00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 46. I'm Wade Galt. 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 live to work instead of working to live is key. And one way to be inspired to do that.
00:00:25 Listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader. How do you know if you're growing or not first off are you setting goals? And secondly, are you achieving them? That's really the measure of whether or not you have growth. It's not just about are you setting the goals and it's not just about, are you achieving them?
00:00:53 Are you going through life passively? Are you sitting back and letting life happen to you? Welcome and thank you 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, you will learn to invest in yourself,
00:01:20 invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. And tonight's Saturday night special. I talk with you about why your growth is the real key, how to recognize if you're really growing or not, and what you can do about it right now. Now one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity.
00:01:54 Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really, 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 done, but actually getting the right things done.
00:02:20 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 personality. Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type. But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work,
00:02:43 but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch. Let's talk about self-improvement growth development, learning, whatever name you want to give it. This idea of spending time and energy and money on getting a little bit better each and every day is a really important one.
00:03:15 When it comes to taking control and stewardship of your resources. The truth is that growth is a key. You might've heard the expression if you're not growing, you're dying before. And I really, I really agree with that. I believe in that this idea that we've got to constantly be adding new growth, we've got to be lifelong learners. Lifelong growers is so important to me.
00:03:42 And I want to distinguish a few things here. First off, this idea of growth versus just learning. You know, the truth is that you can learn a lot in a passive way, but growth means something different. And we'll talk a little bit about that during the podcast today. And the truth is that you could continue to develop yourself, but that's not always growth.
00:04:06 Either growth has something to do with both learning and development. Let's look at just a few facts for a minute. Uh, you know, if you look at different surveys on how much money Americans spend on different things, you can find that the self-improvement industry, the self-development industry, the, the books and the courses and all of this sort of stuff is right around $10 billion a year.
00:04:36 Now I've seen estimates a little higher than that. A little smaller than that, but let's just say it's around $10 billion a year. That seems like a tremendous amount of money. And I mean, if you take that there's roughly 350 million people in the U S and you divide that, you know, on average, people are spending a good amount on self-improvement products,
00:04:56 books, and other courses and learnings and trainings and education and all of these sorts of things. It's a massive industry, but here's, what's interesting. If you look at things like music and films, that is roughly $61 billion a year, it's around $60 billion a year. It's six times as big, and the beauty industry makeup and cosmetic surgery and all of these different things that make up the beauty industry is roughly $260 billion a year.
00:05:33 So the idea that we spend a lot on self development, well, yes, we do, but we spend over 30 times as much on entertainment and appearance. We spend more money on things that make us feel good, or look good than we do on things that make us grow over time. And that's kind of interesting because a lot of times people will say that one of their priorities is learning and growing and getting better.
00:06:04 And, you know, having a better job, learning to communicate with their family, better, all of these sorts of growth type goals. But the truth is we aren't putting our, our, you know, our wallet behind our words. We aren't putting our money where our mouth is. We're not actually showing that in our behavior and in our dollars.
00:06:25 Why should you worry about it? Why should you worry about growth? Because growth is the way towards having better relationships, having less stress in your life, having improved health, having better productivity, all of these sorts of things come from growth activities. The truth is if you want to have success, no matter how you define that word, you gain it through growth.
00:06:51 You gain it by identifying very specific goals and activities and things that you want to accomplish, and then setting out and learning and developing. So you learn knowledge and you develop skills so that you can achieve those goals. That's what growth is. Growth is moving in a direction. So moving towards something, it's an active process. How do you know if you're growing or not first off,
00:07:17 are you setting goals? And secondly, are you achieving them? That's really the measure of whether or not you have growth. It's not just about are you setting the goals and it's not just about, are you achieving them? Are you going through life passively? Are you sitting back and letting life happen to you? Are you stepping forward and happening to life?
00:07:37 You're setting out, this is what I want to achieve. This is what I want to achieve. This is what I want to achieve. And then you're working to achieve those things. So if that's not true, if you're struggling in those areas right now, if you have things that are holding you back, then you're not growing, but what can you do about it?
00:07:58 Why should you care? And what can you do about it? Well, you should care because again, that's the path to those success markers that we talked about, no matter how you define success, that is the path to success, but as well, you should care because that's the way that you continue to grow better over time. And to me,
00:08:17 at least that is a goal in and of itself. So what do you do about it? Well, you step back, you evaluate again, where am I at? And where am I going? What do I want to be? When I grow up, what do I say is success? What do I value? And then evaluate what you're actually doing.
00:08:36 Look at where you're spending your time, look at where you're spending your money. Is it in alignment with those things that you say you value? And if it's not, then you need to begin to work to change that. Now that's what I do. As a coach, I help people figure out the systems and processes and routines and structure so that they can find important to them.
00:08:55 And then they can go get it. So it might be that your personality is such that working with a coach is really good. It also might be that you need to take an online course or read a book or go back and enroll in school again, to begin to learn the skills and the knowledge and motivate so that you can follow through and begin to identify and achieve real goals in your life.
00:09:20 But one way or another, you need to grow. Thanks for listening. 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, please do us a favor.
00:09:52 Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate. 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 feed until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.