SNS 122: {Rebroadcast} SNS24: Saturday Night Special – Future You is NOT a Superhero

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Welcome to tonight's Saturday night special episode 1 22, a special rebroadcast of episode 24. I'm

[00:00:10] Daryl Lyons: Darryl Lyons, author of 18 to 80. 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 treasure. To live out your calling, having the right behavior with your money is key to doing that.

[00:00:29] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:37] Scott Maderer: we're going to start eating, we're going to cut out sugar, even though the truth is that we've been trying to do that for three years. And instead what we've discovered. Is that we just don't manage to complete that technique. We just don't train this to get it done. This year we're going to get our finances in order.

[00:00:56] We're going to start doing a budget. Welcome and thank you [00:01:00] for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. 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 in the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:01:15] You'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:24] And tonight Saturday night special. I talk with you about ways you can achieve your future goals without depending on your future self, just being a superhero, the power of understanding why willpower is not the key. And I'll give you instead a couple of key techniques that can help you with this.

[00:01:44] Instead one area that a lot of folks know. Some help with is around the area of productivity, getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be [00:02:00] really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more.

[00:02:18] But actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personal. Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type.

[00:02:38] But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that in productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash law. One of the mistakes that we make so much when we're thinking about getting [00:03:00] things done, being more productive and working hard is that we depend upon our future self being a superhero.

[00:03:10] I don't know about you, but I've sat down sometimes and started making a, to do list for tomorrow or the next day or next week. And I put everything on it. I make a list that's way too long that no human being could possibly get done in the amount of time that's present on the schedule. I've got some techniques that I use now that keep me from doing that, but this was a common mistake that I made time after time.

[00:03:36] After time. Why because we look at our future self and we think that our future self is so much better and more gifted than our current self. Somehow, tomorrow you'll get it all done somehow, tomorrow you'll just power through and managed to get everything done on your way to long list. Even though [00:04:00] today you struggled and weren't able to do that tomorrow.

[00:04:03] It's going to work. Because future self is so much better than present self. And instead, what we're really doing is sabotaging our future self we're really cutting ourselves off at the knees before we've ever even got the opportunity to do what it is that we need to do. We've created a situation where future self is destined to fail.

[00:04:29] Or future self has to be some sort of miraculous superhero. That's completely different than who you are today. And I'll tell you without putting some habits and some systems and some processes in place and without working on who you are and learning and building and growing future self is really just your present self in the.

[00:04:50] There's nothing that your future self can do that your present self can't do in less. You inject some things to change it. See, that's [00:05:00] the key you've got to take action today. Your present self has to do things to create a situation where your future self actually can get some things. You also have to stop sabotaging your future self.

[00:05:12] Think about it for a minute. How often have you set up a situation where your future self is destined to fail? You've said yes, to way too many things. You put way too many things on your list. And when you actually look at the amount of time, it takes you in the amount of time you have available in a day, it's not possible to get all of that done.

[00:05:32] We all know. Instead, you have to understand a couple of techniques that I'm going to share at the end of this session, but let's talk a little bit first about what we generally do. Normally, what we think is the solution to this is just to grit, to bear down and to get it all done, to use willpower, right?

[00:05:54] We're just going to will ourselves through it. We're going to somehow or another, make our [00:06:00] willpower work tomorrow. We'll get home from work and we'll just manage to exercise for 30 minutes this time, even though for weeks instead, what we've done is sat down on the couch and binge Netflix for an hour.

[00:06:13] We're going to start eating right. We're going to cut out sugar, even though the truth is that we've been trying to do that for three years. And instead what we've discovered. Is that we just don't manage to complete that technique. We just don't train just to get it done. This year we're going to get our finances in order.

[00:06:31] We're going to start doing a budget even though for the last two years, instead of getting it done, what we've done instead. Actually never sat down and do it. We've wasted that time and that energy by doing something else, like again, benching Netflix for an hour that's a common trap for a lot of us.

[00:06:50] And we think that willpower is going to keep us from falling into that trap. We'll just will ourselves to not do it. We'll grin and bear it. [00:07:00] And as I talked about on Tuesday, the funny thing is that willpower first off is a finite resource. You run out of it. And so usually what happens is by the time you get home in the afternoon, you've used it all up.

[00:07:12] This is why you binge on ice cream at midnight and watch Netflix and do foolish things in the evening instead of actually doing the things that you planned to have and get done instead, it's recognizing too that willpower is not usually the key, even if you manage to willpower your way through it for a little while.

[00:07:36] Eventually you stumble and fall, and there's actually research that shows that willpower in your way through it actually hurts you in the longterm. It makes you less successful. It makes you less able to get things done. It makes you more tired, more ill. It causes other issues and traps for. So instead, I'm going to [00:08:00] give you two key techniques to inject into your life that actually work long term and begin to build up your ability to get some of these other things done.

[00:08:12] And those are gratitude and accountability. The funny thing is gratitude at first glance sounds like, wait, what does that have to do with getting my budget done? What does that have to do with getting my money in order? What does that have to do with eating, right? What does that have to do with getting in shape?

[00:08:27] Being thankful for things doesn't help me do those things. But the funny thing is that research shows that it actually does having gratitude, looking and being thankful for those things that actually. Are good in your life, actually spills over and makes you more likely to get things done. It makes you more likely to stick to your habits.

[00:08:53] It makes you more likely to continue to work on things, even when you're tired, even when you're sick, [00:09:00] even when you're fresh. And the funny thing is here. When I say gratitude, one of the things that we tend to do is we tend to focus on the same two or three or four big things in our life that we're thankful for.

[00:09:11] But here I'm asking you, I'm challenging you to look deeper than that, to look broader than that, to look for the little things that also you are grateful for. This is why one of the things I do is I have people do a gratitude journal where they write down three things that they were thankful for today.

[00:09:28] And they do that for 30 days in a row. But here's the twist. You're not allowed to repeat it. Anything that you put on Monday, you can't write down also on Tuesday, anything you put on Tuesday, you can't write down on Wednesday and so on. You're never allowed to repeat. So for 30 days, it's three things a day.

[00:09:46] With everything being different. That means you find 90 things that you're grateful for in a month. And the truth is there's way more than that, that you should be able to identify in your [00:10:00] life, even if there's trouble, even if there's things going wrong, even if your life feels really bad right now, believe it or not.

[00:10:07] There's way more things than that, that you can identify and find and be grateful for. The second technique is the technique of accountability. Now, obviously as a coach, that's one of the things that I do is hold people accountable to their goals and help them build systems and processes to stick. But accountability here doesn't have to be hiring a coach.

[00:10:29] It can even be having accountability of a buddy, a friend, someone in your circle who you call and say whether or not you got done that evening, what you were supposed to get. Do what you said you would do. It can be somebody who you check in with periodically. To make sure that you're on track with your goals.

[00:10:49] It can even be public accountability where you post that you're going to do something and then you post whether or not you actually completed the task that you said, there's [00:11:00] all different ways. You can inject accountability into your life. And the funny thing is a lot of it has to do with how you're wired as to what works.

[00:11:07] There are some people that public accountability works better and there are others where private accountability works best. Obviously, I think coaching works well in part because it can give you either it can give you public and private accountability. Plus the coach can help you actually inject systems and processes that work.

[00:11:26] But in any case, having some sort of accountability built into your process, built into what you're trying to achieve helps you way more than willpower. The research shows that accountability as a tool is actually one of the more successful methodologies that people can use for meeting their goals. So if you inject these two together, if you find ways to find gratitude, That builds that muscle and makes you more likely to follow through.

[00:11:58] And then if you also [00:12:00] inject accountability as a tool, then you'll discover that you're really about 80 to 90% more likely to actually follow through and complete whatever goals you have set for yourself. Thanks for listening.

[00:12:15] 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. If you enjoy this episode. Please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.

[00:12:43] All one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your. Until next [00:13:00] time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.