Book 142 - Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: Vital Priorities for Living A Balanced Life!

Book – The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: Why now is the time to #jointheride by Darren Hardy

Book Description: The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: Why Now Is The Time To #JoinTheRide, will prepare you for the wild ride of entrepreneurship. It will warn you (of forthcoming fears, doubts, and the self-defeating conditioning of your upbringing and past), inoculate you (from the naysayers, dream-stealers, and pains of rejection and failure), and guide you (as you build those under-developed skills of independence, self-motivation, and self-accountability) safely past the landmines that blow up and cause the failure of 66 percent of all new businesses.

You will learn the best strategies Darren has ever collected from the most successful people on the planet, covering the four essential skills necessary for entrepreneurial success: Sales, Recruiting, Leadership, and Productivity.

Reflection:

If you were anything like me, I used to have a forever long list of to do’s and seemingly “vital” priorities that confronted me first thing on my calendar each morning when I would log into my computer.

Each day I would look at it the list and do my best to get as much done as quickly as I could. Every Friday, I would get into the office super early at 6am to clean and re-organize my list and get everything back in order so I could be prepared to do it all over again the following Monday.

I prided myself on taking on more tasks, knocking them out, and crossing them off my list. It gave me a little dopamine hit each time I got to cross something off the list. I sometimes would write already completed tasks on there just so I could immediately cross them off. I LIVED to complete those tasks! I used to always tell people that “I’m a task person. I love to stay busy.” Tasks were my oxygen and gave me a sense of accomplishment with each new one I knocked off the list.

Sadly, that list never really shrunk…it just always grew and grew and grew. I would add more subcategories. I’d try out new software tools that could help me to better organize my list. I would try and rank the tasks in order of importance and only focus on the top 5 each day. No matter what I did, the list always won.

When I lost Emilia, that list disappeared. I literally didn’t exist anymore. I stopped caring, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it since. That’s what happens when your world is blown up in an instant and stripped down to nothing. All the things, tasks, and activities you thought you cared about just magically disappear and you are left with nothing but questions. All the seemingly “important tasks and priorities” of your past life now carry about as much meaning as binge watching the Tiger King.

That list didn’t matter…turns out it never mattered.

So what did I learn that DID Matter?

In the Entrepreneur Roller Coaster, Darren talks about monitoring your success vitals. Those vital functions and priorities that YOU need to focus on to ensure the success of yourself and your business. I loved this concept and I thought, instead of applying this to “business”, how can I apply this to my life?

After years of questioning and soul searching while doing my best to honor my daughter’s memory and the strength she demonstrated to just keep moving forward, I finally feel like I’ve discovered the only real vital priorities finally that I’ll ever have or need in this world. Those vital priorities are my values! It was as simple as that. Find out what you really care about and focus on doing more of that. These days, my vital function is SOLEY dedicated to living those values and express them in as much as I possibly can each and every day for the rest of my life.

That is the lesson that Emilia taught me, and that is the biggest lesson I hope to pass onto anyone following along with this journey. Throw away all your task lists, goals, life plans, BHAG’s, etc and just focus on living your values in as much as you can each day.

I happily say that I now only have 1 item on my to-do list each day and it never gets old.

Thanks for another great lesson and advice Darren! I’ll see you tomorrow morning for our next session like always.

Question: What are the Vital Priorities you focus on each day to ensure you are making the most of your time?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: Why now is the time to #jointheride by Darren Hardy