Merry Christmas Eve 2019

Inspiration, Transformation, success stories, and the Imperfect Action Round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. Merry Christmas Eve. I wanted to take a minute and say I hope you're enjoying your day. And you're enjoying it with family, you're enjoying it with friends. No matter what you're doing, you're grateful, you're thankful, and. And you realize what the holiday season, the Christmas season is about, and Jesus is the reason for the season. And that is very exciting to me. I want you to join me tomorrow for my Christmas message. But today, just forget about everything that's been going on all year. Should I put my hands down? I should. I don't know. I just. I look back, it's hard to believe it's been almost an entire full year. And I don't know about you, but do you ever look and think that you don't really need anything, you're already blessed with everything you need? Sure, it would be nice to have that nice, new, insert adjective, verb, whatever, noun. Sure, it's all nice. But really, what do we have? We have life, we have family, we have love, we have a new opportunity. We have a lot to be grateful for. And every day I like to express that. And it's why I get a little snarky around Thanksgiving, because it's like, oh, great, now the rest of the world gets to be thankful for one day. You can wake up every day as you should, and say, today I am grateful and thankful. Now that I get to pursue my dream further. I get to help someone at work. I get to bless my family with something. There's all different kinds of things you can and should be thankful for. And I just wanted to remind you, it's Christmas Eve. Be fully present. Whatever you didn't get done.

In the last, what, 11 and a half months, you're probably not gonna get done in the next hour or two. You know what I mean?

And maybe this is a time to reevaluate what you're doing going into 2020 and go, how well did it work? A lot of what I teach my clients is time management, productivity, leverage, client acquisition. And they all play a role on each other. And you can apply them to your personal life. I do the exact same thing. And it's like, what? The beauty of running the company and not working for it is you can do whatever you want. The massive downside is you can also do whatever you want, in that whatever you want may not be the most effective. It shouldn't take you 50 hours to do something you can do in five. But so often people get into these patterns, these habits, and they might not be serving you. And this is a time where it's like a litmus test. Any given holiday, any. I mean, this works any day of the week. If you don't want to work five days a week, go hard Monday, Tuesday, take the rest of the week off. Just make. It's not how many hours you put in, it's what you're doing with those hours. One of my favorite tools is rescue time. And you can check it out@eainterviews.com Rescuetime I tell all my clients, week one, day one. Put it on all your stuff and see what you're doing with your time. Because today, Christmas Eve is a very special day. You should be fully present with your family and you should be present with those around you. And I don't know about you, but this year it just seems like there's a lot of people that are just all over the place. There's 400,001 sales going on. Maybe I just didn't care. The last couple of years, I don't know what it was, but this year it's just like, is it because I'm not a kid anymore? I mean, I remember Christmas and it was like, I want to make snowmen, I want to go have fun. And it's like I couldn't wait to wake up and just go do all these fun things. And now it seems like I'm very thankful. But it seems like a lot of people consider it a chore instead of a blessing. They're treating it more like a burden than a blessing, I should say. And that's not the case at all. There is a lot to be thankful for.

It's Christmas.

It'S Jesus birthday, it's Christ within us. It's the whole reason we have the gift giving process is to share that love we have for our family and friends.

And I feel like people just treat it as.

Oh, it's one more thing on the to do list. And I never want to lose that. The magic, the spirit, the joy. And I also want to speak to.

I know, I know you're hurting. And maybe that's why I didn't care the last few years. If.

I lost dad a couple years ago and it wasn't fun the whole year, I just. The whole year and a half, to be honest, even longer. I don't know, it was just like, whatever, there's something was lost. And I know I'm not the only One. And that's why I wanted to share this with you, because someone asked. A good friend of mine asked me last night. She goes, what did you ask for Christmas? And I'm like, come to think of it, nothing really. I don't think anyone asked me. And I didn't really put it out there. And.

I thought about it, I go, I'm actually very pleased with this year. Went to family Christmas, went to the salon, went to wherever. How are you doing? I'm honestly very great. It's been a huge blessing this year, and.

I'm thankful for that because I set out last year to make it a great year and I had a lot of help. Couldn't have done it on my own.

But I was intentional about it. And I'm not sad that it's ending. I'm excited. We're going into what I'm calling the Roaring Twenties. I don't know if I'm the only one on Earth, but if that's the case, so be it. I have for years wanted to. I've always loved the history and how America was founded and all these different things. And it's like the 20s, the 1920s, were a giant period of growth. And I firmly believe in a surreal as it is. And I'm surprised my heart isn't racing anymore because I was a little nervous or anxious. But my life is going to be 180 degrees different in the next 10 years than it was in the first 35.

And that's exciting and it's scary and it's exciting and it's fun and it's surreal and it's exciting.

We overestimate what we can do in a year, and we underestimate what we can do in 10. But no matter what you're doing, if you didn't get it done yet, one more day is not going to make a difference. But it will make a difference when you look back five years and you're known as always working on the holiday or you're never around or what about your kids? How do they see you? How do your friends perceive you? Are you there and fully present for them? Are you a present to them?

Or are you always looking for presence from them?

And I pray very often, like, every day, and I say, God, take everything off of my plate and give me the provision I need so I can be there for other people. I don't want to be so caught up in my own crap. And it's a driving force to continue to leverage and do, you know, do what I need to by no means shirk the responsibility. But I love being fully present and just going, I'm here. What do you need? What would make your day better? I've got the time. Don't worry about it. This is intentional. And it was my number one goal when I went full time in business in 2008, was to own my calendar. Now, of course, you always want to grow it and be doing other things, but.

What are you doing? What are you. What are you doing this decade? What did you do this decade? And I'm going to circle back to what I was saying is when you own the company, you can do what you want. And that's fantastic. But I think of everything like a report card. If this was a class, what would your grade be? Did you kick it with a stick like I did in middle and high school, and kind of maybe didn't pass some classes and just kind of showed up when I wanted to? Others, or did you go, I'm going to put everything in and get AAA pluses. It was ban choir and drama, the stuff that came naturally to me. I didn't really have to try too hard. But there was a difference that I saw. And I was like, why are some of these so easy for me and others not? And the truth is, it's not that I'm stupid. I am actually very intelligent and I have a great memory. I just didn't care.

And I think that's the sad thing. So no matter what your background is, no matter how you grew up, when you get apathetic, you know, what's that joke?

What's the difference between, it's not really a joke, it's sad. It's, you know, the devil loves idle hands. And what's the difference between apathy and laziness? And it's like, I don't know. And I don't care.

If that's your attitude. Like, just, here's. Here's a Netflix subscription for a year. Have fun.

It's not going to work. And I don't want that for you. I don't want it to be another year and you're going, I see these memes of, here's what 2019 was like, and here's what 2018 when it was like. And they're funny. I mean, they're entertaining. It's like you see someone stumbling down the steps, but it's like, how do you have five bad years when nothing really went wrong in your life.

And it's just what you choose to focus on? So I'm going to keep this short, you know, I could go all day and I hope this takes root in you. Jesus is the reason for the season. The reason we give gifts is because he gave us his life. And he is the gift. He's the best present you can receive. And we try to mimic that. And everything is rooted in something and we have grown so far from that.

People feel like if they don't get a brand new car, house, plane, or 15 iPads, like they're a bad person and none of that matters.

Give someone the gift of you later, today, tomorrow, every day.

If you can do it every day, the holidays and Christmas is just so much better. But if you just start with one day, make it the rest of today and tomorrow.

And just be there for someone.

What would you like if I were to be. If you were to be completely honest with me and I were to ask you, you know, hypothetically, like I wasn't right now, what do you really want? Is it really another watch? Is it really another phone that's going to come out in three more months and then six more? What do you really want? And I would just venture to say it's time with someone you really care about, you love. And if you've lost someone, how about the time back.

To have one more Christmas with them? You can't see them again in real life, in this life, but you can see them again in the next.

I challenge you to really look and take inventory this year going into 2020, in the next decade.

What do you really want for Christmas? I can tell you, you already have it, you don't need anything else. And you can give the greatest gift of all as well as receive it.

Merry Christmas. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.