Set Yourself Up for Success… by Doing Something Extra

Hi, I'm Shawn Ellis, and welcome to This Moment Matters. Today's program is titled "Set Yourself Up for Success by Doing Something Extra." In case you haven't guessed by now, with the title of this podcast being This Moment Matters, The theme around here is maximizing this moment, or actually, I often like to think of it in terms of investing this moment. By that, I mean, will you engage in this moment in a way that yields benefits to you or someone else for a long time to come, or will the reward of this moment die right here? One way we can invest our moments is by using them to set ourselves up for success in the future. And for a simple illustration, I always think about vacuuming the house. And it may sound odd, but stick with me here. Vacuuming is one of the chores that falls under my domain here at our house, and although it's easy and only takes a few minutes, it's still a chore, and one of my least favorite ones at that. When I finish that last swath of carpet— and if you're not familiar with swath, I'm giving away my country or farm roots there— but, but when I finish that that last bit of carpet, I can't wait to put the vacuum back in the closet and move on to something that's more enjoyable. But I always make myself do one more thing before I put the vacuum away. Here, our vacuum cleaner is one of those with a canister-style dirt collector. So instead of collecting the dirt in a bag, it's stored in a clear plastic compartment where you have to empty it every so often. And when I finish vacuuming, I have a choice. I can either empty that canister and put the vacuum away so it's ready to go for next time, time, or I can leave the canister as is and then I'll have to empty it when I start vacuuming next time. I always make myself dump the canister before putting the vacuum away, and here's why: I know that psychologically the fresh start will mean more to me the next time I vacuum than ending the vacuuming job 30 seconds earlier would mean to me right now. Since vacuuming is, is already a chore for me, If I leave the canister full of dirt, it's only gonna put one more obstacle between me and getting started next time. But by taking that extra step and emptying the canister when I finish vacuuming, I'm setting myself up to succeed the next time around. And I know it's odd to talk about vacuuming and success in the same sentence, but you see what I'm talking about, right? In the grand scheme of things, it may appear that this one extra step doesn't matter much, but it does, because my tendency and the human tendency, unless we train ourselves otherwise, is to always take the easy way out, to look for the shortcut. But what's easy now will usually make things more difficult for us in the future. So we have to learn to consistently practice more successful behaviors. And I say consistently because that means even while we're doing something as trivial as vacuuming. It would definitely be easier to put the vacuum away now and postpone the, quote, "pain" until later, but that bill will be due the next time I vacuum. There's no getting around that. And then I'll fret even more about having to do that chore because I've given myself this extra hurdle to jump over. Okay, enough about vacuuming. Let's get away from the household chores and take this to a professional level. At work, do you end your day having knocked out everything on your to-do list, or are there still a few things or several things left over for the next day? For most of us, there's still a good bit left for tomorrow. So then what do you do? You can either call it a day and you say, you know, I'll take care of that tomorrow, I'm out of here. Or you can reorganize your list and set some things in place so you're ready to hit the ground running at 8 AM tomorrow. The question then is, will you endure a slight amount of pain now or risk throwing off your entire day by starting the day disorganized and out of focus tomorrow? Or what about this? Is there something in your life that you'd like to change? Maybe you'd like to pursue a different career path or start a new business, eat healthier, exercise regularly. Right now, you know you want to do it and even need to do it, but where do you begin? That is often a hurdle that keeps us from doing these things we want to do. Where do I begin? So you can either take this moment and write out the first steps of your action plan so then you're ready to execute when you have a window of opportunity later today or tomorrow, or you can put it off, and when that window opens, once again, you're gonna have the opportunity, but you'll be sitting there not knowing where to begin, and then you miss one more precious opportunity to begin that change. So here's your assignment for this week: look for one moment every day to invest in your success for tomorrow. So ask yourself, where Can you invest a little extra time, a little extra attention, or extra energy today that will make you better off tomorrow? Can you imagine if you did this every day for a year? Well, don't worry about that right now. Just start with this week. Do it every day this week and let me know what happens. I'm betting you're going to like the results. Thanks for listening. And I'll talk with you again soon.