This morning at the gym I had a really brief talk with one of the owners about the importance of spending time to just "think".
The times in our lives with we've accomplished the most we've followed a pretty regular routine:
1. Get up early.
2. Spend about thirty minutes thinking and dreaming.
Thinking about our lives.
What we want to accomplish.
What to change.
What to add into our lives.
What we'd like to remove.
What's going right and what's going wrong.
3. And then spend about 30-60 minutes of writing.
Either writing in a journal, writing a new article for one our websites or newsletters.
This morning process created a weird sense of accomplishment and calm that lasted throughout the day.
Following this simple process had a certain magic to it.
It put us "in the zone" for the day.
Instead of waking up and checking email and our calendars ... which would just stress us out ... this routine makes us feel we're ready to "attack" the day.
Whenever we get away from this type of routine our days are a little more difficult.
Little things seem to piss us off more.
Strange eh?
And here's what else we've noticed.
Whenever we're REALLY made big progress in our lives there's been one other element added to this process.
And it's...
F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-O-N
If we're spending time every day planning and thinking about our lives before the daily grind begins and then if we have an event that completely freaks us out and pisses us off - BAM - magic occurs.
The emotional energy from being completely frustrated is like super-fuel for accomplishment.
All the things that we've been planning for our lives all of a sudden have the energy they need to get accomplished.
We're a little less polite, a little less hesitant and a lot less hesitant.
We've benefited from this magical combination of dreaming + frustration many times.
My personal ultimate experience was this...
I was working as a Regional Sales Manager at a software company making good money.
My sales team had a killer sales month.
The next month the Sales VP was short in hitting his sales target and asked me to go to my team and pull some deals forward to help him out.
We did.
The next month my sales team "shit the bed". If you haven't heard that term before ... in sales ... it's used as way to illustrate you "bombed" and missed your sales target very badly.
Well, we "shit the bed" hard.
We did about 30% of our sales quota that month.
At the sales meeting at the end of that month the Sales VP ripped me a new a$$hole in front of all the other sales managers.
I was FURIOUS.
I may have had steam coming out of my ears.
It's been etched in my memory forever.
And I'm SO VERY VERY thankful for it.
It was that experience that frustrated me enough to decide right there, that very day, that I would quit and follow through with the ideas for my own business that I was toying around with in the mornings during my "thinking" time.
That night I stopped at DOLLARAMA, mapped out the blueprint for the business and that was the beginning of what would ultimately become Rock Star Real Estate.
The crazy part? I still really enjoy chatting with that Sales VP and learned a LOT from him ... a real lot.
He probably doesn't even know the gift he gave me.
The rocket fuel that I needed to carry through with my dreams.
The magical combo of dreams + frustration had been unleashed.
Today we actively look for those times.
Both Nick and I know the power of frustration and look to harness it ... seriously.
We know it's an important part of our "accomplishment formula".
Today at the gym I was reminded how valuable it is to shut off email, stop reading blogs, turn off my phone and spend time thinking about my family, work, my life and more.
It's funny...
Some of the things I used to think about during those quiet mornings are coming true right before my eyes.
One dream was to have six weeks of vacation a year ... we both hit that about 3 years ago.
Another was to have a "beach house" outside of Canada ... we own a condo on the coast in Croatia.
Another was to show my kids as many countries as possible ... in the last few years they've been to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Aruba, the U.S., Croatia and this summer they'll visit France.
Another was to have my own personal library ... yeah, old school books on shelves not the Kindle stuff ... I'm not certain how many books I own today but there's one arriving almost every week ... it must be hundreds.
There's more that we'll share another time.
What's the point to this?
Don't discount time you take away from the family ... away from work to just sit down and "think and plan".
We all have our own personal potential and we're here to tell you that you can accomplish it.
Plan out some quiet time for yourself.
And then get someone to piss you off!
π
Until next time ... Your Life! Your Terms!
p.s. Thanks for the reminder this morning Alex.
Brilliant as always guys!
Thanks,
Mike
Great post.
I felt this way after I got let go from my job a year ago. "Cost cutting" was the terminology I was given. From that day on I'll never ever leave my career, and my income earning potential to some company who just looks at you as an expense on their income statement (I know this because I was in Accounting