Giving First for a Prosperous Christmas – Episode 390

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[00:02] Hello, partners. This is the holiday episode, and we have something special that we want to share with you today. Now, Kim, are you on the other line with me? I am, Spencer. I love talking about holidays. And tell me, what are we sharing that’s special? Well, I think that it’s this. You know, holidays are a prosperous time. And you know, it’s a time where everyone around the world takes a moment and, you know, hopefully most people would wallow in a stage of gratitude instead of wallow in misery, right? Yes. And they’re also taking the time to think of the prosperity around them. What I think we can share in this episode is how to get those feelings, how to get that mindset, How to get that world to be for 365 days a year, not just one.

[00:57] Absolutely. Christmas in July, but not for shopping. Yes, definitely not for shopping. So how is that? You know, for you, there are a couple of mantras that you live by. Let’s extract those and talk about making Christmas in July in these habits and that mindset. So one of my mantras is give first. And obviously people immediately go to the concept of giving around the Christmas time, around the holidays time. And so, especially for our audience, I think most people would use the term Christmas, but just if for whatever reason that term doesn’t work for you, just sub out holidays. Because it’s super cool that it gets celebrated, that giving gets celebrated, that life and renewal. And of course, this time falls at the end of a calendar year. And all those things

[01:56] enable us to have a perspective of those aspects, giving and renewal. And those are important things that, yes, we want to have every single day. So how can you do that? And I know you and your family have some really cool practices around this space as well. And we’re always all learning about what works and what doesn’t work. And of course, here in 2020, we got to shift what works and what doesn’t work around this space. So I’m super excited for this conversation. Yes, absolutely. So let’s first start off with the giving first. I’m going to pull in a little bit of science for this. I’m not a scientist, by any means. In fact, I think if you looked at my grades in biology and chemistry, you would realize that I am

[02:51] not a science expert. But one thing that is true is this, is that if we look at the world and the elements of this world, and we look at energy and matter, we realize that we’re not really creating it. We’re not destroying it. What we’re doing is we’re transferring it or transforming it. So if that’s the case, and we’re giving first, what are we transferring or transforming? I love the question. And it’s so apropos because giving and prosperity, the word that you mentioned at the very beginning about how this time of year is a prosperous time of year, do not only exist in the material world. And so giving does not necessarily mean a gift in a bag or a gift card or an email with a link for somebody to buy something, which may be way more common

[03:45] this year than in any other year. It means giving of your time, giving of your thought, giving of yourself, giving to yourself. And one of the most important things that I like to do around this time is to take a couple weeks off from the business world, whether we’re traveling or not is irrelevant, and enable myself to have the gift of time for myself and to myself to just disconnect from the awesome treadmill that I live on. And it’s a treadmill by choice. And I use the word treadmill as opposed to rat race, because rat race has some negative implications. Of course, treadmill does for some people too. But I love my treadmill, not only the physical one that I walk on, but also the one that my life is designed

[04:45] on with a lot of intentionality around calendar control and how I’m doing what I’m doing and the way that I’m helping people and all of those things. And so for each of our listeners, I just so encourage a time to disconnect and a time to focus on whatever it is that’s important to you and to give that gift to yourself and give it to others too. You know, maybe it’s a mom that needs a break from cooking all the time, or maybe it’s a dad that needs a break from fixing kids toys all the time, or maybe it’s a grandparent that needs a break from whatever it is just to help by trading time and trading skill sets to let everybody in the family have the gift of time and space in a mental framework. Yeah, that’s a really good point. You know,

[05:40] you mentioned taking the time to do that. I was reading recently, and one of the tech pioneers, he’s a name Robert Scoble, and he does a lot of tech news and other tech developments. And he said something that I thought was quite interesting. He said that he takes the time to hand wash the dishes at the end of the day. And yes, he could outsource that to someone else, but he takes time because it alleviates from others in the family, but it gives him time to think about the day. And I imagine there’s a lot of gratitude in there. How interesting. And to follow that story, it’s a good reminder that Agatha Christie wrote all of her murder mysteries while washing the dishes. So isn’t it amazing that we can take something that is so mundane

[06:36] and create with it? In fact, I think I’ve shared this story before, got a friend that was a dishwasher at a restaurant early, early in his livelihood, I want to say, like one of his first jobs. And he was so frustrated and so disappointed with where his life was, so struggling with all that he was dealing with. And he realized that he needed to love more proactively. And so he tasked himself with putting the clean glasses on the shelf with love. And if he didn’t put a glass up there with enough love, he took it down and put it back up there again, with the emphasis on love. And that transformed, to use your earlier word, that act of put, you know, very mundane, putting a clean glass on a shelf. But doing it with love transformed his life within a matter

[07:36] of days, he was able to extricate himself from a couple situations that were problematic and get a better situation for himself because of the act of love. You know, it’s pretty amazing if you think about it, because that didn’t cost him anything. In fact, you know, he could have done the work just the same. It was a mental shift that he took. And I think a lot of the things that we talk about here on this podcast, the prosperous thinking and living a prosperous life is the conscious choices that we make. And yes, you’re able to actually take those conscious choices, and then look at a person’s life and the legacy that they want, and then fit that into the financial plan. But ultimately, it has to start with how you think first, correct?

[08:24] Absolutely. And it’s not an easy thing to acknowledge that and then to get your mental workings around that so that the financial strategies that you’re using are then supported by that. And it’s super easy to overlook it and just, you know, roll your eyes and say, man, you know, whatever, it’s the old, well, are you getting good results because you’re thankful? Or are you thankful because you’re getting good results? Which one is coming first? And as we’ve progressed into adulthood, I’ve just finally figured it out that it’s the gratitude and the thankfulness and the proactive giving. In other words, giving because you don’t expect anything in return that are what get the good results. And it’s super

[09:17] easy to look at the material side and the outside, obvious signs of wealth on a particular person or at a particular home or what have you, and get caught up in, oh my gosh, they have X, when in reality, in most cases, I believe it’s they have X because first of all, they were grateful, they gave first, they created value in their business, and etc, etc. You know, you’re you’re jogging my mind from a recent interview with Dan Sullivan, who you admire and who teaches a lot of brilliant concepts. Dan was talking about entrepreneurs in our world right now. And he said that about 75% of the entrepreneurs right now are paralyzed, like they’re kind of stuck from all of the noise. And arguably, I think if a person

[10:11] was watching the news, they would feel that way. So I’m hoping for the next few minutes, what we could do is for anyone that is not stuck, we’re going to give you a shot of energy and prosperity moving forward. And for anyone that is, you just mentioned the giving first and if we’ll add a few other things that can we set together somewhat of a strategy for a couple of minutes and just give them Absolutely. I love it. It’s the shot that will propel the forward motion that is necessary in today’s lives because the world is moving forward. Our lives are moving forward day by day, hour by hour. And it’s funny, I just created a whole long list of all my favorite books. And one of them is it’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do about it.

[11:12] And that is such a proposed statement for where we are in our world today. And now is the time of year to really strategize around what you want to do in 2021. And so the shot that I am going to suggest for those that are feeling like they’re not fearful, and they’re forward thinking, and they may already have a lot of this down. One of my favorite tools and it comes from Dan Sullivan as strategic coach is to take a look at the 2021 calendar. So I get like a single piece of paper where the entire year is blocked out in blocks like there’s a block for January and then there’s a block for the 31 days in January. And I get a highlighter and I very intentionally mark the free days first. So Dan Sullivan

[12:06] has an entrepreneurial time system. It’s free days, focused days, and buffer days. We’ve shared it before on our show. I block out all the critical family time. Like my sister and I, we have a spiritual retreat in August. I always take two weeks off at Christmas, one week off at Thanksgiving. I take every bank holiday as a free day. So I go and I block all those out. We always do a sailing trip sometime in the late spring, et cetera, et cetera. So I block out all the free days and then I block out what are called focus days, which is where I’m getting my results. It’s usually Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And there’s exceptions, of course. So I block those out and then I block out my buffer days, which is when I do things

[12:45] like this podcast with you or write books or what have you. And then I actually use a fourth color and I block out conferences. I’m either teaching, coaching or attending conferences throughout the year and I need to make sure I don’t accidentally overlap any of them. And it’s just so valuable to have a picture of my year, 2021, in this format. And of course it gets changed a little bit and there’s scribbles on it and whiteouts and highlighted colors colored over one another. But it’s helpful. I highly recommend it. And it enables me to be very intentional about how I spend my time. I love that. I love this formula. I just wrote it down and I am going to do that this coming year. I really, really like that. Okay, so I wrote down just

[13:37] so you know and we’ll put the notes for all of you listeners as well. I actually wrote down the words prosperity vaccine because I mean, why not, right? That’s a great term. Absolutely. So I’m thinking, okay, what can I do to take the prosperity vaccine? So one, I’m going to do my calendar this way. Two, you mentioned giving first and that truly does work means giving without expecting something, being charitable. I think we can round the list out with two more things. Awesome. So I love the idea of the space and the time to reflect, to pray, to meditate, whatever it is. So let’s absolutely have that on our list is just dedicated time. It might be five minutes a day. It might be one day for 24 hours. I have a friend that went to a

[14:33] silent retreat for an entire week. You know, it could be all kinds of things like that. But do it intentionally. Put it on your calendar and protect the time. Okay. All right. And let’s add in one more piece. What would it be? Then I think it’s always good to be focused on learning. Part of moving forward every day is to be learning. And I am a big believer that you’re either growing and learning or you’re dying. And that’s really blunt language and could even be offensive, but it’s what I believe. And so identify for yourself the way that you learn. Acknowledge that other people learn differently. Okay. So the main ways of learning are reading, listening, watching, and then of course there’s a fourth one

[15:24] that’s sometimes combined with the others, which is getting your hands on the stuff. And so figure out the way that you learn if you don’t know that. Acknowledge that other people learn differently. So don’t get frustrated. For example, if you learn by reading, which is how I learn, and you suggest books to people and they don’t want to read because maybe they learn by getting their hands on something or watching or listening, which of course most books are available in audio formats now. So that solves that challenge. And of course that’s what a podcast is for. But identifying the way that you learn and then just being okay with the fact that you’re not going to probably be as interested in the other ways. Like I don’t want

[16:05] to pick up a model of something. I’m not interested in getting my hands. I love the fact that I work mostly with intangible products because I don’t want to touch them. And it doesn’t have anything to do with being afraid of touching. It just has to do with I don’t learn with my hands. And then same with the video. I just realized I would rather read a transcript of a video than watch the video. And I would absolutely rather read a book than listen to a book. That’s me. So figure out the way that you learn best and acknowledge that and acknowledge that other people learn best differently and try to help them. If you want to teach them something, try to help them find things in their learning

[16:44] modality rather than whatever yours is so that they can accept and learn and appreciate that message. Oh, I love it. Okay, so I’m going to put these notes together for you listeners so that you’ll have this. But we do have a call to action on this. And here’s what it is. There’s probably someone in your life where you’re thinking I would love for them to see how I’m trying to make a prosperous life. And maybe something will rub off and help them as well. Maybe they’re already doing great and it just multiplies that. If that’s the case with this episode, make sure you click on one of the buttons on Spotify or Apple or wherever you are and share it with them. And then let them know why you’re grateful for

[17:32] them. Does that sound like a plan? It’s an awesome one. Thank you. What a great idea. Excellent. And I promise you, if you do that and send the personalized note, you know, when you send them a text, they’re like, hey, I was thinking of you say something you’re grateful for. Share the episode. I promise you it will end in a good experience and it will not only help kick off having the best holiday season ever, but it will also propel you for the most amazing future forward. And so I’m going to do this. I’m getting the calendar. I’m going to move this forward. I’m going to share it with other people. I hope you guys do it too. So thank you, Kim. Thank you, Spencer. Always, always grateful for you.

[18:15] 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.