Craig Ballantyne: NEVER Let These Distractions Steal Your Time!

Welcome to the Genius Network Show. How would you like to make every day a perfect day? Who wants the steps to move towards your biggest goals and dreams? An exercise for avoiding regret, the path to true freedom in your life and more. Genius Network member Craig Valentine is a fitness and personal development guru from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the author of the Perfect Day Formula, how to Own the Day and Control youl Life. He has been a contributor to Men's health magazine since 2000 and his articles have also appeared in Women's Health, Oxygen, gq, Maxim, National Geographic, Men's Fitness and Muscle and Fitness Hers. If you would like access to the full video presentation, the special resources and show notes for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 52 that's geniusnetwork.com 52.

Does this sound a little unrealistic to have a perfect day every day? It's not. It's actually possible now if you have a formula. And that's exactly what Craig Ballantine has created. And I've asked Craig to conduct a group teaching session with you. So this is not a 10 minute talk. Instead, it's interactive and instructional, just like his presentation from the February event. And if you watched his Facebook live from that meeting, you saw how Craig helped 25K members create their perfect like vision with the help of his million dollar question. But while many genius. While many of us in Junior Selwick now know what they want to achieve in life, too many of us struggle with controlling our days and owning our time and letting our minutes get stolen from our loved ones. So today, Craig will teach you how to design your perfect day so that you can take back your time and have true freedom in your life. Craig's system has worked for me and it will work for you too. I can guarantee that. So please welcome my good friend, Mr. Craig Valentine.

Thank you very much for that introduction, Joe. Well, every day with Joe is a perfect day. But what happens when we all go away? What happens when we go home and we're not here with this group? How do we keep having perfect days every day? Well, the answer is to base your days on your values. Because when you have complete clarity about what you want to achieve in life, then you can have complete clarity about what you need to do every day. But when you don't know your values and when you don't live your values, that's when you end up allowing other people to steal time from you. And when they steal time from you with long phone calls, too many meetings, projects that really don't meet your Values. Every one of those minutes stolen is stealing from your children, from your spouse, from your hobbies, from your health and from you, building your legacy. So what we need to do today is build your perfect day. Build your. And we're going to do that by using the formula. It all starts with having your pyramid of values. Now, in the pyramid of values, there's going to be four things. There's going to be family, health, wealth and experiences. And those pyramid of values are going to drive you into making the right decisions with your time every single day so that time is not stolen from you. So we're going to go through some worksheets that I have for us, but I'm going to read you my answers first before we hand those out. So the one thing that I'm going to ask you is in 20 years from now, what would you regret not doing or achieving? And then you're going to answer that in relation to the four values. Family, health, wealth and experiences. So for me, in 20 years from now, what would I regret having not achieved for my family? It's not having a family. And it would be to not have let my mother have a grandkid. So right now she is a step grandson, but she doesn't have a grandson from my sister or from myself. And so that is something that I know I have to work on. That is my number one priority in life. And right now, My mother is 75 years old. She's got great energy. But in 10 years from now, when she starts to slow down a little bit, if she doesn't have that grandkid, she's not going to be able to give that energy that she has right now and today. And so that is something that I'm focusing on every day. For me, for my health, it's living long and vigorously. Now, some people might be getting back into health, some people might have more advanced health goals, might be marathon running or might be something like that, some type of competition. Your values are going to be your values. They're not going to be the same as mine, but that's my health value for wealth, it's not a number. For me, it's being debt free for being financially free. But for some people, it might be having a business that is sold for a certain dollar figure. It might be having a certain number in the bank. It is your value, whatever it is, you need to be as clear and concise as possible. And then finally, experiences. What are the experiences that you would regret not having achieved in 20 years from now? For me, when I was younger, I was lucky, I did a lot of these bucket list things, and now they no longer bring me that fulfillment. For me right now, it's to write three books. Three books that make a big impact. So I believe I've already written one, but I want to write two more. So those are my four value answers. And 20 years from now, I need to make sure that I have built my family, that I've lived and made the right habit choices so that I can live long and vigorously, that I always want to have that feeling of freedom with my wealth, and that I continue to focus my days on writing my three books. And so these four values make it really easy for me to design my day. And that's what I'm going to help you do now. So, Eunice, we can pass out the forms now, and everyone is going to be able to work through these sheets with me as we go from our values down to designing your perfect day. Because what happens is first world problem. The biggest first world problem is comparison syndrome. So we see other people, we see other people doing things and we think, oh, look at them. They have more success than us. They must be doing something, something that's working for them. And so we go and we see the grass is greener on the other side and we chase these shiny objects. And when we do that, it actually brings a lot of stress into our lives because we're doing what other people value and it takes us away from our values. And when we are away from our values, it brings a lot of stress into our life. So what we're going to have at the end of going through this worksheet is an epiphany. We're going to have that epiphany moment that's going to allow us to make the decisions that we're able to follow our perfect day and not be stressed and not want to do anything else. So we're going to open it up to page, page two, and I want you to take a couple of minutes right now and answer, in 20 years from now, what would you regret not doing or achieving for each of the four values in the pyramid? Family, health, wealth and experiences. And over on page three, you see my answers. I want you to be as clear and concise and specific as possible. All right? Now you know how your perfect day should look like. But there's some obstacles in the way, I'm sure. So on page five, we are going to destroy those obstacles. And the way to do that is to come up with two solutions for every obstacle in the way of you having a perfect morning, a perfect afternoon, a perfect evening and a perfect bedtime. Because the philosophy that I have is for any obstacle in the way of your life. As long as you have a plan A and plan B, you'll be able to overcome those obstacles. So for example, on page six in the morning, classic obstacle hitting snooze and getting behind. Well, plan A could be that you place the alarm across the room or that you get one of those Phillips light alarms that naturally adds light to the room to wake you up. Or plan B, you could hire a personal trainer that you have to train with four days a week and pay for the sessions three months in advance. Now, nobody in here wants to waste the money and that will get you out of bed. So come up with the solutions to overcoming your obstacle in the morning. Whether it is getting out the door on time or getting the kids out the door on time in the afternoon, a classic obstacle is that the team member emergencies come to us, right? Everybody has deadlines and fires that we have to put out for them. So how do we come up with plans to overcome those obstacles? Plan A is that you could have a chain of command. You could make them go through an assistant or a general manager before it reaches you. Or plan B, you could have do not disturb hours and open door hours so that you block off more of your time. In the evening, you're late for dinner. That's a big obstacle so many entrepreneurs have. You could have plan A, public accountability. There's nothing more effective than public accountability telling your team members that, hey, I leave the office here at 5:30pm every day and if they still see you sitting there at six o' clock at night, you're going to feel like a hypocrite. And the world does not like a hypocrite. And we don't like to feel like hypocrites. So public accountability is key to helping overcome any obstacle that you want to do. You can also take away your incentives, take away your rewards. So if you enjoy a glass of wine with dinner and you're late, you don't get home at 5:30 or you don't have dinner at 7:00', clock, then you don't get your glass of wine. So come up with the plan A and plan B to overcome all of your obstacles. And the final one there is bedtime. Most of us stay up later than we want to. What is it? What is it getting in the way? What are those obstacles? What are the solutions? So plan A, if you're staying up 30 minutes late every night, set the alarm before you go to bed. In fact, often the alarm at night is just as important as the alarm to get you out of bed. 60 minutes before bed, you set the alarm. That means turn off the electronics and start your bedtime routine and ritual to wind down. You could also have a cutoff time for your Netflix, for your electronics, for all of those things that allow you to get to bed at the hour you want to get to. So one obstacle for each time of day and then two solutions for each. And that's how you get ahead here. So let's have you fill that out right now on page five.

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All right. And now the best time, the best part of it all. We get to put all of that together and build out your perfect day. So if we skip to the Last page, page 8. Taking into account my values, family is the most important thing to me. Living long and vigorously, making sure that I'm going to, going to build in exercise and good nutrition into my day and then the experiences. Writing the books is so important to me. And so that allows me to build this day. Yes, I wake up early. I start writing at 4 o'. Clock. I write my first 1500 words before 5 o'. Clock. Meditation, exercise, walk the dog, breakfast time, maybe a little bit more writing in. I've got this scheduled out time blocks, hour by hour. In the afternoon, I'm all written out. And so that's when I do podcasts or videos. And then I end the day relatively early, around 4 o', clock, walk the dog again, family time, dinner time and early bedtime. And that just falls in line with my value pyramid. So if people come along and say, craig, do you want to do this? Do you want to do this? I'm able to run that through my values pyramid. Say no. It just doesn't take me towards my big goals and dreams. So knowing yours, I want you to go and fill out what your perfect day should look like. That's going to allow you to have big accomplishments every single day and move you towards those big goals and dreams. What does it mean? Social support. Social support. So on the site. Great question, Richard. So on the right hand side there we see the five pillars for success. Those are from the book. And you need better planning and preparation than ever before. You need professional accountability, which is like a coach or mentor. You need positive social support. And what I found, Richard, this is from what I learned from my weight loss transformation clients, that they need to be surrounded by good, positive people. So everybody in this room is your positive social support. They might not give you expert advice, but they'll pick you up when you're feeling down. Community is so powerful, and that's what we all need. So we need that third pillar. We need a meaningful incentive. We need to dig deep into our hearts and minds to figure out why we're making these changes. And then finally, fifth, big deadlines. You need deadlines and everything. So what do you need to get done every day at the end of that day in order for it to be that perfect day? All right, so time is up. Did everybody come and build a nice perfect day There something that was based on their values so that they're having a better day now than what they may have been following in the past where people were able to come and steal time from you? Because that's the one thing that I want to get across today is that every minute that you allow to be stolen by newsletters, by Facebook, videos, by YouTube videos, is stealing from things far more important. From your children, from your family, and from your legacy. And with your values pyramid, you're able to build that perfect day so that you can have perfect days every day and build your perfect life. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Genius Network with Craig Ballantyne. If you'd like access to the full video presentation, the special resources and show notes for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 52. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event, please visit geniusnetworkevents.com that's geniusnetworkevents dot com don't miss out on more insights, strategies and wisdom like this on Genius Network. Subscribe to Genius Network today by visiting geniusnetwork.com subscribe. That's geniusnetwork.com subscribe.