7. Rethinking Time: Choose What Makes You Feel Alive

My wife says this intro sounds like a conspiracy mystery. So I'll stop that voice and tell you this show is for you to get you on the track you want for your life. I'm going to share encouraging educational content, hopefully entertaining, that will help you direct your life. Welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. I'm excited. I'm excited because I want to share Some of the things that have helped me in my career and with my time. I love time management because time is the most precious thing to me, really to everyone, if you stop and think about it. Now, what I'm gonna share hopefully encourages you and educates you with things that have helped me that perhaps you can customize and adjust for yourselves. Maybe something new comes out of this for you. Maybe it's a reminder, but I hope it serves you. And I want to get into it. But I'll start with a question. And this goes straight towards your career or your job, which they are different. Would you continue your career or job if you weren't paid? Would you continue your job or career if you weren't paid? If the answer is— Heck no. Then I want you to think and rethink your job and your career. And I have a few tools and ideas that can help you start drifting into things that you would never stop whether you're paid or not, because that's called passion and just love for what you're doing. And that's what everyone really deserves. If you're going to direct your life, you really want to manage your time well. You want to be doing the things that ignite you. And you want to spend time with the people that enlighten you. So how do you do that if you're not doing it? How do I do it? And how could I do it better? Because I shift in and out. Sometimes in my life, I've had to do— I feel like I have to do this. I don't love it. And I have to keep finding ways to do less of that and more of what I love. Even if the pay is lower. Even if I feel like it's a scary thing to leave this other job and go into the passion that makes substantially lower money. I had that experience and I pushed through it and it was worth it because I now feel good about what I do. And if I wasn't paid, and I often am not for the same type of job, whether it's directing, editing, or doing magic— I'm a magician as well— I still do it, paid or not. And I, I really am proud of that. It took 20 years to really navigate how I could do that and still have a nice place to Live, eat the healthiest food I can find, and feel alive every day, pretty much. Obviously, we all have our bad days, but I think you get my point. So for example, um, this is, this is a story about someone named Sandy, and we were in this conversation in a group, and one of the questions we were talking about was similar to what I just asked you. Would Would you continue your job if you weren't getting paid? But it was even deeper. So listen to this question. Sandy was asked, if you had 6 months to live, what would you do with your life? I think we should ask that every few months, maybe monthly. And not to be morose or negative, to be a little more in alignment with What we want out of our lives. So Sandy's response—it actually triggered me that night into the next day, and I felt emotionally sad for Sandy because she responded like this: Well, I—I would quit my law firm that I've built up for the last twenty years, and I would go and learn new and exciting things. From different cultures, I would love to do that. Take my family. And the scary part for me, and I hope that this resonates. I hope you understand I'm not being like negative towards Sandy and saying why isn't she just done that already? But part of me kind of does ask that question. Why do you have to wait this long? When are you? When is enough? Are you gonna have to wait until you have six months in life? left to live. Now, Sandy spent 20 years building this law firm feeling like, this is the thing I need to do so I have this much money, so then I can have this much happy, and I can have this big of a car, or this much of a house. But if she would leave it to learn about new cultures, new and exciting things like that— With only 6 months left. This is like dangerous. She needs to know that she's in the danger zone. If that's how you feel right now, then take a listen. Listen. You can get out of this. And there's a few tools that can slowly get you out of this. If you love your career like me, I'm so happy for you. But still, sometimes we find ourselves doing things maybe we don't want to do. And we have to think about it this way to get less of that and more of what really ignites us. Because when we're on fire and we feel good, truthfully, as cliché as it sounds, you're helping those around you enjoy their time more because you're in a better spirit. You're in a better attitude, right? If you're more enthusiastic in the world, sometimes people, if they're negative, they're like, all right, you're too enthusiastic, Tony. Tony, you're too enthusiastic. Okay. Yeah, I've got that. Okay. But I would rather have that happen once in a while, and most of the time people are inspired by the energy. Okay, so consider that. And to go into the tools that I, I think could really help you, me, all of us stay on that track, you need to read or reread the book 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. It is a fan favorite. If that's the phrase. I love that book so much. It changed literally the trajectory of my life, the direction of my life. And specifically, just like that story, traveling and seeing new cultures, it helped me realize, oh, I don't have to do it the traditional way where I have $1 million and now I'm retired and I'm way past my prime and now I can travel the world. I didn't have to wait. I lived in the beach, a house on the beach for 6 months in the Philippines. And I made that all happen by reading this book and customizing the good stuff that I could from it and making it, applying it to my life. And part of that is slowly doing less of the job or career that you wouldn't do if you weren't getting paid. Maybe you You can figure out a way to work 4 days a week, get a little less money, and then do the 3 days a week of the thing you love. And then you slowly dwindle that down to 2 days a week, and then the rest of the days are for the thing you love. And you have to be willing to fight for your dream and the thing you love more than having a little more luxury car or something like that. Because it is worth it, isn't it? Like, your dream needs to be bigger than the mandatory job you think you need in society. So if your dream's bigger and it means more than you, you will learn to sacrifice and, and make sure you can go after that thing, that career, and spend the time, the precious time in that zone. But you may not be aware of certain ways you can do it. So I really recommend that book, 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Very great. Now, I'm not saying to be so extreme about it, but personally what I did for about 4 years, let's say 2013 to 2017, I actually secretly found, well, I secretly lived above a liquor store in a small little office. And I just told the owner that I'm an editor, which I was, and I do a lot of editing late nights. I like to have a separate office. Plus it was near the beach. So I stayed there, very low rent. It was like $400 or $430 with internet, something like that, in Santa Monica, California. I could walk to the beach in 15 minutes, and I spent a lot of time at the beach. It was great. Now there were some sacrifices. I had to go to the gym. To shower. Luckily, I was in martial arts several times a week, and after martial arts, I'd go to the gym, I'd shower, and it worked out for a while. But what it allowed me to do— and again, I'm not saying to be this extreme— it allowed me to have low overhead so I could focus on my career as a director, a film commercial director. And I was honing my skills. I was practicing magic as a magician coming up. And All the creative things that I love and still do. I was sharpening the saw and I used whatever time I wanted on these things I loved because my low overhead didn't force me to have a job I hated or a job I wouldn't do if I wasn't getting paid. Now again, every now and then I'd have to take maybe 2 or 3 months to do a job, make a little extra money, then I'd grab a directing job or an editing job. But the reason why I'm saying that is you do have to find what sacrifices are you willing to make to help you have that happiness factor and to give you your time back and direct your life. And that's really the reason why I named the show Direct Your Life is because if you're not directing your life, what are you doing? So the bold statement, direct your life, I'm going to be saying that all throughout This series because I want that for you. Because I meet people and I ask them these questions and they say, oh, you're lucky, you love what you do. And I say, it's not luck. It was sacrifice and decision-making and learning and borrowing from other people I admire and just trying to figure it out and not thinking things are set in stone. In episode 1, I shared about the fixed mindset. And the growth mindset. And I'm going to be repeating these themes throughout these episodes because you have to keep hearing them to implement them. Even though it was hard sometimes when you have to live above a liquor store and there's no shower, there's no hot water, just like a bathroom and a sink. It was a little tough for 4 years, but guess what? I lived across from a Whole Foods. I'm a health nut. I loved it. I just walked to Whole Foods. Got my food, and then there was a park across the street, so I got my nature. I mean, it was a great time. And overall, it was this decision that worked for me to get me into my next advancement of my life, which was traveling Asia and living there for 9 months, meeting my wife, bringing her to America, just experiencing that whole journey and developing my relationships and developing my career and managing my time. Now, the last tool I want to give you, and this is really your call to action. How are you scheduling your time? So what we just spoke about, you know, if you don't love your career or job, I mean, you've heard it before, you got to find something else. Just again, you might have to sacrifice some things, but let's say you got that covered. You're starting to do that. How do you manage your time in simplified terms? How are you going to get going if you're someone that's just, Oh, I don't like calendars. I don't like schedules. It's because you just aren't used to it. So get used to it. Put things down on paper. Now, Tony Robbins taught me this, and it is the way to simplify getting things done and managing your time so you have the freedom that most people don't think you have when you're scheduling everything, but you are. So hear me out. Here it goes. To wrap this up, you have to have your dreams. And if you don't write down your dreams, they're just a waste, just like ideas. So write them down, write out the vision, and you have to commit. So hit your chest. Physiology and affirmations, repeating good phrases and, and writing down your vision, that really helps. People don't think it helps, but prove me wrong. Go research it, try it yourself. Do the experiments, show me the proof it doesn't work. It at least brings up some of the percentage and the, the likelihood that you will take action. So that's what I'm getting at. So you dream what you want to do with your time, commit to it, write it down, and then this is the most obvious— schedule it. Put it in the calendar. Put it in your daily calendar, but your monthly calendar. If you really want to go crazy, have a monthly, a weekly, And a daily calendar and, and get a little obsessed with it. And then put a little block in between these tasks that says like free time or socialize time or call your family. Because if you don't do it, it doesn't happen often. And a quote I want to leave you with today is that of this: the faintest ink is better than the best Memory. The faintest ink is better than the best memory. So we can't just rely on it being in our heads and saying, oh yeah, I want to do this with my time, I want to do that with my time. Then you talk it too much and you think it kind of happens, so then you don't go after it. Don't let that be you. Navigate your life with a pen and a paper. There's something that happens when you take the pen and you're writing it, and you can read about this and learn about this. There's a crystallization that happens that helps you keep the promises you're making to yourself. And that's what I want for me. That's what I want for you. That's it. I hope you love this. I hope you like this at least. I hope you implement this and make it your own because that's what your life needs to be about, making it your own. So I'm gonna leave you with this: life's magic and you are too. So now go and direct your life. Hey again, it's me, Tony. I hope you enjoyed the free show and I hope it served you. And if it did, please do me a little favor and give it a review, a like, and most importantly, share it with that someone that needs to hear the message today, because being the director of your own life involves contribution. So give it back and help others create their vision, break through their barriers, and find their magic too. And lastly, don't forget to check out my free weekly newsletter at tonysuriano.com. That's S-U-R-I-A-N-O. This is where I share exclusive tips, behind-the-scenes insights, and the kind of content I don't post anywhere else. If you're serious about leveling up and staying inspired, connecting with me, that's the place to be. Thank you once again. Now get out there and direct your life. Or I'm gonna get you.