growNman
growNman
159 Own Your Hours, Change Your Life
What up, Doe, and welcome back to I'm Growing Man. Shaman John D in the building. Um, you know, I've been really trying to figure out what I could do to change how I come on here. You know, sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in the 90s and the things that I grew up on, I just kind of like take pieces of here trying to make it mine, but it just reminds me like I'm like lost in a particular period of time. But I wanted to talk about how now I don't want to lose people, but I want you to truly consider where you are in life. Uh depending on how old you are and how much you receive this message, you can really change your life. There's a thing called being in the moment, because typically your body is an autopilot and is constantly doing what it does, and something has to happen for you to bring attention where it really needs you. Like something that breaks you out of autopilot could be like something that scares you, something that's gonna put you in danger, or something that makes you really laugh. Something where it's in engaging you. If you could increase the number of times you're being in the moment, it will allow you to create a series of habits, if you take advantage of it, that will change your future trajectory. Now, what I've learned on this journey is that it it requires an effort that your parents didn't even know to give you. And when you do leave, in order to appreciate whatever's to come, it's going to take a consistent effort that has to be done on a daily basis. And the only person that can do it is you. And you'll benefit from it. You just have to understand that wherever you were in life when you're hearing this message, that if you didn't already know that and you haven't been practicing it, you have to figure out what systems can I put in play so that I can do this. So there's something I put I posted the other day about routines. You need to come up with a productive routine that you benefit in your me time. So let's say if you if you're taking care of your body like you're supposed to, you should be getting at least, they say, eight hours of sleep. Um, you know, I know some of you guys are not taking that seriously because, you know, you you're not getting the rest that you you deserve, but you need to get that checked out because your body will break down. And if it doesn't give, get the rest it deserves, it's going to cause other parts of the body to break down. And that's the type of life I'm trying to hopefully help people prevent. Even if you're poor. And when I say poor, my wife says you, you know, you have to really watch how you use poor because people just think financial. Poor is in and like it it can be in finances, and typically people do refer to that, but poor is just not having enough information on how to improve life. Like, I'm I'm gonna tell you, the way that I grew up, blessed to be to be here, to say the least, and I couldn't have made it without my wife getting me here. But looking back, I'm just watching that I really didn't like the way that I was living. And I had to figure, you know, my father gave me, you know, some words of wisdom saying, you know, just kept re-emphasizing if he dies, I needed to go to college and get a degree and get a good job. You know, he he knew how to get out of that for me. He thought. Well, I say he's correct because without it, I would have never met my wife. So the things my father did, he set me up in ways that, you know, I wouldn't even be able to reflect on without even like having these conversations about how to create a routine because my father didn't tell me about how much free time, you know, what I could focus on to build for tomorrow. So the the things that you do with your time and you'll look after your eight hours of sleep, and then you're probably eight hours of work, depending on what that is, but you have eight hours that's supposed to be for yourself. Driving to work, coming home, whatever you're doing, whether you're with family, anything, there needs to be a block of time that is solely dedicated to you. And when I say that, this is like a routine that it's almost like if you're a professional athlete, they have these routines they do before they go to go out and play or whatnot, right? You have this routine that you're working on yourself. And over the course of time, you're gonna accumulate so many, so many hours of time that you've put in yourself because it's helping you improve something, whatever you decide. And I'll now help you guys just by giving examples of what I do, but you have to have a routine where you're solely dedicated to yourself where no matter what, it has to get done. If you're sick and you like, you know, you just can't do it, you have to if it's like brushing your teeth. You need to get up and do it and then get the rest you need, unless you are just completely dying. But you need to do some part of that routine so you don't feel like you just drop the ball. When you develop this routine, over the years, you're gonna find ways to improve because this is this is what I want people to understand. Tomorrow is not promise, okay? We know that. But the way you use your time is gonna be very expensive later if you're not working on something to allow you to enjoy life. What I've recognized now, I didn't understand the process of how to improve, like intentionally. And it was, it really started from the diet, and a lot of you guys know how I feel about the diet. You can pick any diet you want, just master it because all you're doing is learning what your body can and can't do. But if you don't complete the diet, you can't understand fully on what I'm talking about because watching what you put in your body gives you a different clarity. And when you get that clarity, you have to understand there's so many things that we can do to be improving for tomorrow. Now, I'm not telling you to give up everything, okay? I'm just saying if it's not going to benefit you 10 years from now, five years from now, maybe one year from now, why would you invest? Like it's it's like you need this instant gratification that potentially could distract you from getting to your goal. If you do this, if you take this journey, where you create a routine and you just work on yourself, you're going to see benchmarks of your improvement in areas that you didn't even know. When you really start to invest and start to see how much you've grown, you're going to try to take other parts of your day, like, oh, I can work, I can put more time than this in it. And then you're going to become addicted to getting better. And you know what happens when you get addicted to getting better, everything improves. Like the way you look at life, uh, you kind of understand where people are and you want to help. But it's it's one of those things where you'll realize how much time you've wasted. So if we can just get into the mindset of trying to convince our youth that they are important. And if they don't believe that they're important, it's very difficult to make the best decisions because important people don't make bad decisions. They make decisions that's ill-advised, but like bad decisions, like important people just move differently. And I was telling a friend of mine: if you're really important, why would you move in a way where everything could be taken? It's either you really don't believe you're important, or you really don't believe you're important. And if that's the case, I want you to know this message is for you. In order to get really good in anything, you have to work on it. So if you're honest with yourself, you know what you need to work on. You put in the effort, you'll see improvement. But if you don't put the effort in, it's going to be very difficult for you to get anything out of it. But if you make it, your daily routine is really what separates, removes you out of the hamster wheel. Because when you have a daily routine, that means you're working on something that hasn't even been created yet. In a hamster wheel, you're just doing the same thing over and over. It's like, when is something gonna change? So if you create this routine, you're going to increase the chances of really enjoying life because you understand how important you are. I think that's what maturity is. Some people might argue with me, but I don't, you know, I check this out. I don't really want to argue with anybody. I just want to know how can we get better if we're not learning to get better. It's almost like it's either this way or that way. How about it could be so many different ways. But whatever you do, it's gonna take an effort that your parents didn't have. Because if they did have it, you would probably be in a different place. And and I really believe that. Like, you have to believe that you can change your story. Like, your story can get better, but it it depends on what what do you want it to say? Working on something can change your environment. Like, I work on communication every single day, intentionally, whether it's through language, whether it's, you know, what is a great question to increase engagement with my family where everybody has a part and everybody can feel heard and like enjoy the moment. I I try to come up with those things because our kids are gonna be leaving pretty soon. And as many times I hear seasoned people say that it's it's gone before you know it. At least we're being as present as possible. Because when they're gone, I mean, I can get it. They they're probably gonna be gone. But we raise them to be able to make those decisions. And I'm hoping that my example through putting in the effort changes results, that it rubbed off on them because they definitely know I talk about that a lot. If you don't have it, you haven't completed the process, you haven't put in enough effort to be there. You know, like everybody always say, like, if I had this, if you had that, well, you don't. So what are you gonna do to be the exception who didn't have it? Because you still deserve it. And you got to figure out what I can do to get that much more. And I think ultimately, I said this before, you know, most people don't know this. Like, if you ask somebody like, what's your purpose? A lot of people don't know their purpose. And you know why? Because their life is fit, they have so many distractions in their life that they can't remove them all to be able to decipher what's really for them. And that's, you know, and this is the only reason why I'm saying this is because I remember feeling like I don't know what my purpose was. I was just making up stuff. Like I do know I wanted to serve people, but I didn't know what my purpose was. And when you, like I said earlier, you change your diet, you will develop a different clarity. Like if you talk to anybody who's really got a hold of their diet and then talk to them, like what's the difference? They make better decisions, period. They feel better, they're more active, um, they're enjoying life a lot more. You know, uh, it's a different self-esteem that you don't really have to worry about because you're kind of practicing this. So when you do recognize this, like I said, this clarity, you start to evaluate what you're doing with your time. And I can't wait where there are gonna be kids, how they invest into sports, like they're gonna be able to like really work on something that does not require uh it's gonna be a different game, gaming system with the mind, I think. Because I think if you work on anything, it's gonna get better, right? So if kids know that they could change their if parents know they could invest their kids into like something and whatever the kid likes, but you just support it, whatever it is, because really what you're supporting is them completing a process of being so good in something that it separates them. So once they know, like, oh, the process, no matter what, they'll they'll they'll complete things with like execution. And I think we we try to teach our kids to like get jobs to make a lot of money, but if you teach your kids to be cold and everything, and if you don't, if you're not cold in something, you have to say it out loud so somebody can give you some help. Like, just imagine, like, you're like, you know, I'm I'm not good at math. Like, I need some help in math because if I'm gonna be what I wanna be, I need to get the help that I need. And you, I don't know how old you have to be to recognize you can say, I need help, but it's okay. But if you don't ever say it out loud, you can't expect anybody to help you. And I just hope that as young as you guys are that's that's watching this, because I'm telling you, I do believe when you develop the routine that you get to like work on yourself. Like even on weekends, you can add more to the routine so that you can get more hours on working yourself. Because when you the the self-mastery part of life to me is just really finding ways to improve. Because when you do that, I don't even know how to put it in words. You know, like I think the the biggest misunderstanding, I think, is that I'm doing too much. And before I think I was really doing too much. But I I I pray that people start believing how important they are. It's almost like this is a broadcast of saying, hey, if you really believe you're important, you have to work on yourself every day. And when I say it has to, you have to write it down. Like even like when people have workout routines and they like check off, you have to do that until it is a natural practice. And that's another reason why I look, I will say this I do not get eight hours of sleep. It is so difficult for me to get eight hours of sleep, and I've gone to the doctor, I try to go to sleep. Well, I can go to sleep fairly quickly, but I go to sleep about 9:15 to wake up at four. And at some point I know that that hour is gonna hurt me, but hopefully sooner than later I'll figure that part out. But my point is that I wake up at four, nobody's up. I get to do my routine because nobody can stop me from completing it other than me. Like, if I'm really serious about improving, I can't allow any distractions because when it's time to go to work, I gotta work. And when I get home, it's family time. Like, if I do have time, I'll work on it. But I have a couple of hours I dedicate every single day, four o'clock in the morning. Most of the time I I don't make it to four. I'm up before four, but I get my routine done. Period. I think it's gonna be, it's, it's gonna be cold one day, where it's gonna be kids, it's just gonna just pop up everywhere, and and they're gonna be cold in so many different things. It won't just be sports. Uh it'll be like, I don't even know what it would look like. I can't, I don't even have the imagination of what the world would look like if parents were better supervisors over their children when they're young, protecting them from anything that could cause trauma where they don't make bad decisions. And and I know parents don't do it on purpose, but sometimes you gotta say, I need some help. You know, you gotta say it out loud. You know, we have uh things all around where we can find, you know, some guidance. You know, I'm I'm going to start uh group soon, uh fatherhood and mentoring, just to help brothers that that that that was like me. Like I was out here making bad decisions, and it wasn't like I was, look, I just didn't know. I didn't have the best examples. And I realized the problem is that we don't talk enough and we don't have enough options for better decisions. So we're just kind of doing what we think we're supposed to be doing. So in order for us to change, we're gonna have to like really, really watch what we put in our body so we can make better decisions because the hamster will is real. And intentional work, like this is the work that you said, you know, I'm gonna do every day. It creates an open up doors that you didn't know you could open because you haven't been that good in that area. But when you work on it and you get good in that area, you start to get better and better. Like things open up for you. But you have to believe you're important enough to get it. Sometimes we have things that's just distracting us because we're comparing ourselves to other people that are on a different journey. But if we just focused on who we are, found self-mastery in who we are, we would find a happiness that would change the outlook on life no matter where you are, whether you're the richest. Because, you know, I've noticed that you got parents with money, you know, that doesn't make them better parents, you know, not saying that they don't have parents that have money that are good parents. I'm just saying I've seen parents with money that are no good, better parents than parents without money. And I think we have to, we just have to be a better example for our kids. And sometimes we just don't know enough. And no matter where you are on the spectrum of life, it can get better. But without intentional effort of like creating a routine and being serious about it, it's almost like you're gonna complain, how about this? There was something I remember, and I'm gonna let you guys go. It was just got it. This is one of the things when I first started, when my journey was on, and he was like, Well, I've tried everything and I still can't lose weight. And then the guy was like, Well, I might as well just actually do everything it says because it's apparent that I'm not an expert in this, and I need to follow the rules like it's supposed to. Sometimes you have to keep yourself accountable and say, okay, like, you know, some people say, you know, it worked for you, but you know, it don't work for everybody. It will work for everybody. You just have to do what it says. Like, and, you know, people have to be intentional about it. Y'all make today better than yesterday. Don't worry about anything you can't control. G A T A. Get after that action, or the action will get after you. Be great on purpose.