Tiny steps for great goals – Episode 447

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Hello, Prosperity members, tribe members, community. We’ve coined this phrase as Prosperity Thinkers is the website. We’ve got the Prosperity Podcast, and this is like a prosperity family. I don’t even know what to call it, right? Community works for me. I think that’s my favorite word. And, and, and it’s perfect because here we are recording this at the beginning of 2020. And I feel like the beginning of every year, the world kind of divides into these classes and you’ve got people that are just like, let me run, let me go. And then we’ve got others that we’re happy to bring along with us. That’s a good way to put it. Yeah, really good way to put it. And it’s actually 2022 Spencer.

[00:47] Oh, that’s right. Oh man. Put me in a time machine. Oh, that’s so funny. Well, 2020, I mean, we’re in the 2020s. So that was, but I love what you said about bringing people along. And I think that’s honestly a obligation that we have as human beings. And I get it. If somebody’s like super negative, you basically don’t want them to be too affecting in your life. But the fact is we all have an obligation to bring those along, to bring forward everybody that we possibly can, and that isn’t going to be everybody. But the fact is we still have an obligation. And that’s why podcasting is so awesome because we get to share our message and our community members that are like, yep, I’m there right with you.

[01:35] Some of them even leading the charge. And yet all of those, some of whom will never even know that can benefit from it without any extra effort on your and my part, get to benefit from it. And hopefully that small little drip that we put forward, just one little drip a week pulls them forward to the place where they can say, yes, I am a prosperity thinker. And when I’m not, I know what to do to get there. So when you mentioned that you’re talking about a complete mindset, you set a phrase in there, which is little by little. And that’s one of the topics that we’re going over right now. So I want to start teed up with one thing on your property, on the podcast, you’ve told us about things that you deal with on the property,

[02:28] having, you know, a farm, a ranch, and there’s a lot of work that goes in and it can be overwhelming. So tell us about that and then let’s tee it into the topic. Absolutely. So I had this huge aha, and this has probably been 10 years ago when we set out on a weekend to clear a fence line and it was, I mean, we’re talking probably a hundred year old fence line. And the test was overwhelming and I was so frustrated that we didn’t get further in that one particular Saturday. And then it dawned on me, we have a lifetime to clear this and all the other fence lines and the acres of the jungle that are necessary to keep beating back because we live in East Texas and we call it a jungle, but it does

[03:17] grow quite proliferously, I think is the word. And so this realization, and I really credit Dan Sullivan, because he had just gotten on this track of 25 year increments and so it dawned on me. Well, at a minimum, if I don’t want to think lifetime, at a minimum, I can think 25 years. And it literally just took that one Saturday and stretched it into 25 years or a lifetime or whatever timeframe you wanted to give it. The most important is that it wasn’t necessary to be done in a day, especially a project like that. That’s literally ongoing. And it was a real aha for me in a lot of areas of life. I mean, there’s so many times we set a goal as an example. There’s nothing wrong with the goal. There’s everything wrong with the timeframe.

[04:09] And so when you have a long-term perspective, the Bitcoin PhD in economics that I listened to talks about time preference. When you have a long-term time preference, it enables you to enjoy the work at hand and do the job and come back again the next day or the next weekend and do some more of it. Ooh, that’s so good. So you’re talking one, I want to attack timeframe in one piece because they believe there is one important and I’ll say crucial piece of timeframe that we do have to focus on, which is starting because too often people become paralyzed or they procrastinate the starting of it. And you mentioned the fence at the end of the day, the, when you looked at it, you wish that you would have done more.

[05:05] And I think in all of our lives, we wish we would have done more with personal development or whatever it may be. However, you’re looking at this and you just started. So let’s take this conversation and pull it over into our finances and our personal prosperity. Well, just like the fence, a tiny step was needed to start literally like pick up the fence tool or pull out the old fence post or clear the brush away or whatever a tiny step was what started the work. And you and I have talked on the podcast before about BJ Fogg. And I know you can put those links in the show notes to BJ’s work. He has a book called tiny habits. It is a fabulous way to get results because there are so many times and now I will liken it to personal finances.

[05:58] It’s an exact example, like literally taken. Sure. We have goals of a million dollar net worth or a billion dollar net worth or whatever number it is that you have. But the fact is results are going to get there because you took tiny baby steps all along the way I’ve said for years and years, go slow, start small. So you go slow by taking a step. You go, you start small by just doing one thing and committing to that and making that happen over and over again. And of course in the personal finance arena, it’s easy because we can automate it. So we decide I’m going to save money, save as a verb. Like the most important thing of all the things. And then we go slow and we start small and we automate it.

[06:42] Now small is relative. It could be a hundred bucks a month. It could be a hundred thousand dollars a month. Again, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you are taking steps and you are inching forward and getting whatever it is in terms of results that you want. This is true of our eating. This is true of our relationship habits. We make deposits into our savings account. We need to make deposits into our relationship habits. And we need to love the act of those tiny baby steps and not get frustrated that I’m not getting anywhere. I have this big, huge goal and I’m not making progress towards it. Well, it isn’t going to ever be one big step. Okay. Maybe occasionally something will happen where you feel like you make a big step.

[07:30] But when I look back about all the cool things that we’ve accomplished, amongst many types of things in our lives, as well as over many years, it was never one big thing was always a culmination of lots of little things. Yeah. You mentioned it’s never one big thing and that’s where the mystery lies because our brains will look at it and it will tell us that it was one thing and the outside world wants to sell us on the diet plan or the financial strategy or whatever it is. And by the one thing, and I will say this, they’re just like lightning. There is the occasional time when it may be a one thing, but from what I’ve read and seen is if it comes in super fast and it would make the difference, it will leave just as fast.

[08:24] Right. And that’s what’s amazing is the learnings are often one big thing, right? The learnings are often the two by four that we get whacked over the head with. And you can look back at your life and go, yes, that was a big one. But the progress are the baby steps. Yes. So you mentioned one thing and the way I would love to wind up and deliver this episode, depending on your circumstance, your tiny habits and your tiny steps will be different. So someone that’s in college, like Robbie, your son, I remember this story. He got out of college and he made his first investment into his property and he brought roommates in. And then he got bit by the bug, the real estate bug and saying, wait, I want to do this.

[09:15] I’ve got leverage. And he acquires another property. And so it can start with a hundred dollars a month, or if someone’s established, it can be a hundred thousand a month or more. So can you walk us through a little bit, some of the tiny habit or tiny step principles that you can deliver as a prosperity thinker? Well, with the finances, it’s so important to start small because you won’t make a big decision. And again, the zeros are all relative, but if you have to write a million dollar check, you’re going to be very resistant and super, super careful to write that check. But if you only have to write a fill in the blank, small check to you, then you will do it. And so that’s why this saving monthly idea, the start small idea is so valuable.

[10:07] And I could liken it to eating too. Here we are in the new year. Everybody wants to get back on their good eating plan. That is a habit. It’s not a special diet. It may be for a period of time, but it is a habit. And so you’ve got to take the baby steps to get you the result that will then develop the habit. And one of the most important messages I can share around the developing of habits is to make sure they are positive oriented and BJ has a great like trigger for this, if this, then that I think, like if, for example, let’s say you were wanting to stop smoking, I’ve never had to deal with this, but I’ve heard that if you will set yourself a self up and if then same, and like, if I want to smoke, then I go on a walk.

[10:54] So the habit is going on a walk. The habit is adding in the thing that you want to be doing. And it’s super important that the habit is not the thing that you don’t want to be doing. So let me liken it to something that I can speak specifically about. And that is the saving of money. If I want to save money, I have to add the habit of saving money. I cannot be overly focused on the habit of getting out of debt or the habit of stopping to buy so many things or whatever the habit is that I think is causing me to not save. I cannot be focused on that. I must be focused on the habit that I want to bring in and install in my life. Ooh, that’s beautiful. That is the foundation of a prosperity thinker right there.

[11:54] Well said. Yes. Listeners, thank you for being a part of this podcast. You’ll notice this episode here has, you know, stories to it, but it also has foundational principle pieces depending on where you are in your life. So if you’re saving again, $10 a month or a hundred thousand or a million dollars a month, the zeros don’t matter. The habits do. And I have one challenge is for listeners to either send in an email and let us know what you’re doing this year, because it will help. It will help you by knowing that there’s a community behind you. Send that email to hello at prosperity thinkers.com. And if you’re not comfortable with that, then what you can do is share this episode with a friend, family, or someone like that, and you’ll probably

[12:45] be surprised that you’ve got more people on your side. Sound like a plan? Awesome. Thank you, Spencer. 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.