Hope for the Future

All that matters is now. And my behaviors brought me here. Everything that I’ve done, what I’ve done, my past thoughts, my experiences, my actions, the relationships and interactions I have with other people. That’s why I’m here. doing what I’m doing is brought me here and doing what you’re doing is brought you where you are. And my future is unwritten. It’s undetermined, it is unknown. It’s not too late. It’s not too early, you’ll probably end up getting what you need. It is a paradox, yes. But all that matters, is now there is no future dwelling in the past, and over focusing on the future robs us of the present. As a kid, you are doing your living experiencing, that’s all you’re doing. As middle aged person like me, you’re at an inflection point, you’ve lived long enough, hopefully, to recognize value to understand value, you understand the value of time, you know the value of energy, and how finite it is, you know, the value and importance of your attention. And where you give it who you give it to all of that. And you probably know the value of money, how we earn money, where it comes from saving it, investing in all of these things, hopefully, you have developed acquired an understanding of the value of our most finite resources of those things. How we, as older people interact with values and the understanding that we’ve gained, I’m going to have to circle back with you on that one to fill you in on what I’ve learned. So soon enough, stay tuned on that one. So here, in my middle age, I have an understanding of my past, I have comfort in the present. And most importantly, I have hope for my future. And that’s really fundamentally what I want for you as well, to have a good understanding of your past, I want you to be comfortable, doesn’t mean that I want you to be complacent. Nor does it mean that I want you to be hyperactive or hyper focused or anything else. Just content, comfortable. Understanding looking backwards, being positive, looking forwards, all while understanding and making good decisions about allocating your most important resources, your most finite resources, time, attention, energy and money. I think that contentment and that comfort I’m talking about, I think that it comes from understanding, embracing the reality that we have choice. It comes from having a deep understanding of the importance and how to prioritize things, specifically how I allocate my most important resources. So being a good steward of those resources. And then in perspective, I learned long, long ago, that we must have a solid and realistic understanding of where we are in the world. I’ve come to appreciate that how you look at something makes all the difference. Whether you are in from your perspective, the best situation you’ve ever been in or the worst, that perspective, how you look at it is of paramount importance. It is penultimate thing, so important. So looking back, I seek to understand the past and seek to understand my past. I’m working really hard and thinking a lot about what wisdom is what it means to be wise. And most importantly, being able to enjoy the benefits of wisdom. The benefits of wisdom are actually putting it to work in our lives, not simply knowing stuff. Because that’s not really wise that’s just knowing and there is a massive difference between knowing something and using it doing something knowing and doing. Such a huge chasm exists between theory and practice between literacy and wellness. It’s the behavior gap. It’s okay I know this, but do I do it might come in anywhere close to closing that gap between knowing and doing between theory and practice, between knowing and doing and I’ll ask And yourself, what have I learned? What have my previous experiences taught me? If anything? What has my studying taught me? Your schooling, your personal development? You are your sharpening of your saw? What has that taught you of anything? If anything? What has your observation of others taught you? What have your relationships with friends and family members and loved ones and romantic partners and business partners? What has that taught you? That is really key, what has all that taught you? Has that given you wisdom, it’s given you information, has it translated to wisdom thus far, I’m hopeful that the exploration and understanding that exploration and understanding of your past your experiences gives you the comfort in the present as it does for me. Now, all of that is predicated on whether or not you’re actually doing that, if you are courageous enough to engage in that kind of self exploration, if you are courageous enough to look into your past and to examine things that you are both proud of, and not proud of, and reconcile everything and help it make sense. And what doesn’t make sense to question why it doesn’t make sense for you. So, I mean, at the end of the day, it just is what it is. Even if you want it to there’s no going back. There’s no rewriting my history anymore than there is rewriting your history. But I’m hoping that that can go out amalgamation that combination of all that I hope it is beneficial to you. And from a perspective standpoint, you get to choose, you get to say yes, it is very beneficial to me. The good things that happened to me benefited me, the worst thing that happened to me benefited me. I am not a victim, I am a survivor. I am a I am a champion, I am a thinker, I am somebody who takes in information, and applies it in a way that is benefiting me today and will continue to benefit me in the future. I hope that it’s taught you about the reality of life’s trade offs. And the importance of prioritization and decision making. Thomas soul I like to talk about this or say it repeat it is that there’s no solutions, there’s only trade offs. And in terms of our most finite resources, when you choose to do something, when you say yes to something, you are saying no to everything else, when you choose to spend money on one thing, unless you’re independently wealthy, you are choosing to not spend money or to invest money or to expend, put money to work in any other way. Same thing goes for your attention, and it goes for your energy, all of these things. I hope that what you’ve learned, has shown you the importance of what is fundamentally the importance of knowing what’s important, the importance of knowing what matters to you, really difficult as a young person, to be able to grasp that. Think intellectually, you might, and you might be in practice also also grasping it, just because you are of a certain age does not equate to wisdom, one way or another. I know plenty of extremely wise young people, lots of really, really wise young people. And I know a lot of really dumb, older people too. So wherever you are at, I hope that you have taken in and learned and are applying the wisdom that you have learned that you have acquired. I hope it’s taught you that you have choice. This is one of the most powerful things that we human beings have, if not the most powerful thing that we have is choice. Because you know that you have very little control over the circumstances of your life, but you have absolute control over how you think, feel and respond to those circumstances of your life. That your decisions all of them matter. All of your decisions big or small. They matter and the better quality of your decision making, the better quality of your life.

We make a lot of decisions are making 1000s 10s of 1000s of decisions every day. So does the quality does your ability to be a good decision maker matter? Yeah, it makes a massive difference. Huge difference. If you got 1% better at decision making. Would your life directly get 1% Better? Probably Believe, if you got 10% better at your decision making ability, if your skill of making decisions if you were to get 10% Better, could that would that make your life 10%? Better, I advocate that it would almost immediately, we, me, we fail to recognize or fail to realize how fast things can change. And I don’t mean, in the blink of an eye, my life was different. But if you feel like you are in a place where you’re not content, or you’re not comfortable, you’re not happy with where you are at, you can change your fortunes quickly. And a big part of that is improving the quality of your prioritization and your decision making and recognizing that that will have an impact over the quality of your life. And it will have an impact over how you think and view your life. So your perspective because you have absolute control over your perspective as well, again, how you look at something makes all the difference. There’s so many wonderful stories about that. So many wonderful stories about that. There’s a famous story about Kennedy during the space race when he showed up to NASA, and all of the brilliant engineers and scientists and everybody else. Were working around the clock. Not only that, but Kennedy noticed that the janitor was working his tail off round the clock. And he walked up to the guy. He said, I’m Jack Kennedy, can I ask you what you’re doing? And the man looked at me said, Mr. President, I’m working to put a man on the moon. So that’s perspective. That’s, I think that that’s just such a perfect story. Doesn’t really matter what you’re doing. It’s how you look at it. circumstances. So if you do those things, you should have hope for your future. If you are now analyzing your past, if you are, if you are looking at your ability to beat, make better decisions and be better at prioritization, I think that you have a lot to be hopeful for, because you’re getting better. And the reality is that your future can absolutely be better than your past. And 100% better than your today. If you’d like to learn more about what I am talking about, about this work about developing a stronger understanding of yourself, your past where you’re at what your future is going to look like. I invite you to check out the purpose book. I am excited about it. Also proud of it. And we’d love for you to check it out and let me know what you think. There are free resources regarding the purpose books you can take advantage of. And also you can actually get a copy of the books. I’ll put those in the notes of the show. Thanks for pursuing wisdom. Thanks for working to get better. Do your part by doing your best