1/25/21 - All’s Well That Ends Well

Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to Made for Mondays with Justin Lester. I'm so glad you guys are tuned in with us this Monday morning on January 25, 2021 in this amazing new year, an amazing new space where we can be all that we possibly can be. If you guys can do me a favor, those of you who are listening, I see we have a number of consistent listeners and consistent engagers. Can you share this podcast if you don't mind? This just gives us a chance to grow our listener and also bless somebody else if you've been blessed by this. To assist you with beginning your Mondays and your week. Well, I believe that Mondays don't own me. I own my Mondays. And because I own my Mondays, I can jump into the week and not let the week jump on me. That being said, let's jump into this. I've been doing a short series this month on ways to start your Mondays and ways to engage with your Mondays so that your Monday is catered to you, by you, for you, for your future. And so, that being said, I've asked you some questions about how to look at your week, how to evaluate your week, and I want to end this series thinking about and giving you some prompts on actually how to end your day. If you start your day well, you also need to end your day well. And so it's one thing to begin my day by having the right mindset, begin my week by having the right mindset. But I want to give you some statements and things in your head as you begin your day that you can utilize to end your day. And then I'll give you two principles as well that prayerfully will help you this week. But here's some things I want you to go into this week thinking about when you end your day. Number one, what's a moment you can appreciate? Right? I want you to go into your day, but also then reflecting at the end of the day. A moment that I really appreciated today was this. As you go into your day, look for moments to appreciate and to be grateful, right? I believe grateful is the anecdote to fear, to worry, and to pain. So look for moments to be grateful and then take a moment to log at the end of your day. A moment that I appreciate, a moment that I was grateful today is this. As you consider your task today, I want you to at the end of the day, I want you to take a moment to look back and say, what's a situation or task that you can say that you handled really well and what's a situation or task that you didn't handle really well. Fact of the matter is we're not going to handle every single situation in our day perfectly. But some things will do well and some things we won't do well. We can improve tomorrow by actually taking time to honestly assess what we did or didn't do well. And then lastly, if you were your own life coach, what would you tell yourself today? If you were your own life coach, what would you tell yourself today? Now, that could be a way you start your day. It's also a way that I actually end my day every single day. If I was my own coach, if I called myself to sit down to have a meeting, what would I tell myself today? So let me give you three points of purpose to go into your day this week. This is contextualized and I want to give you some context for it. I'm currently reading a book called the Four, paired with another book called the Splendid and the Vile, talking about Winston Churchill. And this book, the Four talks about the hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. And I'm really enjoying this book. I'm taking my time through it as I'm reading about Apple and reading about Facebook, Google and Amazon. There is this one little hitch in the book where the writer Scott Galloway mentions the power of Amazon. Amazon's going to be probably the first trillion dollar company that we've seen and the differences between Amazon and Walmart and how while they only acquired 400 some odd whole food stores, how powerful Amazon is over Walmart in spite of the fact they only acquired a little bit of food stores and how Kroger stock dropped drastically the day that happened. They mentioned something very small in this that I want you to consider. Scott says that Amazon is the number one search for thing on Google, that Google is driven by Amazon sales, that when we search for something Amazon I think is 53% of the searches that come up on Google have something to do with Amazon and that all Amazon would have to do is to create their own search engine where they make their products exclusive to their own search engine and it would kill Google. What Amazon are you relying on to make your life great? What Amazon are you relying on to be 53% of the work and engagement that you are? What Amazon are you relying on if you're Google, that you need to make sure you look at your own space, your own ways of differentiation and segmentation, the things that you do well so that you never are held over a barrel by somebody else. All it would take for Amazon is to create its own search engine completely separate from Google and make only their searches there, and it would completely eviscerate Google. I wonder what that is for us. I wonder who we're relying on. I wonder what we're relying on. I wonder who has our energy. I wonder who has our attention that's getting us to feel comfortable that they're still with us. But if they ever were to wake up to the power that they have and get comfortable with that power, they could destroy us for you. Who's. Who's that? Amazon? Who's the person that has that much power and access? What's the thing that has that much power and access? And as you guys have heard me say all the time, there's always a who behind the what. So we name the what, but then we also have to name the who. So here's my points of purpose. Number one, defeat pessimism with honest optimism. Defeat your pessimism with honest optimism. What are the areas in your life where you know you've been pessimistic, where you've been looking down? Things have been negative, Things have not been going the way you want them to go. If we look at the year 2020 and now as we come into 2021, there's a lot of areas of our lives we can be very pessimistic. But I want you to defeat your pessimism with honest optimism. Not toxic optimism, but honest optimism. What are the areas and places in your life where you can look with a positive, honest outlook? Yes, if things go the way that things go, at 50%, I will be successful. So if I hit 80, I'll be amazing. And if I hit 100, I can change the world. I want you to have honest optimism. It's very easy to be pessimistic. It's very easy to look at all the negative things going on in your life. Personally, in my own life, there's a lot of areas in my life that I wish were better. There are a lot of areas of my own personal journey that I wish were different. Pessimism can destroy you. Pessimism has taken away some weekends. For me, pessimism has taken away some days and nights for me, pessimism has taken some great times, even on this podcast or in preparation or preparation for my week because I've gone into some weeks pessimistic. I didn't go into the week with honest optimism. Honest optimism allows you to really see things with clear eyes. Honest optimism allows you to see things with clear eyes. Head once again, if you were Your own life coach, would you tell yourself, defeat your pessimism with honest optimism. What are the good things that are available to you this week? What are the good relationships that are available to you this week? What are the good places and areas and arenas that are available to you this week? I guarantee you there's more good available to you than there is negative available to you. Number two, don't fight with people. Engage with people. You ever notice how you watch some athletes and it seems like they get on the court and we glamorize and glorify their anger, get on the court and we're just looking for reasons to fight. We have all these videos that go viral of people fighting. When's the last time we've seen videos that we honor where we see people engage? The most popular videos that stay around for long periods of times are the ones we see the two little kids crossing the street and hugging. It's the employees that do something good. It's the co workers that do something good for someone. It's the spouse who does something positive for them. On TikTok, there are so many videos about cheating and losing and taking away and death. But what would happen if we took a moment this week not to look for ways to fight our co workers, to fight our bosses, to fight our stakeholders, to fight the people we have to talk to. But the same way that you approach someone to invest in your company, in the same way that you approach someone to invest in your resources and invest in your organization and invest in your future, you engage. How different would it be for you to engage with that person you think that doesn't like you instead of looking for a fight with that person? Allow me to go to scripture. Jesus put it like this. Seek and you'll find it. Knock and the door will be open. That's not just for the good things. It's also for the bad things. If I seek conflict, I'm going to find conflict. If I seek negativity, I'm going to find negativity. If I seek seek frustration, I'm gonna find frustration. But if I seek peace, if I seek joy, you know how powerful it would be for you to enter into a meeting with that CFO or that COO that you know is looking for a way to just eviscerate and destroy you and you sat down and engage with them. It's amazing how much we don't know about people because we are looking for ways to fight people instead of ways to engage with people. So this week, don't fight Engage. And lastly, address your purpose head on. There's so many books that I've read and so many articles that I've read about conflict, how to address conflict. See it head on, take it head on, grab the bull by the horns. I don't think we do that for purpose. I don't think we do that for our goals. I want you to address them head on. I asked you some questions earlier this month. I want you to take your goals and address them head on. I want you to put them at the forefront of everything you do. Write them on the top of your journal, put them on a post it note in your car. Put them on the post it note in your bathroom. Address your goals, your purpose, head on. Center your day, center your life, center your engagements around your purpose. And anything that then comes against you is fighting purpose. If anything comes in your life that does not allow you to address purpose, it is not worth your time. Address your purpose like your life depends on it. Because your life actually really does depend on it. You can have and will have an amazing week. Because you were made for this. You were made for this Monday. You were made for this week, you were made for this hour. And everything that's available to you in this week is going to bring you to exactly where you need to be to be the best person you possibly can be. Now let's say our affirmations today and then we'll get together and we'll discuss our wine for the week. But if you repeat after me, just say, I am me, I can be me and no one will stop me from being me. Now we're going to take a moment, have a brief break and we're going to come back and discuss our glass of wine for this week. I think you'll like this. It's a rather unique blend and I think you will love what we learned about it, the tasting notes on it, and I think you will like to engage with this particular wine. Alright, let's take a break and come back for our Wine of the Week. Well, hey everyone, welcome back to Made for Mondays. Today we're going to engage with our Wine of the Week. These wine of the Weeks are just a simple way for me. It's a part of me I never really shared out and I finally am taking a moment to share out. This part of me I just enjoy. I don't drink for intoxication. I drink because I just enjoy this. They say that on some of the articles that I've read and books that I read about wine that a Lot of times, people who were involved in athletics or people who were involved in anything competitive really love engaging with wine. And so for me, this is just another extension of me. Today we're going to review and talk about a Dragon Salazione 2018 wine. This wine is from Calabria in southern Italy. It's a mixture of two different grapes, a Malikhio grape and a Merlot grape. 85% Malikhio, 15% Merlot. Honestly, my wife loved this wine. I me, not so much, which tells us something about wine. It's unique to each person's palate that each person has an opportunity to pick and choose what's really good for them. And so I love bold reds. I thought I was going to love this. It just wasn't it for me. My wife, on the other hand, absolutely love this particular wine. This wine is $21.99. It's from Italy. You can tell by the type of oak that you can taste in the wine, as well as you can tell from the ripeness of the grapes, the location in Calabria, where it's a sunny, cl, smooth Mediterranean climate. It's going to give you a lot of fresh, vibrant grapes. And you can tell that in the taste as well. And you can also tell that this region probably produces some really grape Chardonnay, really great Pinot griges as well. That being said, the color of this wine, when you grab it, you tilt it, you're going to see that it's going to be a deep fuchsia moving out to a pink rim. And you can tell that white rim around it gives you around the age it has a decent alcohol content. You can tell from the dribbles on the side of the glass. It smells when you put your nose into it. It's going to smell this. You're going to smell some berries, some plums, some Dr. Fruits. You're going to smell some sour cherries, pepper and licorice. For me, one of the smells I put down was it smelled like my old football weight room. It smelled like an old weight room. You can smell some grass and you're going to then smell some oak. That oak is then going to tell you the type of oak that was used on the wine, which tells you is age in oak barrels. For me, the taste when I tasted the wine tasted like summer. That's the first thing I wrote down. Tasted like summer. And that summer taste gave me some cherry, some dried strawberry. You can taste some oak, taste some plum. And for me, I put vinegar. The the finish on it was not what I desired. And I think that's why I didn't like it too much. The buzz was medium. The buzz was a medium bite on the lip. It doesn't tingle, doesn't tingle going down. It's just. It was a medium bite. It's a firm tannin. It's a big red. So it's a firm tannin and it's a full bodied red. I suggest having this wine with some red meat, some pasta, some. Some bold flavors. I even suggest having it with barbecue just because you'll have the type of meet with you as well. It's a complex red. It's a big, rich red. But to tell you the truth, my wife is not a fan of big, rich reds. I've given her some of the best big reds there have been since 2015. I gave her the top rated red wine from 2015 and my wife said no, but I gave her this one. I couldn't stand it. My wife loved it. So I don't know that. I think that the merlot grape compared to a Cab Sob grape and a pinot grape and a Cab franc grape is completely different. And so I think you'll enjoy this. If you're looking for ripe fruits, this wine is going to be great to be aged because of the place it was from. This could have been aged till 2025, 2027, a good little cellar and I think it would have actually probably done even more justice to it. I would suggest to open it up and let it sit for an hour. That's what we did. And when we let it sit for an hour, we were able to grab a hold of the flavors. Out of five stars, I gave it a three out of five. It wasn't my favorite. But like I said before, my wife will tell you this is her favorite wine she ever had. And so go ahead and try it. A Dragon Celzion. I got this from my subscription to Laithwaytes. L A I T H W A I T E S. What I like about lathewaites is actually partners with local small businesses and small wine outlet companies and gives you some unique wines so you don't get the basic yellowtails and cupcake vineyards. And that's what you like, that's what you like. But if you're looking for something around the same price, that's going to get you across the world, across the globe to give you some unique flavors and unique cultures. Try something different. Try a local place. You'll be surprised. The same $9.99. You'll spend on yellowtail. You can spend on a really good cab from Paso Robles or a good Pinot. Not from Burgundy, but something from New Zealand. You can get some good things from Italy. Try Australia, South Africa, places like that. So, Dragon Salzion, 2018, from Calabria, Italy. Three out of five. Not one I'll have again. But my wife will have it, so that means I will have it again. Because happy wife is happy life, right? Have a wonderful week. Remember, you were made for this. You were made for Mondays. Mondays don't own you. You own your Mondays. Now go win. God bless you.