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 we shouldn’t run away from feeling bad, but actually embrace it. Back in High School, we had to read Fahrenheit 451 and the book is about how a government society has banned all the books because they cause inequality and make people feel bad. So then people just watch television all day on drugs to make them feel mellow. There is a secret society that does have books but they always have to be on the run. The government didn’t want to control the people but just did what people wanted to avoid, feeling bad. The lesson I got from this book is that you can’t have your good days without your bad ones.
If every day was a good day, there would be no contrast and everything will seem bland. Variety is the spice of life and if everything is always good, then it’s not good. There is a balance between chaos and order. You don’t want too much of either. Some days you want to order as a break in order to plan and prepare for the future, while also recover, and other days you want to have chaos so that you can take advantage of opportunities and appreciation for all the good things that are happening in our lives.
I think my childhood is a big reason why I’m so ambitious. I grew up with two blue-collar workers and went to a school where there were some rich kids, and I was also overweight as a kid. I felt that I missed out on social things because I was super shy and socially awkward plus I didn’t want to share too much about myself because I was worried about what other people would think. So I just focused a lot of energy on my school work and looking for opportunities. I didn’t want to settle for a mediocre life where I had to wait for stuff. I wanted to experience the stuff as fast as I could.
It was probably good that I didn’t get everything I wanted as a kid, because it would have made me complacent and lazy. I wouldn’t have been tested by life and might be afraid of taking that leap. In the book Grit, by Angela Duckworth, she mentions that if you have kids, you want to praise your kid on effort and not on talent. When kids are praised for talent, they might take those risks necessary for growth because if they fail, then they’ll believe that they’re not as talented as people think and it’s best to do the easy but manageable stuff. Whereas a kid who is praised for effort will take those extra hard assignments and know they can recover from their failures.
So I’m glad, I had my childhood because it made me the person I am today. Instead of taking it easy as a salaried employee, I’m taking a chance on trying to start a business. It’s a lot of hard work and I fail a lot but at least what I’m doing it for me. Plus I believe that my way can help out more people and change the poor system we have. All I know is that I’m going to be really happy when I get to my goal of 50 clients because then I can start hiring more folks to grow my financial planning firm to help out more folks. Since it is so hard to grow this business, then I’m going to do things that are necessary to keep it in business. So maybe this is why a business needs to be tough so people actually respect it and take care of it.
Good thing I learned this lesson in high school because it helped me during my time in the Marines, in DC, and traveling now. When things go wrong, I just tell myself that I need these moments to stay grounded and that they serve as a teachable moment to become a better person. A big part of life is having the right perspective to handle your day. The Stoics believed that all events have two handles that you can hold on to, where one is going to burn you and the other is going to be cool, and how you handle an event is going to determine which handle someone chooses. So make sure you pick the right handle by having the right perspective. Do this and life is going to be a lot more enjoyable.
And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, we can’t have our good days, without the bad days. Like the rain, it can put a damper on someone’s parade, but that rain can provide a lot of benefits to the environment. There can also be a thing of too much rain which can cause flooding. Like with so much on this planet, balance is key, and having the right perception can help us use these bad days to help us in the future. So if times are tough right now, in the future we can look at these moments and be grateful for what we have. Every day I write down three things I’m grateful for, which serve as a reminder that no matter how bad my day, week, or month is, I still have great things in my life. I also review what I wrote down in my journal a year ago and that gives me a perspective on how much I’ve grown as a person and that I can grow myself out of this situation. I’m not where I want to be in life, but I am having progress. The key this is that I can’t allow bad days to hold me back and I can’t always be going after good days because the bad days serve as teaching lessons to become better. So be thankful for everything that happens in life, but also know how to use life to your advantage since we only have one life to live.
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.
