically spend two to four hours a day on learning, and then I spend the rest of my day creating until it’s time to call it for the day. Now I have more control over my life and I love the life that I live but I know if I want to keep up this lifestyle, then I can’t ever take a lick from the lollipop of mediocrity and hopefully, you won’t either.
If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
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
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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
