About the Episode
You can always figure out how to better leverage your own time, even without giving up something that brings you joy, levels your head, or helps you function on your day to day. It can be extremely toxic to focus on elevating yourself by forcing yourself to lose something. Why are we so focused on addition that requires subtraction?
Listen to the podcast here
Watch the episode here
Important Links:
Episode Topics:
- What you’re willing to sacrifice
- Are we teaching people that have to give up things we love?
- When social media says to give itself up
- Don’t give up your Netflix too quick
What’s shakin’? Hey, we’re back and we’re having an awesome day already today. I’m glad you’re listening. I’m glad you’re here because I’m here and today I’m gonna give you something that has just been really bothering me the last couple of days, and it’s about sacrifice. So I’m sure you’ve heard this before, and I’m gonna call out a dude who I actually respect a lot right here, John Maxwell. John Maxwell is an amazing motivational speaker, leadership expert. I’ve got photos with him. I mean, just an amazing guy. I even remember back in the beginning days of when I was in ministry, in church, being a pastor, and there were a lot of leadership things that were derived from him and they were pretty amazing principles. So I saw this on his Instagram feed just a couple of days ago, and it was about people leveling up and what you have to do in order to level up.
And he said something along these lines is that in order to be successful, there’s one common thing that I’ve seen. There’s one common trait that I’ve seen when people wanna raise their level from where they’re at right now. And that’s that you have to give something up. And when I heard this, I started cringing a little bit because I, I’ve heard this before and it’s like in order to make room for the new, you have to give up something of the old. And I don’t understand why that, I mean, that may be just something that people can grasp pretty simply because it makes sense, right? Because you’re thinking that you have a finite, and this is why I have an issue with this because this comes back to hustle culture for me, which I freaking hate. By the way, I freaking hate hustle culture because I think that it’s toxic because thinking this is toxic, meaning you’ve got so much time and that’s it.
And you gotta pack as much into it as possible. That’s giving you a finite way to achieve certain things. It puts limits on you when you’re saying that you, in order to go somewhere higher, you have to give up something that you were currently doing. And that could be an activity, it could be a job, it could be a role, it could be a relationship. It could be friends around you. It could be just part of your daily routine. It could be a habit that might be considered bad, It could be any one of these things. And I get the principle behind this because on the surface level, it sounds good to where in order to go to the next step, you have to give something up. I understand that. But then it continued on and towards the end of this reality cuz it was only maybe 60 seconds, probably even less, it said to move up, you have to sacrifice.
I was like, come on, what are we teaching people here? Are we teaching people here that there’s limitations on what you can achieve in life? Because you can’t have the old plus have the new, You can’t keep something going that you really like in order to get something that you really want. And I’ve seen this all across the board, right? Because you see these reels and these slideshows and all these things, these carousels on Instagram, on other social media that says, Hey, like the seven Steps to success. And it’s like, hey, give up Netflix and read some books or something like that, right? Hey, give up looking on social media, which is ironic because you’re seeing it on social media right then and there, and it’s say, Give up social media for an hour in the morning and workout. And I’m looking at all these things and it’s like you have to give up to get, which fundamentally bothers me because it’s saying you have to quit in order to start. That’s bullshit. Why don’t you just start whatever it is that you wanna do and try to build that habit and then figure out if what you were doing actually fits in. I’ve talked about this before. It’s like everybody’s read more books, not Netflix. I do. I listen to audiobooks while I work out. And this is a key part that I want you to pick up today because it’s called Leveraging your Time because time is finite, but the way that you can leverage your time is unlimited.
You can always learn how to better leverage your time. And sometimes you might notice that there are things that you wanna shift because they no longer serve you. And that’s what I want to get ingrained in your skull today. The only reason to shed things is when they no longer serve you. I’ll give you another example. I just told you that I read books, right? Meaning I listen to audio books, I get through dozens of books a year because I listen to them while I’m working out. It’s a good time of meditation for me and it’s a good time to consume content. Specifically audio books, big audio books, the ones that are New York Times, Wall Street journals, bestsellers, and all these motivational things and even business books and all these other, whatever category it is, that’s when I consume it because I’m leveraging my time better than just doing one thing.
I’m learning how to impact my life in a greater way. Cuz what would that be, right? Cuz that’s the time that I fit in. If I had to give something up to go to the next level with my workouts, does that mean that I have to give up listening to my audiobooks? No, it still serves me. In fact, it’s highly leveraging my time. I talked about Netflix, right on this carousel and everything. You know what? If you watch Netflix or Amazon, right? The new Rings of Power sees, which by the way, it got better as it went on. I just wanna say that, right? The last two episodes were pretty good. I finished the last episode just a couple days ago. It actually was okay, and now I’m looking forward to the rest of ’em. But still, those are things that I actually look forward to because for me, there still has to be some sort of relaxation in my mind in order for me to be more productive.
See that kind of thing? That’s what I do at night. It’s not picking up a book for me late at night because that’s what I do during my workouts. And you see these carousels and I’m talking about what they are saying, Stop streaming shows. Stop watching TV and read books instead. Maybe that’s what some need to do because maybe the TV that they’re watching doesn’t really serve them. Maybe it fills up time for no reason whatsoever. Whereas for me, when I watch these things late at night, it’s the only time I watch it after everything is done because it helps shut off my mind. Otherwise, I’d keep thinking about business. I keep thinking about life, about family, about relationships, about everything under the sun. It helps me wind down and I think everybody should have a wind down routine at night, but for me, it serves me and it always has. I’ve continued to level up, level up, level up, level up, be more successful, more successful in life, in business and in everything. And yet I still watch tv.
Are you tracking with me on this? If it’s something that you don’t wanna give up because this still serves you, you could still leverage that in your time because the amount of time that you have is finite. But the way that you can leverage your time has unlimited possibilities. That’s what I’m continuously working on now, especially over the last six months to try to to do more because demands on my time continuously get greater, and now I’m figuring out it’s, I’ve seen that this kind of goes through cycles and when I get frustrated, it means I need to think bigger. I’ve talked about that before. If I get frustrated at the moment, I don’t have much time to do all these things to fit all this stuff in. And you know what? That could be true at that moment. You may not have enough time right?
Then to do all the things that you wanna do doesn’t mean that you have to give up all those things that you wanna do. As long as they still serve you, you can figure out ways to leverage your time better to fit all those things in. And that to me seems to go through cycles because just when you figure out how to leverage your time better, then you level up your success. You level up your life when you figure out how to leverage your time better, and then you go through these things because now you feel like you feel energized and reinvigorate it. It’s like, man, I was able to do all these things. This is incredible. I love it. And then you start to itch a little more because demands of life start to press down upon you and things can change. Seasons can shift in your life, in business, in whatever, in your job.
And now you have to figure out again how to step up to the next level. And stepping up to the next level only has to do with leveraging your time better. It doesn’t have to do with giving things up. It doesn’t have to do with putting in less time at work. It doesn’t have to do with giving up time that you spend with your family in order to move up to a next level in business. That’s not how it is because anything other than that, anything other than figuring out how to leverage your time better is getting into hustle culture to where it’s like you gotta give up in order to get, That’s quitting. That’s quitting on yourself, That’s quitting on your family, that’s quitting on your job, that’s quitting on your friendships, That’s quitting on everything when you say that, Oh, I absolutely have to give these things up only for the sole reason that I need to make some kind of sacrifice in order to move up to the next level. This glorification of the sacrifice or of the quitting or of the giving up, something has to end and leveraging your time better is the only way to go ALL IN.