Prioritize Joy & Watch Everything Change

Your mind and your body and your spirit thanks you for doing self improvement. It really does because it says, hey, I've got a chance here. I can change here, I can improve here, I can have a great destiny here.

Every day is a great day to grow so much. Part of life's wisdom is learning to schedule our joys. Scheduling our joys if you could take a moment and just capture what are the five things that bring the most joy for you in life? Some folks, it's family time, creative endeavors, passionate hobbies, purposeful work, health or fitness, the ability to mentor somebody. We all have something different that brings us joy. What is it for you? Could you capture five things that bring you joy? And if you can, here's my next question. Of those things that bring you joy, how many of those are in your calendar for next week? How many are scheduled in some type of activity or reflection or experience next week? And how about the week after that and the week after that and the month after that? Is there time on hold in your schedule or your calendar for the things that you enjoy most?

Now, this might seem so basic, but.

I really believe that the way that we manage our time in life is who we ultimately become and how we experience life. I know lots of people say, ah, I hate to do calendaring. Brennan, I don't like your battleboard ideas or how you manage your calendar or how you think about being a high performer. And geez, it just sounds like you're taking away everyone's freedom. I'm like, well, no, most people's freedom are being taken away by four hours of television and two hours of social media per day. What the reality is, most of us are not scheduling our time well.

And so the projects are important to.

Us that could be done in three months or being done in three years, if at all. The truth is, most people are unaware of where they're spending their time and sometimes they're dissatisfied with life and it's an easier course correction than they think. It's just about taking back control of their agenda, of their schedule. Doing a little bit more calendaring, if that's a verb. What I like to do when I start working with a major CEO and as a high performance coach, I've been blessed to work with some of the best CEOs in this world. And one of the first activities I'll do with them is often get access to their calendar and spend some time with them going back through their calendar and really understanding how they've spent their last 90 days just doing a full calendar audit for the last 90 days and seeing how much of that 90 days schedule where there was block time for the major important projects and initiatives in their life or there wasn't where there was block time for health, where there's block time for family, where there's block time for their passions. Because, you know, your last 90 days are often a pretty good reflection of where we're heading this year. Sometimes for some people who are really Busy, their last 90 days really does predict their performance. And so we have to say, let's even look back further. I like to do at the end of each year, I like to look back to the entire calendar and just revisit how many of those items that were scheduled were necessary, moved the needle, led to major senses of aliveness or connection or meaning or progress or growth, and making sure that if they didn't, I don't keep making that same mistake of over scheduling myself on things that don't matter. And so if you could capture those five things that bring you joy, could you take the next step, do yourself a favor and schedule some time to make sure you get to enjoy those joys, Literally add them to the calendar next week, the week after that. Maybe a recurring time slot or something you just set up as a reminder to remind yourself to do every week. And I just hope that whatever systems or tools you use to organize yourself, whether you use Growth Day or something else, that you're using them to ensure that your time on this earth, when you schedule stuff, you don't just schedule obligations. You just schedule things you have to do for other people. You schedule a lot of time for you, for your creative endeavors or your passions or your hobbies or the things that bring you the most amount of joy. Of course, lots of us have nine to fives that maybe you don't love. Maybe you're in a difficult time of life where you're caretaking for a family member and that's eating up all your days, or you've got newborns and that's eating up all your days and your nights. Maybe you're in a place of starting a business and it's been more harried and busy and crazy than you ever imagined. And we all have seasons of life where it's difficult and challenging and it's easy to say, well, yeah, yeah, Brandon, whatever you and all your joys and telling people to do that. But the truth is, over the course of a year or over a year or two, that how we've managed our calendar is really who we are. That's what our life really is. If it's unscheduled and open and there's nothing to do there, well, then often we feel like our path is maybe meandering too much. We lost focus or motivation, drive, purpose. If it's overly scheduled, overly busy, overly committed, well then that stress and anxiety, it's been adding up for a while and that leads to a particular kind of experience too.

Your calendar reveals so much.

Nothing on it means maybe you're being inefficient towards purposeful acts, too much on it, maybe you're not setting enough boundaries, taking care of yourself, nothing of joy on it. Then why? I hope that posing this question and keeping it so simple today that you gain some of that great self awareness. I'm just thinking about how you've been managing your time, because your time is your life and I hope they'll spend a little more time being intentional about it every single week.

Today I thought I'd share a framework around happiness and what we all want. After 15 years of coaching people one on one, and kind of being the top of my particular field of high performance coaching, I've learned a lot about what people really want, not what they say they want in the moment. Because what usually people say they want in the moment is pain relief. They want to improve something that's broken or unblock something and figure out how to take their foot off the brake. But often, once they've moved through some things, they've had some healing or forgiveness in life. They've had a moment of security, of abundance, of reflection to ask what they truly want. It always comes down to the same four things. And I found these four things guide us towards happiness. They guide us towards fulfillment and meaning and purpose. They guide us towards a sense that we can be satisfied, but also loving of our life and ourselves. And those four things I want to bring up today because I think they're so straightforward that I want to make a theme here and just consistently remind the Growth day community of them. The first thing we all want after we've had success or security or any sense of belonging is we really want aliveness. Aliveness. That means alive aliveness. Mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. It means mental health and physical health and spiritual health. It means we want a sense of pop or passion or enthusiasm or excitement in our life on a consistent basis. Not once in a while when we go on that vacation or experience that thing, but no, on a consistent basis. A sense of aliveness. This is why maintaining good health routines to keep your body Physically fit and energized is important. Why meditation, exercise, diet, sleep are such an important part of what we talk about here at Growth Day. Your care for your wellness so that your battery tank is high and not always depleted. Because if you want to experience a lot of misery in life, allow yourself to let go of your health for a long period of time and that low level of energy just grinds down on your variability. To even feel positive about life, it dramatically affects your emotions. I still feel that we don't talk enough about the mind, body, spirit connection and how our body is feeling really does guide so much of our in the moment reactions and emotions. And so to guide our sense of aliveness of life, we must take care of our bodies. We have to also have those practices each day of looking at our goals to energize our mind, to get pumped excited for the day, not just to wander it in replying to emails and texts and what everyone else's emergencies are, but rather to literally sit each morning and develop a morning mindset. And I promise doing that every day for 30 days will change your life. You go, oh my gosh, I. I didn't realize how I was leaving my mindset to randomness. No wonder I don't feel excited about the day. I would also say that you have to have practices of renewal and specifically spiritual renewal. Whether that means you've got to go to church on Sunday or meditate at.

Certain time, or take that yoga class.

Or just go for a long walk and listen to your favorite music, or just have a long journal session, whatever you need to do. Those moments of rekindling some peace in your life and connection to something higher can re energize your entire life. The second thing that we always talk about is connection. Connection to not just yourself, but to others. When we talk about connection here in Grote, we usually mean connection to the moment, meaning presence, but more importantly, connection to other people. That your lifelong sense of satisfaction comes more or less from your relationships and the quality of those relationships. It also is tied to your longevity. How long you live and how healthily you live and how happy you live is directly correlated to the quality of your relationships. So what are you doing this week? Or what could you send out today to the people you care most about? What's a message you could send via text or voicemail or audio text to really share that you love them. You might even do something crazy like call them randomly and talk about nothing, but just connect with them. Third big area is meaningful pursuits. This means engaging with your passions and your interests, the things that make you curious, moving towards them consistently in a way in which over time, those interests or passions or curiosities, you get some momentum behind them. And it feels meaningful because you actually like it. And when those are also connected to a sense of social contribution that you feel like what I'm doing, you know, what other people appreciate or it helps or serves other people, that meaningful pursuit, whatever that is for you, Some people call it purpose fulfilling activities, you know, your area of mastery and contribution, whatever.

You want to call it, make sure.

That you're moving towards something that you care about each day. Even if it just means engaging in a hobby or finishing that one project or trying something new that you're really interested in. It makes a big difference when you take that away from people. They can have great vitality in their mind, body, energy and spirit. They can have great relationships. But if they don't have this one, they lose that sense of meaning and fulfillment over time. And that ends up diminishing everything else. And finally, growth, growth, growth. The thing that makes us feel like there's a sense of progress or momentum towards our full potential, towards our dreams, towards our destiny, towards the best of who we are, towards where we hope one day we will become the best of who we are.