Episode 854 Easy is Hard and Hard is Easy
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 854 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:07] Matthew Diebler: [00:00:07] I'm Matthew Diebler. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to focus on the calling of God is key.
[00:00:24] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.
[00:00:37] Scott Maderer: [00:00:37] and yet, if we really step back and look at it and think about what are our big priorities, what are our big reasons? What are we really trying to achieve in the world? What's the impact that we want to make? What's the change that we want to make. Then all of a sudden we're more willing to do the difficult in the short term.
[00:00:54]welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. [00:01:00] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact.
[00:01:20] The work
[00:01:21]and today's episode about impacting the world through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about why often when we do what's easy in the short term, it's hard in the longterm and vice versa. And I also talk about why we have a bias to assume that the bad outweighs the good, and I share that why we believe that our future self can really solve the problems that we you've heard me talk about developing your talent and what are the best ways to do that is through books.
[00:01:52] But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by [00:02:00] audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via audible.
[00:02:18] That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. Often one of those weird paradoxes that I found over the years is the idea of sometimes we do something in the short term that seems like it would be easy. That seems like it would be something that just works really well.
[00:02:46] But in the longterm that ends up causing difficulty. And we often do things in the short term that seem like they're difficult. And in the longterm, they make things much [00:03:00] easier. It's a weird paradox of where tin to, to look first at the short term. So we all say, Hey, let's do something easy in the short-term because it's the low hanging fruit let's take care of this, or let's make this choice because it's easy.
[00:03:16] It's less painful. It's simple to do. And then it's not until weeks or months later that we have to deal with the consequences. And so it's easier to do that. That's why we have a bias towards making those sorts of choices. We don't tend to think of the future the right way. And we'll talk more about that in a little bit.
[00:03:37] But think about it for a minute, choosing to go deeply into debt, to get certain things in your day to day for today is that example of this it's making a short-term decision so we can get it now. But there are long-term consequences of that. You have to clean up that situation down the road, and if something goes wrong or you [00:04:00] struggle, or you lose a job, you can end up in a position.
[00:04:03] That isn't as beneficial as you thought. And so the short term pleasure ends up causing longer term pain. It's always leveraging the future for the present. That's often what we do and other decisions too, that decision to eat that extra gallon of ice cream is an example of doing this in the health realm that.
[00:04:23] Chance to sit a little longer on the couch and not get up and go for that walk or not get out of your warm bed and go for a cold run in the morning. Those are health impacts that sort of do this same thing. That there's all sorts of choices that we make where sure. Short term pleasure leads to long-term pain.
[00:04:44] But having that discipline in the short term, doing the difficult things now makes it easier. In the longterm. It turns out that being consistent and doing difficult things each and every [00:05:00] day turns out that creates long-term good. In fact, the most successful people are the people that can delay gratification and do some of those difficult things.
[00:05:11] In the short term, and then they get larger gratification in the longterm, but that's really hard to do because we have a bias of assuming that the bad outweighs the good, what that means is when the bad is closer to us in time, when we can see that the bad is going to happen now it's uncomfortable.
[00:05:31] It's difficult. It's challenging. It's painful, whatever it is. Then we have a tendency to weigh that too heavy. We have a tendency to actually look at that in a way that says this can't possibly equal any good in the future. The immediacy of it, the closeness of it causes us to actually weighted heavier in our mind.
[00:05:57] We also have a tendency to believe that any [00:06:00] problems that are created any difficulties or challenges that arise by future self can always solve that problem. My future self is so much better than the self I am today. I'll exercise in the future. I'll eat better in the future. All of those things will happen in the future because my future self is such a better person than the today self that I am.
[00:06:24] But the truth is the only way that future self gets to be better is by making changes in today. See, the only way we can affect the future is by the choices and the decisions and the activity that we do each and every day, we can't really affect the future. Without changing the present. And yet we don't tend to pay attention to that.
[00:06:49] We don't think about it. We don't look at it that way because it's easier to let inertia take over. It's easier to let the habits that we've had for years [00:07:00] and the energy and the time and the effort to just be pushed into the future. While today we enjoy what's going on or we just get through the day.
[00:07:12] It's true that most of us have a bias. Towards not making changes. We have a bias towards not doing the difficult things. In the short term, we have a bias to putting that off for the future and assuming that somehow or another in the future we'll make the challenges and the changes that we really want to make.
[00:07:34] But today it's easier to just let it rest. It's easier to look at the difficulty. Look at the challenge, look at the bad and let that outweigh the good. And yet, if we really step back and look at it and think about what are our big priorities, what are our big reasons? What are we really trying to achieve in the world?
[00:07:55] What's the impact that we want to make? What's the change that we want to make. Then all of a sudden we're [00:08:00] more willing to do the difficult in the short term. I'm really in a position right now where I've taken on a lot of extra duties. I've taken on some extra work. And it means that my days are going to 10 and 12 and 13 hour days routinely, but that's not going to last forever.
[00:08:17] And I know that it's a short term choice. That's going to lead to some really strong, long term benefits. And that's where I'm at today. Is it tarred today? Is it a struggle today? Is there mornings where I don't want to get up and go do it? Absolutely. But I know that in the long-term the benefits outweigh the challenge of today.
[00:08:41] Thanks for listening.
[00:08:43]thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. [00:09:00] If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent and sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent.
[00:09:14] Or if you're in the U S you can text four, four, two, two, two talent tips. That's talent tips to four four, two, two, two, and get those tips until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world. .