Creating Goals and Habits for 2018 – Bonus Episode

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[00:00] I founded Ornot in 2013 and we made clothing for cyclists. For me, the best part of Shopify is the possibility of managing the business even without technical knowledge. We manage everything, from back-end to front-end and make online sales, without complications. If Shopify were a cycling equipment, I would say it would be the bicycle itself. And that’s what allows us to get where we want. It is in Shopify that we manage our business. Start your free evaluation at Shopify.com. Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler. Hello and welcome to the Prosperity Podcast.

[00:54] I have Kim Butler, our host. Are you there, Kim? Yes, I am. Well, today we’re going to be talking about the subject that is on everyone’s mind because it’s goals. But we’re going to twist and we’re going to say, how is Kim going to make 2018 great? And how can we all make 2018 great? Awesome. What a fun subject to talk about. I love talking about making anything great. That is right. So I’m going to start with mindset. That is paramount. And the coolest thing is anybody can change their mindset, like literally in a moment’s notice. And you can shift your thinking. That’s really what we’re doing when we’re changing mindset to adopt different habits. Because really all of life is made up of habits.

[01:45] And so the question that you want to ask yourself is, are your habits serving you? Somebody will say to me, oh, gosh, I just wake up late every morning. And so the question is, and you have to be careful. You have to not ask it too flippantly. But you say, how is that working for you? And you put it back on them to come up with a solution. And so whatever our habits are, if we go behind the habit, it’s really back to mindset again. It’s back to our thinking. It’s back to what we’re taking into our thinking. So one of my absolute go-to places is not a to-do thing. It’s a not-to-do thing. And that’s to watch the news. So watching news in my mind is a deal breaker. I just do not feel that news on the television, and for the most part news on the radio,

[02:47] is beneficial. And there are definitely people that could argue about that with me that I’m missing out or I’m not aware of something. But frankly, if I need to be aware of something, somebody will probably tell it to me. And there are other sources that I choose to go to instead to get information about what’s going on in the world. One of my favorite ones is CSMonitor.com. So that’s CSMonitor. It stands for ChristianScienceMonitor.com. And it is put out by the Christian Science Church, but it is not a religious publication. It’s a fabulous, very well-done piece of information about not only the U.S., but also the world. So that’s an idea. But really, back to the mindset, we need to be careful what we’re feeding our minds.

[03:34] And so that means also what’s going on in the evening in your homes. Like, what are you doing for basically two hours that you have before you go to bed? How are you using that time? And then you have a certain set of habits around that time. And I would just ask you, how is that working for you? So that’s a good start. Mindset, the feeding of our minds. I, of course, think it’s super important every morning to start with something extra positive. And there’s so many good places today. You can get information on meditation. You can get information on prayer. You can get inspirational videos. You can listen to inspirational music. But in the morning, feed your brain with something good. And positive, because that mindset carries you then into the day

[04:24] so that you can tackle the challenges. Because all of life is a series of challenges that if we look at them as opportunities and we see the learning and we see the good, that’s what we will get out of them. And that is something that we can start at the beginning of the day by setting our intention that there is good in today and I’m going to go find it. How are we doing so far? I love it. I think it’s great. Now, one thing that I’m asking, and I would assume other listeners are, they might want to say, can I get a peek at Kim’s day in the life? Maybe a couple of things that you do at night and a couple of things you do in the morning. Absolutely. So my go-to thing in the morning is something spiritual.

[05:11] So that’s what works for me. And specifically, I use something called MyBibleLesson.com. MyBibleLesson.com has a web thing that you can get on and you can download or you can just read it. It’s a paid-for subscription, so this isn’t going to be right for everybody. But you can also call in. And so a lot of times I will, so you could almost think of it like a podcast if you will. It’s not. It’s a phone number. It’s a little old school, but it works. So I call in on my walk to the barn and I listen to 30 minutes of biblical readings while I’m feeding the alpacas and walking the dog to the barn and back, etc. That’s a very, very important start to my day. And sometimes I will also grab it. I’ll either print the PDF off and look at that

[06:01] or I’ll look at it on my phone on the web over my smartphone or something like that. But to me, having something spiritual is the way to start the day. And even on Saturday and Sunday, I’ll turn to that or potentially some type of inspirational music. So I’ve got a variety of hymns and other inspiring musical pieces that I listen to if that just suits my mood better. Okay. That’s the morning. Let’s hear the evening. What are a couple things you do in the evening? I just don’t watch TV. Again, it’s almost a not rather than a two. And so I just think frankly that there’s nothing worthwhile on TV at all under any circumstances. Now I do watch movies, but I try not to watch movies on quote school nights.

[06:54] So this is a holdover from a long, long time ago. I did grow up in a house full of educators. My parents were both teachers. And so school nights were really, really important. And so for us in our household, we don’t treat Sunday as a quote school night anymore. We get Sunday night off if you will. But Monday night through Thursday night, I am not going to watch a movie. I am going to watch YouTubes of particular things that I’m interested in like Ted Talks. I’m a huge lover and consumer of Ted Talks. And I just go through, I have some subscriptions to particular people, some thought processes that I like. I just try to widen my perspective on those because it’d be really easy for me to watch

[07:44] all the sort of growth, human growth oriented environments or the financial channel if you will on Ted. But I try to widen my perspective there. Sometimes Todd and I will get on our treadmill and watch and walk at the same time, which works really well. The other thing that I like to do, especially if Todd’s occupied elsewhere, is I crochet our alpaca scarves. While I’m watching something on YouTube or Ted. So that’s a good multitasking thing for me. So that’s typically Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. And then on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings, and we are very much home bodies. I tend to then turn to movies and we’re particular about the movies that we watch. We buy most of our movies on eBay

[08:35] and we buy the actual discs, the CDs, and we put them on a server and then we have a really cool media room. And so it’s me and Todd and Emma Dog on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. Well, I was going to say you can’t forget Emma Dog and she’s actually the boss of it all. Absolutely. In fact, she knows if you say, do you want to watch a movie? She knows right where to go. She hops up on her particular spot on the couch in the movie room and settles in. And she, that little dog, sorry, little is not the right word, is it? You don’t call it Great Dane Little. That dog understands more English than any dog I’ve ever met. Now, the last point that I want to talk about with Mindset is something that we’re going to borrow from Dan Sullivan.

[09:30] And I want to borrow the concept of 10X. So how can a person 10X their mindset in 2018? It’s all about what you are thinking about because you get what you focus on. And so if you want to 10X anything, you have to start looking for it. Now, 10X does not always mean an increase. 10X could mean a decrease. So maybe your mindset is, oh my gosh, I kind of like this news diet idea. How can I do that? Well, try to 10X reduce the amount of news that you’re listening or watching to. Or if we take it the other way, let’s say that you really, really want to create something. So 10X, the time that you spend looking for, reading about, watching and listening, the areas around that thing that you want to create.

[10:32] So like a quick story on this, back to when I wanted to form with Todd, the Prosperity Economics Movement, which is now a formal 501c3 organization. We’ve had four annual events and the movement has wings and we’re actually doing something with it. But long before that, when I thought of the idea, I thought, okay, this is a great idea, but how could I make it really, really big? Because I think when you look at something, when you think about something and you try first to make it really, really big, it focuses your thought processes, your brain, your creativity on it in a different way. In other words, and this is a total Dan Sullivan thing, he says that 10X is actually easier than 2X because anybody can just bump something up,

[11:24] 20% improvement, that kind of thing. But for you to think about something in a 10X way, either again, 10X increase or 10X decrease, it really forces you to look at it and think about it very, very differently than just same old, same old. In today’s technology, and I use the word technology very loosely, like all of the things around technology is giving us so much potential, so much capacity, so much capability that we absolutely must think about things very, very differently. There are so many businesses in the world today that will be out of business in 10 years. So if we don’t want that to happen to us, then we must fill our minds with the really good thinkers of the world and use their abilities to think about,

[12:12] to brainstorm, to visioneer what it is that we’re interested in creating or working on or spending time on. And I love that term visioneer. I think visions are actually better than goals in a way. I mean, we all have goals that we have for certain things, but a goal, as we know, needs to be very specific, very measurable, very achievable, very realistic, and with a timeframe. That’s the smart acronym that it applies to goals. A vision is further out there. It’s not smart. It’s potentially not realistic. It’s maybe achievable, maybe not, certainly probably not going to be in the way we initially visioneer it. And it doesn’t have a timeframe. And because there is no timeframe, we are able to think much bigger.

[13:07] And because we can think much bigger, we can create something that we might not be able to create if we were thinking smaller. I love that term visioneer. So I think for our listeners today, they can all become visioneers. And in order to do that, start to create the habit of focusing on their evening routines and their morning routines and getting that mindset correct. Yes, and I want to add one more thing. And that’s once you’ve got the mindset correct, which, by the way, you need to get correct every day, every hour. It’s not a one and done thing ever. I’m working on my mindset all the time. But once we get our mindset correct for this next 60 minutes, let’s make sure that we’re also verbalizing

[13:56] what our mindset is going after, the good that our mindset is looking for. I meet so many people on the phone, you know, day after day after day, and 80% of them say, oh, happy Monday, you know, away, here we go. But every now and then I’ll get somebody on the phone, which will say to me, oh, you know, I have a cold and I’m focused on this thing and I’m not feeling well on that thing. And, you know, with your chatting with somebody that can help you with what it is that you are complaining about, then that’s a completely legitimate statement. And occasionally I realize people may feel like they need to apologize because their voice sounds funny or something like that. But we need to be very careful what we’re verbalizing

[14:49] because if we verbalize it, that’s just bringing it into the conversation. It’s bringing it back around into your mind again. And that can really throw you because if you’re verbalizing things that you don’t want, you’re putting them back out there to be present. So instead, verbalize things that you want, share gratitude, express something positive. I mean, even if it’s as simple as saying happy Monday and the whole fake it till you make it, I don’t like that statement. But what I do like is act as if. Like if you’re not feeling positive at the beginning of 2018, at the beginning of today, at the beginning of this hour, then act as if you were. Just stop for a second. And act as if you were.

[15:39] And do it for the next minute. And then the next minute. And then the next minute. And you know what? Those are the results you’re going to get. I love it. I think that’s great. And I think verbalizing and that really puts the icing on the cake. Now, something that I want to do for the listeners is to say how grateful we are for them listening to the podcast and also to extend that they can ask us questions here on the podcast. And we want to help them. So what’s the best way for them to do that? We have a special email for our podcast listeners and I too want to add my gratitude. The podcast has been so fun to do. I’m so grateful for the good work that it does. And it’s only doing good work

[16:22] because people are listening to it, responding to it, interacting with us and asking questions at hello at partners number four prosperity.com. That’s a special podcast listener email. Many times I’ll respond on the email so that the listener can get their question answered right away. But then we’ll also cover it on the podcast where I can elaborate it a little bit more further. So that’s hello at partners number four prosperity.com. Well, thank you so much for listening today and we hope that all of you take a step forward to make 2018 great. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partners for prosperity.com. If you liked this episode,

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