What Can We Control? – Episode 463

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast today. We’re going to be talking about control and this is a different type of control. This isn’t the control that we’re putting on anyone else. This is internal control and there are tumultuous times. I think it depends on how you view it. Let’s hear from you, Kim. Well, I think there’s two specific things that I would like to land on for today that you can control. The first is your thinking and the second is your calendar control. We’ll do that one first, because I love the alliteration of the two C’s is the most important aspect of one’s life in my mind and I think a lot of people would fall into the thought of, oh my gosh, I don’t have any of my own

[00:51] time that I can control, but I really beg to differ on that because if you look at a 24 hour day and you know you’re supposed to be sleeping eight of it and in theory you’re working eight and let’s take another four hours for travel if needed and all of the other pieces and parts of life that have to go with eating and you know, although probably some of your working time is eating. Nevertheless, that’s still four. You could even cut it back to two hours of every day, day upon day where you get to control your time. You get to control what is on your calendar and then you could even add in the weekends and that kind of thing. It’s funny, we’re going on a little trip here shortly and it’s partly

[01:34] business, partly pleasure, right? That’s the best way to travel because then you get to deduct most of it. And my father-in-law says to me, well, you know, you’re doing this that day and then, and what’s the other day? And I said, that day is for me and Todd to have for ourselves. He said, how’d you work that in? And I said, calendar control, because I put it on the calendar. I blocked it off. I said, this is important for us and we’ve got social things before it. We’ve got work things after it, but this day is our day, a 24 hour period, midnight to midnight, which of course goes with Dan Sullivan’s entrepreneurial time system that is truly a free day for me and Todd to reconnect. And sometimes we’ll take like Kim days where Kim will go do what she wants

[02:22] to regenerate and then Todd will do what he wants, so he calls his Todd days. However, this is a Kim and Todd day and I’m really looking forward to it. And we probably only get truly that protected time, maybe once or twice, three times a year, and yet it’s super, super valuable. So that is calendar control. And every single person has the ability. If you have younger kids, I would really encourage you to get them started on calendar control because them learning, okay, I have an hour or a day or two hours, you know, whatever’s appropriate for age, of course, and your family. Learning how to self-generate as a child is super important. How to just deal with time and understand the use of time.

[03:09] Super, super valuable. And so calendar control also can be where you get your to-do lists done, right? And, you know, another example is Todd and I are leaving the house for a week and then we have a very busy week when we get back and there’s certain things that needed to get done. So on a Monday morning, we made an attempt at blocking time to get the things done that were necessary to have all those other pieces and parts be smooth and graceful. And that again is all about calendar control. You know, you’re mentioning a lot of pieces in here that have a correlation with finances, which I think this is kind of strange that you’ll meet people that are successfully successful with finances, but they’re

[03:56] not successful with their calendars and their life, meaning they’re great at saving their money first and investing their money for, for some reason, they say, oh, I don’t have time. It’s like last I checked, we all use the same calendar. Yeah. And it causes relationship disrepair, which sometimes cannot be repaired. And so the use of time and the priorities that are important to you where I’m not judging what they are, but pick what they are and then schedule your time accordingly. And, you know, people that do a time audit, you know, if you’re feeling like I’m not sure my time is in line with my priorities, just do a quick time audit and figure out how you can rearrange your time so that it matches your priorities.

[04:43] And that’s what calendar control is about too. And the realization that we can do that. We can shift, we can have discussions with our children, with our siblings, with our other family members, with our employer or the people that are working for us, depending on where you are in that space or our coworkers have a discussion. The time is not in line with your priorities and your values. You know, there’s one piece I’m going to add in, and I’m going to admit some guilt here, this will be good that when you schedule time for yourself, it can be really difficult to be with yourself that happens for people that are high achievers because we’re always go on that next thing. And then when we schedule the downtime or whatever that is, that can be difficult.

[05:39] So what I’ve found for myself, and I’m just sharing this with others, is I like manual labor, working on the property or something like that. And I consider that me time. Yes, I’m still working and I’m not one to sit on the beach and sip drinks. I just, that’s not me. I like to do something. And so if it doesn’t get on a calendar, that won’t happen. And it’s necessary. Well, I love that you brought the earlier connection to personal finances. And the same is true with our free time. You know, this stuff is all interrelated as we know, and it’ll even bring us back to the other thing that you can control, which is of course your mindset and your thinking. And so what you’ve done by finding a hobby essentially that benefits you

[06:31] is you’ve freed your mind and you’ve also dedicated finances to facilitate that transaction, if you will. I mean, it really, you bought the property, you have the equipment, you are engaged in making something take place on that. And because your mind and also literally your hands and your money are all tied up in that, I don’t mean holistically, just for that period of time with that certain amount of money, then you get a huge win when that is occurring, you know, the property is improved and your money’s doing good and your physical body, as well as your focus is onto something else, which then means when you come back to the business, you’re rejuvenated and ready to tackle it again. And I think we forget sometimes the value of rejuvenation, yet each

[07:22] person has to define for themselves what rejuvenation is, because I love beach and drink for about a day. And then that’s good for the year, right? And so other people love that for longer. And other people can’t fathom doing property work, but you and I happen to love that. And Todd and I enjoy that. And I know your Jen gets involved as well, and you get the kids involved. And I remember growing up being involved with my parents and their property work and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So sometimes it takes a little bit of experiment. Like you block a day for yourself. You have to kind of try a few things to figure out what really rejuvenates you best. And I know the rejuvenation is sometimes only mental.

[08:07] Like yesterday, Todd and I worked on a property and we were fried at the end of the day, just like physically spent. And that’s a great feeling and enables, and it was funny because I had some kind of mental things to do. And I was totally rejuvenated mentally, but like my body was done. And that’s a thing that I think kind of helps with the whole aspect of it. But you have to know that for yourself. So feel free to experiment and try different things that enable you to figure out what works for you. And sometimes it’s with your spouse and sometimes it’s not. And both can be good. A hundred percent. Yes. And, and I think that goes to our next point. We’re going to talk about controlling your thinking.

[08:49] But as you mentioned, having your body a hundred percent spent, I think that’s what it does is when you’re intentional with your calendar and you’re a hundred percent spent on whatever that is, that allows you to a hundred percent enjoy when you calendar out the other piece. That’s the yin and the yang, the opposites. Now, right now, what we have, depending on where people are in the financial cycle, there is some serious uncertainty in the markets and that uncertainty is going to destroy people unless they control their thinking. Cause what happens, people get scared. They sell when they shouldn’t, they make bad decisions when they shouldn’t, and when they have good decisions in front of them,

[09:39] they’re scared to do those. So let’s talk about that controlling the thinking right now. Well, without a doubt that thought process of just being alert to controlling your thinking is so, so important. I have a good friend, Joel Weldon, and he talks about not participating in the recession. And I would encourage people to really take that advice because if you let your mind go into, oh, the stock market is down or oh, the real estate market is down, now you want to be wise and look for opportunity, but especially if you can’t control anything about that, so you have money in your 401k plan and for whatever reason you can’t, you didn’t either time it, and I don’t mean by market timing, but you didn’t get the time

[10:28] to move the money to a fixed account or you couldn’t move it to a fixed account, so it’s down, okay, you can’t control that, let it go. So much of our mental capacity is focused and our thinking is focused on things that we cannot control. And it’s imperative that we rein that back in and we be very picky about what we’re putting in our minds and in our thinking. So we’re watching what we are feeding our brains in terms of like being careful around the news, being careful about conversations that cause fear, being careful around conversations that we cannot control. So again, if something is up, down or sideways and it’s already done and you can’t control it, move on, go think about something else.

[11:15] And that control of our thinking is imperative as it relates to our minds, our bodies, our health, what we’re eating, what we’re doing with our money, how we’re choosing to take advantage of opportunity or look for opportunity, how we’re engaged in our relationships, like our thinking is controllable around all of that. And it’s funny, just even as I said, relationships right there, I even remember sometimes just getting caught in like a whirlpool of poor thinking about my relationship with Todd. And it’s easy to just get sucked down in there and then you start thinking about this bad thing and that bad thing and that’s ridiculous. We have an amazing relationship and yet I have caught myself on occasion,

[12:02] not controlling my thinking and letting it go down the whirlpool. And it’s devastating. It literally is something that we need to be on high alert for and stop when it occurs. You know, if there’s a specific problem that needs to be handled, then calendar control, right? Set a time, have it get handled. But beyond that, don’t let either ancillary commentary or just our own silly little brains sometimes cause us to get on a downhill slide that can be slippery and dangerous and hard to come back from. Absolutely. You know, when I think of our thinking, getting it out of control, we have two different approaches of it. You know, you can look at it like a person that’s trying to get in shape. And everyone really knows how to get in shape.

[12:49] It’s called eating less and moving more. So I think if our minds get out of shape and we’re not working, well, why don’t we cut the things out that we don’t want, like eat less of the garbage, like the news, the bad people, the things like that. And then how about we move more, meaning like we move more towards gratitude, we move more towards those things and within a few days, really it’s that fast. Like we’re back on track. It’s that simple. I’ve seen it many times. I know you’ve seen it. So love that suggestion there. That is a perfect note to end on because just purposely shifting the thought, whether it’s about the calendar, about the person, about the money, whatever the thought is, shifting the thought is what is going

[13:39] to get you the different results. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.