Are You Wasting Time?

The trouble is, you think you have time that quote by the Buddha, by Bucha, is an all time great as it would be, and think it’s all one that, that, that, that we’d like, and certainly I’ll intellectually understand it. And it takes until we’re actually at a certain event, time or impasse to really let it sink in. And I know that you know this, and I also know that we need to be reminded of things more than we need to be instructed of things. So it always bears repeating. It bears repeating for me, bears repeating for everybody. I don’t know, there’s ever a bad time to to pause and reflect and to take stock in an inventory and think about if things are going great, if things are going badly, if things are going just fine, or if things are just going and that last one, I think, is the danger when things are just going time is just passing. I’m just doing things. I am going through motions. I am and that’s that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you can be doing things in service of a life that you like and you enjoy. I what got me thinking about all this stuff is it just recently turned a year older, and so it’s just a wonderful time to reflect. And I do fancy myself a thoughtful, reflective kind of a person, so what I’m doing, and you reflect on these things, and you recognize that at this stage of my life, I recognize that there are a lot of things that are you’re just doing. I’m driving kids around, I’m dropping them off, I’m picking them up, and that is just part of the program. So not everything in life needs to be feel like I’m getting 1% better all all the time. I’m not saying that, but it just bear. I think that it is of immense value to be thoughtful about these things, and to be thoughtful of where it is that I am doing great and pursuing that which is of the greatest value and importance to me, and that which I’m really I’m doing just because I have fun doing it, that which I’m doing that because I have to do it. And if there’s really any opportunities where I am just sitting on my laurels, I’m not pursuing things, and I’m doing that because I’ve been little to sleep. I am a I don’t know victim is, is, is the right term or not, but I’m falling prey to convenience. I’m falling prey to comfort. I’m falling prey to delicious food. I’m falling prey to mind numbing entertainment and just wanting to check out and zone out, and all those things are fine, just not when I’m doing those things more frequently than I’m doing other things, or when I’m doing those things unconsciously and I’m not engaging in hustle porn, or inviting you or encouraging you to engage in some kind of an Infinity War of production, nothing like that. Just, let’s just take stock and make sure that what we’re doing is, is, is what we want. Think that that is a worthwhile thing. We follow particular patterns and habits and routines, and it’s easy to get carried along by the flow of life and just executing tasks and crossing things off of lists. And some of that’s on our terms, some of it’s on other people’s terms. Of course, you’ve experienced this as well. You’ve experienced this as well. And circling back to how I started, maybe it is just a byproduct of one’s age. Once you start getting around middle age, which is where I am, you start to to reflect and think about these things. Maybe you have some kind of a an event that happens. Somebody close to you gets sick, or you become sick, or just not healthy, or something bad happens, causes you to take a step back and sort of look around, but it’s easy to happen. It’s easy to get wrapped up into just life. So I am. I’m always curious when I look at how I’m spending my time and how I’m spending my attention, I like to talk and think about a lot about my most valuable resources, and I consider those to be my time, attention, energy and my money. And while, again, none of this is game of perfect, I think that success in life is found by allocating those mvrs most valuable resources to their high and best use, highest and best use. Yes, to try to figure out, okay, in an ocean, a sea of endless possibilities for where I can apply these or allocate or spend them, what’s going to make me happiest, most successful, most contented, most fulfilled. And that’s a different answer on a Monday morning versus a Saturday night. I get it, but that’s, I think, I think that’s one of the big keys to getting what we want, is to be really thoughtful and mindful of these things. And the Bucha talking about how the trouble is you think you have time. We only have one crack at life. We only have so many Saturdays in a year, we only have so much money, I only have so much attention. So it is a beneficial thing to be considering these things. So when I look and I say, okay, as interesting, why did I choose to spend, you know, three hours, you know, scrolling through the internet or watching YouTube or Netflix or whatever it is that I do? Why did I spend so much time on Twitter, investing in politics or thinking about politics. Why did I, if you’re somebody who plays video games, why did I, why did I game for four hours on Saturday? What’s, what’s, what’s going on here? Why am I so excited about this? Is this? Is this some version of me engaging in avoidance behavior where I’m just I don’t know I or I know what it is that I ought to be doing, but I’m actively choosing to do this other thing instead. Am I just pure procrastinating because I just don’t want to get started with this thing? Am I overcompensating? Maybe I’m doing something that from the outside looks like a pretty beneficial thing, but what I’m doing it for, not for the right reasons. Maybe I’m doing it for somebody else’s reasons. I don’t know. These are questions that I’m constantly asking myself, and I invite you to do the same. So I think that for me, I’m always wondering or asking myself, why am I focusing on this stuff? It just doesn’t matter. And again, I’m not interested in not doing certain things ever again, but I’m interested in doing certain things less. Like, why am I focusing on things that don’t matter? Why am I focusing so much on stuff that I don’t have control over? And odds are, when we have major events going on in the world, it is a natural thing to be concerned or thinking about them. But where am I falling victim to, or falling prey to focusing too much time on stuff that just doesn’t matter, or it’s just a function of again, and why am I doing anything other than what I know that I’m ought, that I’m supposed to be doing right now I’ve allocated time. I actually put something in my calendar. I’m just not doing it. Why is that? So? I think fundamentally, we are, once you get to a certain age, probably late 30s, early 40s, you start to record, reconcile, or rather wrestle with the idea that you’re either getting stronger every day or you’re getting weaker every day. When you get to a certain point in your life, probably in your late 20s, your early 30s, you look around you say, I’m either in a relationship I should be in, I’m looking for it, or I’m wasting my time. I know that for a lot of my 20s, vast majority that was something that was very applicable to me. I probably should have asked myself that question at that time. Maybe that’s true of you. Maybe it’s not. And also, you’re either doing the work you want to be doing or ought to be doing. You’re trying to determine what that is, or you’re just wasting time. There’s so much talk right now about the younger generations and how the majority want to be professional influencers. That’s the job that they want. There’s so much talk about them just not wanting to work at all, it’s quiet, quitting or just not winding it whatever, whatever stupid term you’re interested in using, what a crazy, scary thing, and that just couldn’t be more foreign to me. But all of that goes to if you don’t feel like you have agency, or you feel like you’re part of a rigged system and there’s no way you can get ahead. Why would you even engage in playing so these are good questions to be asking all the time, but the idea being we need to answer them and start moving towards the version of our lives that we truly want, otherwise we are simply wasting time. I recently did an episode talking about what I learned over the course of the past year, and I know that I’ve talked about this in the past and mentioned this in the past, but for me, 2020, was such an. Important year.

So it was essentially four years ago. It was around my 40th birthday. Obviously, COVID happened that year, and my brother had been really sick, fighting cancer, and he ended up passing away. And so that confluence of events of me coming into middle age, me recognizing and seeing the profound impact that outside influence like a pandemic has on on our way of life, and then coming to the really hard realization that life is so finite when you have somebody you care for, you’re so close to pass away. All that made me take a big step back and said, okay, is this the x that I want to bring with me to the next stage of my life? And it was, Is this the physical body that I want to bring with me to the next stage of my life? Is this the career? Is this the work that I want to do into the next stages of my life? Is this the attitude or mindset? Is this the financial situation that I want to bring with me into the next stage of my life? And the answer to a lot of those questions was No. It was no. So for me, that language is really profound. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be profound to you, but I would ask you that. I would invite you, encourage you to ask yourself that question, is this the the relationship that I want to bring with me to the next the rest of my life. Maybe you’re single, maybe you’re with somebody, maybe you’re not some version of that. Your physical state is your body, the body you want to bring with you to the next stage of your life is your financial situation, the the financial situation you want to bring with you to the next stage of your life, your work ethic, your community involvement, your friendships, think about all the things that are most important to you, or things that are currently important that you could see becoming more important. See, okay, interrogate your reality. Is this what I want to bring with me to the next stage? These are big questions to ask. Another way to think about this is, you know, when you were a kid, what did you want to be, when, when, when, when you were growing up? Was there anything did you definitively know this is what I want to be when I grow up. This is the work that I want to do. Want to be an animal doctor, also known as a veterinarian. You want to be a physician. You want to be a scientist, you want to be a pirate, an athlete, whatever. Are you anywhere close to that version? Are you that today? Maybe you were like me and you really had no clue, didn’t have a really clear sense of what it was that you wanted to do. I always respect people that have sort of a definiteness of purpose as a young person. And I know people like that, and I respect the heck out of them. They’re normally pretty measured, driven, hard working, focused people. And then there’s the rest of us where like, oh my gosh, I don’t have any idea what I want to do anyway. It took me a really long time to figure that out, but I figured it out because I was asking myself, and I was looking and the time is now. The time is now to remember who it is that you wanted to be, or the time is to decide who it is you want to be, what it is that you want to be. To answer that question, is this x the version that I want to take with me to the rest of my life, and then to begin moving towards that version of what you want. So I think the starting point is, is to think about that in the picture. If I could be anything, if I could be anyone, because you can, what does that person look like. Think about an idealized version of you in your mind’s eye. Just imagine, let your mind one run wild. What it is that what you want, who you want to be, what it is you want to do. Think about how that version of you, that idealized version of you, spends their most valuable resources. What is the idealized version of you? How does How? How do you spend your time? What do you do? What do you not do? What do you give your attention to? What do you not let in? What do you need to let in less? What do you need to let in more? What do you spend your money on? What are you not going to spend your money on, and what do you give your energy to? Lot of through lines on all these things. I appreciate it. The only way that you’re going to get to the life of the version of life that you want is by figuring out, okay, it’s pretty. Abstract, or can be pretty abstract. Just think about what it is that that you want and figure out how to get there. But I think that once you do figure out what you want, and then you think about in the context of those mouse of those resources and how you allocate them, that’s going to get you a lot closer to what it is that that you truly want, to the life that you really do want. Because if we’re not intentional about making those decisions. Well, we’re just not going to get optimal results. There’s plenty of people out there, marketers and sales people and companies that follow us around from device device and try to sell us stuff. They’re trying to extract your resources. They want your likes and your subscribes and your subscriptions and your follows and your money and everything else. And every time we say yes to one thing, we’re saying no to everything else, which I know, you know, Thomas Sowell famously said there’s no trade offs, or there’s no solutions. There’s only trade offs. So it’s not a right answer to any of these things, but you’re making a trade off. So when you’re saying yes and you apply your time, energy, attention and money to one thing, you are saying no and not able to apply it to those other things, the whole universe of other options. So it benefits us. It behooves us to make good decisions. And here’s something else that I know, here’s something that I know definitively, is this is really hard. We’re living in a very strange time where the internet is is fairly new. Social media is fairly new. The flow of information is is fairly new, being that I now know everything, or I could know everything. I can learn about a traffic accident in a different country that I’ll never go to, involving people that I will never meet, and how terrible it was I learned about landslides and earthquakes and fires and natural disasters and violence and atrocities and war and famine and just pain and suffering, all of it. Open up the internet. Look at some news. Look at Twitter. Oh, my goodness. Nothing against Twitter. Social media in general, it’s breaking our brains. We have not figured out how to live with this, how to be a good steward of what I let in and what I don’t that I can eat whatever I want, whatever I want it, I can watch whatever I want, whenever I want it. It’s crazy. What a difference, just from a very short blink of an eye, and from a human existence standpoint, all this stuff, it’s no wonder we are struggling with most every aspect of our lives today, but I think a lot of it is just evidence that we have to try extra hard. We have to try a lot harder in order to live with this stuff, to be able to say no to some of this stuff and to say yes to the stuff that really we want. Because that’s, that’s, that’s the probably the best case is that I do have access to all of of of history’s wonders and all of the wonderful things that offer are available to humanity. It’s just we have to like pan, pan for gold. I don’t have to go through and sift through lots of junk that is not a value at all to get to the stuff that is a value, to get to the stuff that I truly want to figure out, okay, I see the whole field, see the state of play. I’m not getting stuck up and not being able to see the forest through the trees. Take a step back, open my aperture a little bit, be able to see the long game, all these kinds of things. Once I know that, then I think I’m going to get a lot closer to the life that it is that I really want. So the way forward think that we have to have a good understanding of what we’re here to do. So try to figure out what that purpose is. Need to figure out what it is that we want. Have to have clear goals. You have to understand and have a good understanding of what your beliefs are about things in life, you have to understand what your values are, and then to apply those values. And then I think it just the next step is to figure out how to create habits, routines and habits around doing the things that we’ve decided are of the highest value. Our habits are really what define us. It’s what we do consistently, and you’ve got plenty of habits right now. Same as me, I just discovered that a lot of my habits were not serving me at all, keeping me stuck or just not allowing me to move forward. So in service of that, I wrote a book called The. Purpose book, and you can have it for free.

I will link to it in in the in the description. And the whole idea is, how do you live a purpose driven life? And so it talks about purpose, goals, beliefs and habits. Again, you can have it for free. So I’m not trying to sell you a book. I am inviting you to engage in this kind of work. Then again, I’m not not trying to get you to wage some kind of an Infinity War where you are ruthlessly only doing good things all the time. I’m not asking to be 100% perfect all the time, but what if you can get to 80% perfect? You could be 80% in your diet, that’d be pretty good. You could get an 80% on your exercise program, that’d be pretty good. Get to 80% of how you’re spending your money, what you’re spending your time and your attention and your money on those resources like that. That is probably an unlock to the success you desire, to life that you desire. But of course, it all happens to it all demands that we understand what it is that what it is that we want, which is what I’ve been talking about. So we’re always heading into an important time in our lives. We’re always heading into an important time in human civilization. I don’t think that this time is necessarily any better or any worse. That’s for sure better, but it’s on us to be able to to be good stewards of it, to be good stewards of our of our most valuable resources, to have a good understanding of who it is that I want to be, and to strive to become that version of who we are, understanding that I’m never going to make make it 100% I’m never going to be perfect with it. But it’s not about being it’s not about a living, a game of perfect or realizing some kind of a perfect existence. Is just striving for it, getting up, striving for it again the next day, being grateful for the good and the bad, the ugly of all the things that you have. Because again, trouble is we all think that we have time, and I think you have time to do most anything that you want, but not enough to waste. So we got to get moving on this stuff. So as always, do your part, doing your best. You.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.