In this episode, we discuss how we need to accept the fate that is given to us and learn to love it. And if we can do this, then we can create a great 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.
In today’s episode, we are going to talk about accepting all outcomes, even the bad ones, and know it is supposed to happen to you. I’m big in the stoic philosophy and they say that you have to love your fate because this is the fate that you’re going to have. You can’t pass it off to someone else, you must accept that the events were supposed to happen to you. Who else would you like these events to go to? Well, the answer is, you don’t wish these events to happen to someone else. You want them to happen to you.
When you accept events as your problems to solve, then you will start taking an active approach to solving them. I remember there was one period in 2017 that so hard for me. I was with my ex-wife during that time, and she was about to lose her government contract and I wasn’t doing well financially at my last firm, so I told my firm I was going to leave so I could find a job with more security. Then my ex-wife told me she wanted a divorce, that was tough. Then a month later, the engine in my car malfunctioned and cost me $5k to fix. Then two months later I had to fix my root canal at $2k.
This was a rough six months but I feel so much stronger as a person today. I feel that when I get minor inconveniences, they are so manageable. Or even if I get a larger problem, I can handle this with a cool head because I know that problems can be much worse. So I’m glad are those negative moments happened to me. That six months sucked but three years later, I’m living my best life. I’m here in Medellin, Colombia working on my business and learning Spanish. I’m doing what I want to do in life and I have the strength to pursue it.
I know I shouldn’t expect things to go perfect and I have to be prepared for the setbacks. Right now, a lot of people are trying to get through covid and this situation reminds me of 2011, with the great recession. If that event didn’t happen, then my ex-wife wouldn’t have found a job in Washington, DC and if I didn’t move to Washington, DC, then I probably wouldn’t have started this Grow With Joe Business and I love what I do now.
We learn more from the setbacks than the periods of growth because we have to learn how to be more creative and take chances. Back in 2010, my ex-wife couldn’t find a career in Oregon, and one of her college professors said she should take these fellowships in Washington, DC and she got it. I don’t know if she would of left Oregon if the economy was good and I’m happy that I went to DC to gain some valuable life lessons. It was scary to think about all the uncertainty we were going through at the time, but we made it. This is a major positive of living in a global economy. You don’t have to rely on your community to provide opportunities. You can get in a car and find a place to work in another state if you want to. 2000 years ago, those journeys were a lot harder to complete. Get on a caravan and travel for six months to get to the place you wanted to go to. Now you can make that same trip in a day or over a week.
Plus if you mess up in one city, you can reinvent yourself in another city if you want. So if negative stuff happens, there can be a reset. Those moments are not permanent. So if we know that we can get a reset, then we should embrace every moment that comes our way because it will serve as an opportunity to get stronger and become a better person. If you go five years without an incident, that probably means you were either lucky or you’re playing it too safe. The playing it safe can be a good thing or could be a bad thing depending on your situation and the outcome you want for your life. As people, we have the ability to decide on what is enough and what is necessary for us to live our best lives, but if you want to reach absolute freedom, then taking some chances is necessary.
At my last firm, I spent a lot of money trying to make it and I didn’t succeed. But when I started this new financial planning firm, I had the confidence and experience to do this on my own and now I’m 13 months into running my own firm and things are looking up. So I’m glad I failed at my last firm and went through that tough experience because it made me into a much better financial advisor and person. So don’t run away from negative events or setbacks, you have to embrace them and go through them if you want to get stronger from them. Just realize that this is supposed to happen to you and you do have the ability to use it as a stepping stone into something greater.
And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, who else are negative events or setbacks supposed to happen to? The answer is no one else except for yourself. Life is not perfect and the faster we can accept this, the faster we can turn the setbacks into opportunities. There is a Japanese craft called Kintsugi where pots are broken and then mended with gold. And dents and crafts are a sign of a good thing in Kintsugi because it shows that this object is useful. What good is an object if you can’t use it and it just collects dust that you need to clean. It’s causing you extra work that you don’t need to have in your life. So when you use your life, you’re going to get cracks and dents, but this shows how useful you are and you can use these cracks and dents from unfortunate events to spread your message to build greater empathy and to help you become stronger as a person. So embrace the setbacks and learn to love them. Learn to do this, and you’ll be unstoppable on this planet.
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
I’m also on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
The greatest way to support this show is to share it with someone else.
Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
