Mindset Monday - Lottery Life

This is episode 241 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Hello and welcome to Mindset Monday. We've got another episode where we dive into the topics that will make make a difference for your life, not only in your business, with your family, your personal life. We want you to be empowered, to be your best in order to give your best in whatever you are up to so you can lead at your top level. So today we're talking about lottery life and I'm going to give you the three things that I find that will really have you live a life as though you've won the lottery or as though you are living living a life where money is not a limiter. So to kick this off, I'm going to let you know where I am and what the surrounding context is because I think it plays into this topic. I'm recording this in my pantry because there are two cleaning people in my home, which is amazing and perfect and awesome in so many ways for this topic. The reason I say that is that there was massive uncertainty in my life and many times in my life where there's no way I ever thought I would have a pantry, a dedicated room for food and food stuffs or a cleaning or 2 cleaning people in my home. There was definitely periods of time in my life where I never thought that would be possible. But it is and it does exist now. It doesn't mean we have a cleaning person every day. And I know people, I have friends who have a housekeeper who lives at their home and helps take care of things all the time as a full time thing. But I don't. We have a cleaning person come every two weeks. It took a while to get this set up and it helps us and we like to do some cleaning ourselves as well and teach our kids along those lines. But I'm sharing that not because it's. I just think it plays into this particular topic of how to live a life as though you won the lottery. And the way this topic came up is because Maeve asked me when we heard the song on the radio. We were at camp in the summer and she heard the song on the radio by the Bare Naked Ladies. If I had a million dollars. And you can hear the lyrics clearly in there, if I had a million dollars, I would do this, I would do that. I wouldn't eat Kraft dinner, I'd eat craft Dinner with this, or, you know, so along the lines it went, and you hear a story within the song. And I don't think she had heard that song before. And so she turned to me and she said, what if you had a million dollars? She's 11. What if you had a million dollars, Mom? Now, number one, my first thoughts were, well, that's not that much considering the economy right now and inflation and, you know, like, of course, I go into adult analytical thinking, but I paused there for a moment and I said, you know, I actually, we do have that much, if you consider savings and equity and all these different things. So really, I think the question you're asking is, what if there was so much money available that it was never a question of money because you could really have whatever you wanted? That's what I think the question was like a lottery life. You. You suddenly had so much money tomorrow that you could do whatever you wanted. And so that's how I started answering the question for her is answering that way. I pondered, would I still be doing what I'm doing? Would things be different? And this is how I ended up answering her. And then I'm going to give you the three points that I think really can have you live as though you have as many millions of dollars as you want. So the way I answered her was that I. I am living exactly the life that I want. If I had a whole bunch more money, Maeve, I don't have a whole bunch more time. And I'm already doing so many of the things that just light me up, fill my cup, just expand my heart and my connection with others. And I said, that's what really it's about. And so she. She just thinks about this for a moment. She's got this uncertainty. And I said. I said, you're wondering what that really looks like for me. She's like, yeah, you know, I said, okay, we're working on camp, but it would just mean that it. It goes faster because there's more money to put towards things right now instead of. Instead of later. But then I even thought about that, and there wasn't the. The manpower wasn't there, the resources of labor wasn't there to get things done faster. So I don't even know that things would be moving faster on that, but there would be more money available to spend, so it just might be a faster timeline in the bigger picture. And I thought about travel and I thought about my family. I said, the only real things that would change, Maeve, are that I would have these Epic family vacations. Like Epic, I would want us to have the most incredible, amazing experiences in the world with our family together. I said that would be a thing. So the difference really is that we're going to do a family vacation each year, but it would just be a bigger experience or maybe nicer accommodations or nicer travel options and a luxury jet perhaps. So it wouldn't be all that much different because our time together would be the same. We'd still have an adventure, we would still explore different places in the world, but it would just be a higher end experience of that. And yes, you can probably hear my dog in the background shaking her collar. I would still have dogs. Of course. I need animals. I would want animals. So I answered her with that. I said our family vacations would be more epic. Camp, the development of camp would just be happening on a greater scale. I would be traveling, maybe more, maybe not, because I love my time at home and I've been traveling a lot and I love those things. So. So when it really landed and we had this conversation and it all got laid out, I realized that I'm living. I am living the life that I absolutely love and it is what I wish for everyone. And it doesn't have to do with money. More money comes as you are living in a way that really lights you up. Because like it or not, most people don't feel amazingly lit up and have their best life when they're not up to something or connected with others. So really, it's not about the money. If having more money I start after starting my business. I used to say I started my business with buttons and a smile. I learned very quickly at that stage in my life in bringing that business from nothing to something. I learned what it means to create something, to create something from nothing. And that challenge gave me the confidence to understand that, oh, I could do this with other areas of my life. I could do this again with other either businesses or topics. Because I can just create something from nothing. And really we all can. We can do it with our attitude, we can do it with ideas, we can do it with what we give of our time. There are so many ways we can do that. So here we go. The question becomes how to live a life that you love. Whether you are earning what you want or not, or whether you have inherited what you want or not, or whether you have been gifted what you want in terms of financial means or not. It doesn't matter where the money came from or if you have money or not. Here are the three Things to really live the life you love. And number one, this one is really important. This, because this is how people end up hitting walls. It's knowing yourself, knowing yourself, getting to know yourself really well. What do you love? What inspires you? When do you feel the most accomplished? When do you feel the most connected, knowing yourself really well. There was a time where Paul and I moved to Turkey. He was living there already. He had a contract there. This was early in our relationship, before we were married. But we'd been together already for over a year. And we'd known each other for many years. And we didn't like living apart. We'd spent a year apart. It was really challenging for both of us. And I made the really, really hard decision to take my daughter and leave my business, have somebody else managing my business while I was away, leave my business and move to Turkey and live there together with my daughter and with Paul. And one of the questions that Paul asked me, because he was getting to know me really well in the time that we'd been together, and he asked me, can you. Will you be happy living here? Because we were in a densely populated city of over 4 million in Turkey, So very different culture, densely populated city. And I was moving from the middle of Canada, a place where there was. I was within kilometers of my home, to my business. I could ride a bike to my business. I was in walking distance to my daughter's school. So I had set my life up exactly the way I wanted it. I had a golf course nearby that had trails. I could. I could ski at that golf course in the winter. I could ride bikes. There were. I had a community, I had friends, I had my career, my mission, everything was set up for me. So he knew that uprooting me and my daughter from that could mean that I would be miserable. But one of the things about knowing myself is that we lived in an apartment that was right next to the most amazing park. This park was in the central of Izmir in the near the downtown area. And this park had a track, like a running track, that was over a mile long in a circle. And in the center of the park, there was all kinds of green space, and there were trees that were arched over this running track. So I know myself well enough that to remove me from the opportunity to connect with nature, to remove me from the outdoors. And being only in a metropolis, densely populated city, would be really, really bad for me. But in this environment, that park was massive for me, being able to thrive and be happy. So in order for you to live your lottery life. Number one is know yourself. What do you love? What inspires you? When do you feel the most accomplished? How do you connect with others? When are you most connected? There's so many ways to really get to know yourself, to understand what lights you up and what doesn't so that you can live a life that continues to fuel that, to fuel what lights you up the most. So number two, it's three things and it's this. Consume, create and contribute. I am doing this every single day of my life. I'm consuming or, and creating or, and contributing. Because by consuming, I'm learning. I'm trying to consume. Not the news, not from cnn, not from the thing, social media. I'm consuming from very specific resources that are either research based or high performing, high level leaders or something that's going to educate me in an area that I'm very interested in or an area I know nothing about. So I'm consuming and then that spurs on ideas for me to create from my unique experiences, my unique skill set, my unique ability to provide what I know that people need. So I'm consuming, I'm creating and then I'm contributing. I'm making sure that I'm giving in a way that is just about giving. It's just about serving what somebody needs. And if people are doing that, if everybody's doing that in some form, it doesn't mean my form or the way that I do it, but in some form or another, then they are going to feel a sense of fulfillment. It is going to be critical. For a sense of fulfillment is to have that combination, that magical combination of this learning, of this bringing information in and creating and contributing. So notice that the creation and the contribution, there's 2/3 more giving than there is taking in. There's 2/3 more giving than there is taking in. So that is number two, Consume, create and contribute. I can tell you this, that I have seen multiple people, many, many people retire. I've seen multiple people exit from companies, either clients that I've worked with, friends that I know, and between retiring or exiting from a company, something happens. Something happens. It goes one of two ways. This is what I've seen. Typically, number one, someone feels this loss of inspiration or this emptiness because the thing that they worked so hard for, where they were consuming, creating and contributing is now gone. It's not there anymore. They don't have it. It might have been a career, it might have been a career in sport, it could have been a career in business, it could have been retirement From a job, whatever it is, this thing that they were doing so much of is now gone. And yet sometimes when someone retires or transitions or exits a company, they are inspired, they give, they're doing so much more. They feel like they could create or be on top of the world. And it's a difference, because the person who retired and thought that they just wanted to relax, they wanted to do nothing, usually becomes very uneasy, very unfulfilled, bored. I've seen this. I can think of one person, I can think of multiple people. But one person, for example, wouldn't let anyone call it retirement. When he sold his company, everyone said, oh, you're retiring? Well, no, I'm not retiring. But he wasn't doing anything. And while he wasn't doing anything, he felt brutal. He didn't like it at all. He was unfulfilled, he was antsy, he was kind of moody. But then when he started to build a new company, he felt amazing because he got back into the cycle of consuming, learning about this new business that he was going to create and all the steps he needed to take and figuring things out. He started creating what was going to happen next in all of the the next steps. He started contributing the people he wanted to work with and work for and how he wanted to set up his company to serve people's needs. There were so many things that started to light him up again. I think of other people who have retired and just stopped and really started to spend hours in front of the TV or doing just less of the other engaging things that they might have done with other people. So that, number two is critical. It is like the meat between the bread of the sandwich. It is really important to make sure that you have within your life to make you feel like you're living your lottery life because you're creating that. And number three, always, always have something in front of you to look forward to. You might have heard one of our podcasts called Triple Vision. If you have this is the next vision, there's the thing you're doing right now. There's the now vision, there's the far vision, but the next vision. There's something that's coming up in a way that you're looking forward to it. Not like a big thing that you're anxious over, but something that you're looking forward to. I like to see it this way. Anticipation, this fun, exciting anticipation of looking forward to something. Hold space for the low points and the bad days when you know you've got a trip to Disney. If that's your thing, or you know that Christmas is coming up and then there's an awful weather day, or there's a bad work day, or you have a real low mood one day. It's not so bad when you still have this thing coming up. Anticipation of that fun thing coming up holds space for a low point. And a bad day, you just realize that it's a low point or a bad day. It's not the end of the world. You still have amazing things coming forward that you're living into. So there was a time when I had a young child. I was working all the time. I was a single mom. And I ended up going to the doctor. I was so exhausted. And the doctor listed off this list of things and had me tick this. These things off. And I wasn't really knowing what was going on. And I ticked the things off. And she looks at it, she looks at me and she says to me, well, you've basically ticked enough things off of these boxes that you are depressed. And I was like, what? You know, I didn't understand what that meant. I wasn't a person who'd get depressed. I heard about that for other people, but that wasn't me. And she said, unless you turn this around with some key actions, I would suggest medication. And again, I thought, what. You know, this is what I hear about with other people. And I have clients who are on medication, but not me. Like, you know, I. This and that. But I knew what it was. I was so inundated with two things. Mothering a young child and my. My career, my work. And there wasn't really. And I. I'm going to rephrase this. I was going to say there wasn't any room for. But that's not the truth. I wasn't making any room for other things besides those two main things. That's all I focused on. And so she said, what I would suggest is to have something to look forward to. And when you do that, that would be your first step. And so when I left that appointment that day, and this is. This is probably almost 20 years ago, I left that appointment that day. And I started to reach out to some of my friends who I hadn't seen because they didn't have young children or they weren't working with me where I was, I reached out to them and got to know what was coming up and had, you know, a social event coming up here, a person's bachelorette party there, or getting together with a friend. And sure enough, I started to take the actions that would turn around my mental state in a way that was really powerful. So really the moral of this is that it's not rocket science. It's not money. It's not some elusive thing that some people have and others don't. It is quite literally you creating your lottery life. It's creating the life you love, the life you look forward to, and the life that when it has lows, you know that the lows are going to be there. You know it's going to be bad at some point or another, but you also know that you're going to get through it. So number one, know yourself. Number two, consume, create and contribute. And number three, always have something to look forward to. Create that in your life. Those three ways are what I've personally found to have me feeling like I'm living my absolute best life with or without money, with or without, you know, the things that people attribute to a dream life or a dream home or a dream career, whatever. Those three things any of us can have, any of us can create so that we feel in any given moment that we're living our best life right now. So that's what I want to offer you for this week. To kick your week off, especially on a Monday, in a way that you can live your lottery life, your dream life, whatever it looks like for you. And thank you to Maeve, who prompted this with a simple question of well, what if you had a million dollars? So ask that of yourself and have a beautiful rest of your week. Keep getting after all the things that you're doing. Keep leading. Keep being your best. Keep so you can give your best. Sending you love. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team is our group coaching and accountability program where we provide the tools, skills and community for you to grow your self mastery as a leader and optimize your results alongside a other leaders. The Empowered Team runs year round to learn more about our leadership consulting for business and our Empowered Team Group coaching. Head to www.TheEmpowered.ca empowered learn more. That's www.TheEmpowered.Ca empowered-learn-more. We can't wait for you to join us. Let's go.