Hello and welcome back to Authentic One Air with Bruce Alexander. I am your host, Bruce Alexander. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about your compelling future. Why is it important? What is it? Why do you need to have it? How is it going to change your life? But first we're going to do a quick update across the core four. Body, I accidentally walked five miles the other day. That's something I'm really excited about. It's a funny story that is not that funny.
I thought a street was connecting to another street as I was on my morning walk and It did not connect it sent me on to a rural highway.
So there were no exits I could see the street I needed to be on but there was a Railroad track and swampy marsh between where I needed to go and I kept just thinking I'll just keep walking until it eventually connects a mile and a half later I finally connected and then I got to walk for three miles back The important thing I took from that is I can do hard things. If I just focus on the next step and I keep pushing, I can do hard things. My body is more capable than I give it credit for.
I've grown a lot and I have to stop using the limitations of my past to determine my future. So I've been going much harder since then. Secondly, my balance things are. Things with Kate and I are, continuing to improve on a deep and emotional level. A lot of intimate conversations talking about what we want for our future and, you know, kind of what we're going to talk about today, what compels us to move forward in our relationship and to continue growing. Let's talk being first.
I've kind of had some new prayers that I've been saying to try to kind of... find a deeper connection to what I'm supposed to be doing on this planet and why it's been so difficult to find the people I'm supposed to serve. So that is, you know, I'm continuing to take care of my habits and show up on a daily basis to continue to grow every single day. And that excites me. I need to celebrate myself a little bit more.
That's exciting, but it is still hard whenever you are not seeing the results that you were specifically looking for. But there are still results and they're still good results, but you know, money is a result that I'm really missing right now. So, then there is business, the money part of it. So I talked last week about a possible exciting venture that looked like, you know, it was like a high possibility. Didn't pan out. this is tough. It's tough.
Whenever you, you think that you are following all of the, the signs to what you're supposed to be doing, it feels like something that God is calling you to do and you pursue it and you like, I mean, I really thought I was in alignment and this was, this was my breakthrough coming. Something big was happening. It didn't turn out to be the thing.
And I think that there's a lesson to be learned there as well that, you know, sometimes, and this is what was said in my, in my accountability group is that sometimes rejection is redirection. And so maybe the breakthrough that I needed was from this, from this cooperation that I thought I was going to have and it was to redirect me into working harder on building my own thing. Or maybe it's to apply for some more jobs. I don't know.
Like I still have to think about it some more because I know long term I want to be serving as a coach. I'm positive of that. But is it supposed to be all I'm doing right now? So that's that's something I have to think, pray, stack on more and figure out what's gonna happen there. So obviously the struggle is still real in the business. I'm not working with any clients currently and that's frustrating because I really enjoy the client work. The last client I had went really great.
I shared a testimonial hearing some great results about that. Working with accountability group that is, it's like several different people who are coming together who are all trying to. enter the knowledge industry, trying to sell what they know and help people shorten the time between their before and after. So that's really exciting. And I'm getting to do some, you know, not coaching, but guidance in there because there are stuff that I know that other people don't.
And I can just share it with them and get to serve in that way. So that's exciting. Last update is we are moving to Baldensville officially, Baldensville, New York, upstate New York. On the first of September, we've got our lease signed. finally have a place to call home. We've got all of our stuff ordered and paid for to get delivered up here at that time. That's crazy. I'm glad that's finally taken care of and excited to finally have a home again.
And it's a really nice area and I'm excited to become a part of that community and to really start to put myself out there in a way I haven't done since I was. Since I was. my gosh, managing the fundraiser, the project life. It's nice to realize that I can do that same thing for myself and start to get out in the community, get to know people, build relationships and serve whenever it makes sense for me to serve. So that's the next viable step.
So now we're going to jump into this thing called your compelling future or your compelling vision, however you want to think about it. So what is a compelling vision? a vision of what you want your future to look like that is so well defined that you can almost taste it. And most people, when you ask them what they want their life to look like, they start to tell you what they don't want.
Well, you know, could tell you don't want to work as much as I am, or I, you know, I would really like to not. I would like to not watch so much TV or whatever, but they can't tell you in any certain terms what they actually want their life to look like. I want to be making how much money I want to be living where I want my house to look like what I want my marriage to be like what I want my body to be like what they have. They have no specific information on that.
They have a bunch of general ideas, but if you look on a map and you have a general idea of a destination, you're going to get generally close. If you have no idea where you're going to go. or where you want to go, then you're probably not going to get anywhere. And that is what happens for a lot of people in life is they never define what they want their future to look like. And so they never find any success in getting any further in life.
So in this exercise, you define to the best degree possible, everything that you know, you want your life to look like. Like I said, what do you want your body to look like? What do you want? What kind of fitness do you want to have? What do you want your business to look like? Do you want to work more or less hours? Do you want to work from home? Do you want to hire a schedule? What do you want to be doing in your work? Is it what you're currently doing or do you want to change jobs?
If you change jobs, where would you want to work? Would you want to move? you, know, do you want to have a commute? Everything. Talk about everything and really make mold the life that excites you. Cause that's, that's the important part is People tend to react to the life that they're living versus being compelled by the life that they want to live.
Whenever you really define this life and you've made it very clear as to the benefits of it and the opportunities that you would have in this life that you don't currently have, it starts to excite you. It starts to make you want to do things that you wouldn't normally do to make that life happen. And that's where the key really lies is, especially with us ADHD folk, there's a lot of stuff that we just don't want to do. We don't want to do it because it's not exciting to us.
It's not fun or it's not interesting. So we just write it off as like, that's not something I want to do. And we procrastinate it or we get paralyzed and we have to do it. But if you have done this to where you have this compelling vision of your future, you can start to tie those tasks that need to get done into your compelling future. And if you can't tie them into your compelling future, like if it's not something that helps move you towards that goal, maybe it's not important.
Maybe it's not something that needs to get done right now. Maybe something that you need to be doing is something that will move you towards your compelling future. Working on your, you know, sometimes it is as simple as I hate this job I'm going to, but I know that I want to increase my income, you know, $20 ,000 a year before and bank 10 ,000 of that each year so I can retire early. That is something that's exciting for you.
So then you realize that showing up that job that you hate becomes a necessity to get there or you need to find another way. That's not something that you're going to find out until you have something that excites you. You're just going to keep complaining about showing up to this job and you're going to hate it more and more until eventually you're going to quit or they're going to fire you because they think your attitude sucks. And at that point, It's too late and then you're reacting again.
But if you've made a decision that you are going to find a different way to make this money, or you're going to find a way to make this job work, you change your attitude. You start to realize that it is a necessary function in order to get to the vision that you have. You can write whatever path you want to the vision. That's up to you. You can write whatever vision you want. But the important thing is that you define these things.
You define where you want to get and then you start to develop a plan. And as you develop that plan, as you start to, I'm sorry, as you start to enact that plan, you have your guiding light of your vision to make adjustments. And that's, that's what's missing for a lot of people is that when they get knocked off track, for example, this, this deal falling through, it hurt like, mean, it is it's a punch in the gut. I'm. not happy about it.
feel very disappointed, but I'm changing my perspective on it because I know that my goal is to be a work from home dad who controls his own schedule, makes good income and has the freedom to be there engaged and for my children whenever it's necessary. Working with for somebody else takes away some of that freedom. So this is that, know, I'm changing my perspective to see this is a blessing in disguise. That would have been some much needed income right now.
But once again, I would have had to take some of that engagement that I provide for my family off the table to pour into somebody like pouring into building something for somebody else. I don't think that it's wrong to selectively take that engagement off the table to pour into building something for yourself that is going to provide deeper and more meaningful engagement for family down the road. But when you're doing it for somebody else, like you have to think about is it worth it?
Is that is that going to get you closer to the dream that you want? And you really have to start living and dying by that. That that motto is that does this get me what I want? If you don't know what you want, you can't answer that question. If you know what you want, you can and you can start to eliminate a lot of stuff from the board that is wasting your time, wasting your energy.
absorbing your your vigor for life because It has nothing to do with what interests you What interests you is getting to that life that is really really compelling for you. So That's you know, that is the the journal basis of what it is but I can tell you what happens when you don't have a compelling future like back in like about 2011, where second kid was here, third kid was not quite on the way yet, but stuff was getting, my student loans were due, stuff was getting tight.
I was starting to get desperate. I was starting to feel like this life that I was living as a restaurant manager, a part -time restaurant manager in an expo and doing room service, working sometimes 60, 70 hours a week to make ends meet. was not working. I had no idea what I wanted my life to look like. I just was desperate. So my compelling future became survival. I just wanted a future in which I could survive and my family didn't have to struggle. That's all I knew I wanted.
So when my dad, for the 50th time, said maybe you should try for the fire department, I was like, you know what? I could survive that. But the problem is whenever you are operating out of survival, you are not making decisions that are gonna make you invested in your future. You're making decisions that are gonna make you survive right now. And so I survived right now and I got through the worst of it.
Got a change in my financial status, but I started going to a job where the people hated me and I hated showing up to work. I didn't fit in there. It was not something I ever wanted to do. And the entire time, several people kept telling me, we think you're here for the wrong reasons. And like, I kept telling them like, what do you mean? Like I'm here to provide a life for my family and to do the job. And it was true that that was, that's what I was there for.
But at the same time, I hated being there just as much as they hated me. And that is what happens whenever you don't actually decide what you want for yourself. you let life happen to you and you let it push you into a decision, you're bitter. You're bitter and it shows and people start to get that bitter taste from talking to you, from being around you, from being in the same room with you.
You become a toxic person, even though you don't think you're toxic, but the situation is toxifying you and you're toxifying the people around you. So instead, decide what you want. if I had decided that I wanted to provide a life for my family that looked like X, Y, and Z, and then I had made the decision that the fire department was going to be how I serviced that life coming into fruition, I would have had a totally different attitude towards it.
I would have been super excited to show up every day and to do the job, to get everything out of it, to squeeze every ounce of juice. of what there was to reach the top of that job and get to where I wanted faster. But instead I was just mad. Every day I had to go there because that's not what I wanted to do. I had no desire to actually be a firefighter. Whenever I became a public educator, I promoted and did well and, enjoyed it more, but it was still not something I had decided I wanted to do.
So there was always this essence of bitterness I encourage you to take the time to decide what you actually want because whether it's being a parent or being a stay at home mom or the full time go to work parent or whatever, if you don't want it, if you haven't made the decision that this is what you want to get the future that you desire, that bitterness is going to come through in some way.
You have to make decisions in your life instead of reacting to what life forces upon you in order to reach true fulfillment or really any kind of fulfillment or to find any purpose. You have to decide what is important to you and what you want to get out of life.
And if you decide that this is the kind of information that you want more of, I would love for you to go to realcoachbruce .com and download my free mini course, which has several of the steps that we've talked about already and a few more steps that will help you to overcome the mindset that is holding you back. It is, it is a mindset of living in the extremes and being paralyzed and, procrastinating from what is going to move you towards life that you desire. And I can help with that.
This free resource can really guide you on your own through some of the most important steps to changing how you look at your life.
And if you want to shrink time, between the before and after, you should set up a 30 minute discovery call with me in which we can talk about how I can help you shrink the time between your before and your after to help you get there faster through some guided lessons, through accountability, and through having a mentor who's been there before and knows how to fight that mindset and keep going to get the life that you really desire. That's going be it for today's episode.
As always, I enjoy being here with you and I will see you again next week.