When you remember that everyone you follow on social media started with one follower. It's crazy to believe, but even some of the biggest, most followed YouTubers and social media accounts in the world started with one follower. And so you want to study that journey, not envy that journey. Envying that journey creates more negativity in your life. It creates more trauma in your life, it creates more baggage, it creates more feelings of pain and stress and pressure.
But study it's endless joy. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. Now, I just want to say that whenever I bump into any of you on the street, if you see me, please come and say hello. I just bumped in to a group of on Purpose listeners the other night. It was after a Halloween party. You just left the Staples Center.
I think you just watched the Lakers versus Rockets game. I believe your name was Ramsey, and it was just one of these moments where I was so grateful to run into you, and I know for you, you were just so excited to bump into me and my wife. But for me, I just felt so much gratitude and so much love, and I just secretly pray and hope and wish for the day that I bump into each and every one of you because I can't thank you enough. The support you are showing on purpose does not go unnoticed.
We have just had our two best months in a row, all time listening, and each and every one of you are making that happen. Now I want to read some reviews because that's the closest I feel to you, and I hope you value this too. This is from Omar. Since my father died suddenly in November, I've been listening to your podcast. I've not only listened to your podcast, but also read your book. Every morning, the first thing I do is put on my AirPods and listen to
your podcast to get my day started. You've been a huge help in getting me out of bed on those difficult mornings. I'm absolutely thankful Omark. Congratulations to you to be able to get out of bed in the morning and be able to start each day despite the difficulties that you've been through. I'm sending you a lot of prayers and positive energy. This one is from Dan, who says, Wow, Jay, each episode hits in a different way, but always exactly what I need. You're an absolute genius. I'm not, but
thank you. I can't express enough how grateful I am for you serving your community with on purpose. You've opened my eyes to many new concepts and reminded me of things I already knew the forgot along the way. This podcast is an essential part of my growth journey and has become a habit to listen to weekly. I usually go back and listen a second time to some episodes to take notes. I've been on my personal growth journey for a few years now, and you have no idea
how much you're opening my mind with these episodes. I truly feel like you're speaking directly to me at times. I have a goal of starting my own podcast in the near future and am inspired by you every time I listen. My favorite episodes are usually the Relationship Aren'ted ones, as I'm trying to be an exceptional partner and lead an exceptional relationship. Thank you so much, Jay for showing up for us in a way no one has before
with this podcast. Dan, thank you so much. For that beautiful, beautiful message, and I love your intention of wanting to be a good partner. We need more good partners in the world, don't we. And now I'm going to read out one more. There are so many beautiful reviews here. I'm genuinely browsing throughism doing this. This is from Sasha in Nebraska, US say, I can't get enough of your podcast, Jay.
I'm also currently reading Think like a Monk, and between the two, I'm getting more insight into who I am and the world around me. I even got my mother to download your book on audible and she used the words life changing to describe it. You're helping me more than you know. Thank you well, Sasha. Thank you so keep those reviews coming. I'm so grateful. I love reading them. They're a way of us staying connected and staying together.
And today's episode is going to be a special one because it's something that I really deeply believe in and it's something that's quite underestimated. So today's episode is all about the six ways successful people spend their time instead of wasting it. We have three choices with our time to invest, to spend, or to waste, just like with our money. We've all heard the phrase time is money
and money is time. And the truth is the reason is because with money you can either invest it, spend it, or waste it, and that is exactly the same with time. Let me ask you a question. How many of you feel right now that you waste more time than you like? How many of you feel you're genuinely trying to spend your time more wisely, and how many of you feel that you're truly rising towards investing your time now? If you're someone that wastes your time, I don't want you
to judge yourself. Judging yourself is going to create more guilt. And what guilt does is that it acts as a block towards your growth. Let me repeat that, and I want you to write this down. This is such a huge point for each and every one of us. Guilt blocks growth. When we experience guilt and we judge ourselves and that experience escalates, we then start creating blocks for our growth. Because when we feel guilty, we feel tired, we feel exhausted, we feel lethargic, we feel lazy, we
feel bad about ourselves. And what that does it strips us of our energy and it overwhelms us instead of empowering us. If you're climbing up a twenty thousand foot mountain and you're at five thousand feet and you think to yourself, oh, gosh, i have fifteen thousand feet left to go. I'm going so slow. Do you think you're going to get up faster or slower? Do you think you're going to be happier or less happy in the
process in the journey? Now, what have you said to yourself? Wow, I've climbed five thousand feet, and now I've learned skills to make sure that the next five thousand feet are quicker and easier and safer. And I've learned lessons along the way of knowing when to take a break and went to work harder. Okay, let's go for the next fifteen thousand Which mindset do you think is going to set you up for success? The first habit and the
first mindset is usefulness. Are you able to see everything that happens in your life as useful, of use and usable? So often in our life today we think of things as useless. Right when our phone gets old and the new iPhone thirteen Max Pro whatever it's called, releases I already have it. I'm guilty of this if it's already out and you say, okay, well let me get that and let me get rid of my old phone. It's useless. Oh that broke. Oh let's throw it away. It's useless. Right.
So many things we disregard and discard as useless when the truth is that everything can still be useful, everything can still truly be usable. And the reason why this is such a powerful way of living and the way successful people spend their time is they ask themselves, is this useful? Is what I'm doing with my time? Useful? Now? Useful could be anything. It could be sleeping, it could be taking a nap, It could be taking a break, it could be getting a massage, it could be doing
something self care. But they look at usefulness as opposed to uselessness. Some people say, oh, I'm useless if I take a break right now. But is it useful? Is it useful to your greater goal? Is it useful to where you want to be? Is it useful to what you want to achieve and what you want to do?
Start creating a usefulness mindset. Usefulness means you find the use in anything and everything and often, even if you're doing something that you feel is a waste of time, if you can find a way to make it feel useful, it will change your life. Some of you may be thinking, oh, well, you know, whenever my friends invite me out, I don't want to go, but I go anyway. But it's a waste of time, and now I feel guilty, and now I'm beating myself up when I get home and I'm thinking, oh, gosh,
I wasted so much time. How many of you get into that habit where you're actually judging yourself for how you spend your time. So you think it's useless because it's not what you want to be doing or what you think you should be doing. But what if you were able to learn even from that. What if you were more of a better listener around your friends and they shared something important. What if you use that as
a way of understanding human behavior and decision making. What if you took a question and used it as research. I often when I'm speaking to people, that's when my best content ideas come to me. That's when my best inspirational ideas come to me. I'll give you an example. I got a message from someone that I share some mutual friends with and she said she wanted to connect, and we had a zoom call. And we're in the
same industry, same business space. So I always allow some randomness and some openness because I find it to be useful. So people would say, well, if that's got nothing to do my goal, if that call has nothing to do do with my goal, then what's the point of me doing it? Well, I find randomness useful, so I make space for randomness. So I jump on this call. I have no agenda. I don't want anything from it. I have nothing to win, nothing to achieve, nothing to close. There's no direct benefit
from this phone call. And I'm getting to know this individual. And then she starts telling me her story. And she tells me her story about how she started doing something at twelve years old, and at sixteen she was consulting in that industry, and then at twenty five she's built her own company. And now I'm telling you that story because I was inspired by her journey, and I love that because it was useful. It was useful because I
got inspired by it. I get to share that inspiration with you, and it becomes something that feels like a good use of my time when a few years ago I would have thought, well, that's a waste of my time because it doesn't have anything to do with my goal. So one of the ways one of my mentors trained me was to become more open, random and supportive. Thomas Powell, my mentor in London, started working with about eight years ago.
Now he's a dear friend, and he told me to be up and random and supportive, or RS as he called it. And he was saying that as you become more successful, as you build more, you'll become more closed, selective and controlling. And that closed, selective and controlling you think it's making you better, but actually it's making you worse because you're now losing the ability to make something useful and learn from it. So that's the first habit
that I want to talk to you about. The second habit successful people do to spend their time is that they study versus envy. Think about that. When you look at people in your industry, or people that you wish you alike, or people that you want to follow in their footsteps, how many of us waste energy on jealousy and envy. When you see that someone just sold their business for a billion dollars. Do you feel jealousy and envy when you see that someone just sold their podcast
for one hundred million dollars? Do you feel jealousy and envy? Or maybe you feel a sense of like, I wish that was me, I deserve that. Or how many of you when you see that someone's video just got a million muse or their subscribe account just went to a million subscribers, how many of you look at that with envy, jealousy, comparison, self judgment, self worth issues instead of jealousy, instead of envy.
The solutionist study, when I see people achieving incredible things that I value, that inspire me, that motivate me, I choose to study, study their lives, study their journey, study their first video, study their first start. Because the problem is we're looking at people at the stage they're at right now. We're not looking at the phase they started in.
When you see those pictures of Ed Sheeran when he was just busting on the side of a street who's a street performer, it makes you realize that that stays, that he feels, that audience that he feels today. It wasn't what he always had. It reminds you of where he started and where you may need to start. When you remember that everyone you follow on social media started with one follower. It's crazy to believe, but even some of the biggest, most followed YouTubers and social media accounts
in the world started with one follower. Everyone started at one. Actually everyone started at zero. And so you want to study that journey, not envy that journey. Envying that journey creates more negativity in your life. It creates more trauma in your life, it creates more baggage, it creates more
feelings of pain and stress and pressure. But study it's endless joy because the more you deeply study someone's journey, the more you deeply understand the process and the systems and the steps someone took to get to where they are, you feel a sense of empowerment. Instead of feeling overwhelmed that you're not there, you feel power to know you can get there in your own way. I spent my teens not knowing that I was doing this, But I
remember reading Martin Luther King's biography. I remember reading the biography of Malcolm X, I remember reading the biography of David Beckham of Joined the Rock, Johnson. These books transformed my life because they helped me study greatness. They helped me study the lives of people who found purpose, lost it, failed, and found it again. Please take time when you look at someone's feed and you feel envy. Study. Scroll all
the way back down to their first ever post. Scroll all the way back to a Google set to figure out where they started, what they did, what they studied at school, how they pivoted they shifted. Go listen to a podcast on their journey. I mean, that's why we have on purpose, because you get to hear about the journey that no one else sees. You get to hear about the parts of people that no one knows. Choose
to study people's lives, not envy. Please, and if you make this slight switch in your mind, I promise you you're going to save yourself a lot of headaches as well. The more you study, remove envy, replace it with study. The third habit that I wanted to talk to you about today is education versus entertainment. And here are a few incredible stats that I thought would really really help you.
So this is using data that I found on Aprium Advisor's website, and it said that eighty eight percent of wealthy people read thirty minutes or more every day, and I've found that sometimes, you know, reading for thirty minutes a day may sound hard, but I promise you that limiting your social media time itself can change that. Sixty three percent of wealthy people listen to audiobooks instead of music in the car. Notice how it's all about replacement
and substituting, it's not about eliminated. Only eleven percent of wealthy people read purely for entertainment purposes, and only one in fifty of those struggling financially engage in learning every day. Now I know where you're thinking, you go, Well, of course, the wealthy, successful people are learning because they have time. The truth is that they didn't have time before either, and they don't have time now. But they've always made
time for learning. Why Because those new ideas, those new thoughts, and you're doing that right now. I just want you to know you, by being here every week, listening to on purpose, are building this habit. You're actually doing it even if you don't know. And I want to give you a moment to pat yourself on the back to honor that. Now, listen to this Sixty six percent of wealthy people watch less than an hour of entertainment based TV.
This is a big one. Sixty three percent of wealthy people spend less than an hour a day using the Internet for entertainment. I highly recommend that you switch on a parameters and boundaries on social media onto a phone. I also recommend that if you're not using social media as a creator or a consumer of positive information, unfollowed, block move on. Seventy seven percent of those struggling financially spend more than an hour on both of these things daily.
Not for growth, not for education, but for entertainment. So I wanted to share those habits with you, not to scare you or alarm you, but so that you start recognizing where you can improve. And in the beginning, it takes what's known as purification. So when you're forcing yourself based on will power, that gets tiring. Purification is actually
the changing of your taste. I'll give an example when I married Rade and rather wanted me to reduce my sugar intake, and she was showing me all these studies where sugar is linked to cancer, sugar is related to gut issues, Sugar is related to a lot of our health issues. And I started to become more conscious through her research and reading, and I started to realize that I needed a substitute, and I substituted it for monk fruit. I substituted it for dates and dried fruits that were
more natural sugars. She didn't want me to have refined sugars. Now, in the beginning, when I made that switch, I didn't like the taste. I missed the taste of real chocolate. I missed the taste of When I say real sugar, what I'm really talking about is refined sugar. But it had become real sugar to me by that time. And the amazing thing is that as time has gone on, as I've stuck to that habit, my tastes have actually been purified where I actually preferred the taste of the
monk fruit that I have. And I've tried this recently where I've tried to have chocolate again with refined sugar and it doesn't work for me. Now, your habit can swing either way. And another example of this again is the idea of anything I'm talking about right now, like watching TV, reading a book, in the beginning, it's going to be hard, but your taste buds will be purified. You seek what is known as the higher taste. So we're not trying to do this through willpower or force
or pushing ourselves or stressing ourselves. We're doing it through building a healthy habit and watching our tastes naturally be purified. You will seek the higher taste the more you practice it, But if you're always engaged in the lower taste, it's very hard. So if you read a book one day a week and watch TV six days, you're not going to be purified. But if you start with one day and then you go to two, and then you go to three, and then you go to four, and then
you go to five, that's how you do it. Because that one day where you break the pattern and you read a book instead of watching that TV show, you go, oh, that was a great day. I learned a lot. Then what you need to do is journal about it. So every time you have a breakthrough in your mindset, journal about it right down, how positive it was. This is what I learned from reading the book. This is how I felt. This is how many conversations I used it in. This is how many times I told that story, This
is what I learned from that podcast. The more you share on Instagram, the more you share it with others, you are reminding yourself to do that habit again and again. Now this habit, the fourth one, is often underrated, and it's intelligence versus emotions. Now, this research from the same article said ninety four percent of wealthy people filter their emotions, seventy nine percent of those struggling do not filter their emotions. What does it mean to filter your emotions? So an
emotional response is a signal. It's almost like receiving an email. So your emotions are like email. You receive an email that says I don't like this, I don't like what that person said, I don't like what that person's doing, I don't like what that person did, and then all of a sudden, your emotions are not being filtered. So when I think about filters, I look at like gates that people has to walk through. If you've ever been to a home that has high security, you have to
walk through multiple gates. So if the first gate that you get buzzed in through, then you meet someone who's gonna check whether you're are allowed to get in. Maybe they're gonna check your idea. Maybe they're gonna check your name, they're gonna make a phone call. Then you get to the final gate. So the first filter with your emotions is this true? Is the feeling I'm having true? And
often you'll find it won't be true. It's what you've heard, it's what someone assumed, and so I'll say, Okay, it's not true. So let me ask for the real information. The second gate that you want people to walk through, or you want your emotion to be filtered through, is this useful? Is this information useful? Is this making me a better person? Is this getting me closer to my goal? Chances are it isn't. Chances are it's actually doing the opposite.
And third, is this emotion actionable? What is the action based on this emotion? Let me turn this what is the action that solves this emotion? When you start asking yourself those three filters or three gates, you're going to see remarkable things happen in your life. Successful people only work based on the truth and the fact, because the truth and the fact is worth acting upon. Anything that's
false news is it worth acting upon? No. It's like someone calling you up and saying, oh, your tie is punctured, and you get all emotional, you get confused, you start making phone calls, and then you realize they weren't telling the truth. Has that helped? Has it helped having that emotional trauma? And now you're saying, well, Jay, what if it is real? Well it has the emotional trauma been useful? No? The emotional part is not useful. The truth is useful.
Is it useful based on how it's making you behave? And then is it actionable? The action is the most important part. So successful people try and filter their emotions into actions that can change their emotions. Right, actions that change your emotions are what should follow an emotional response that you're not appreciating or isn't working for you at this stage. The fifth habit is growth over goals. Seventy percent of wealthy people constantly pursue at least one major goal.
Only three percent of people who are struggling financially do this. This is from the same article at a Priam Advisors, And what I loved about this and the more research I've done, is that smart people set goals. Successful people set growth towards their goals. So let's say you have a goal that you want your business to have a certain amount of revenue. You say, we want to make five million, ten million, fifty million. Sure, that's a great goal. It's good to have a goal. You need to have
a goal to know where you're going. We may say, oh, one of our goals is to win a Webby like we did last year, thanks to all of you. To win a Streamy like we did last year, thanks to all of you. But setting a goal is good because you know what your target is. You know what direction you're going in. It's like saying, yeah, I want to drive from La to Arizona. That's a goal. But the more important part is the growth. What vehicle are we taking? Is it fueled up or have we ard it? If
it's an electric car, what route are we taking? What are the pits, stops or the milestones along the way to know we're going in the right direction. Is there somewhere where we need to take a break halfway to re energize? Which part do you think is more important? Successful people don't just point to the map. They come up with the journey to follow on the map. I want you to set a goal, and then I want you to set the growth plan. The growth plan includes
everything from what skills do you need to develop? What coaching do you need to get, What do you need to learn? What do you need to build in order to get there? I could say I want to build one of the biggest companies in the world. The biggest gap between building one of the biggest companies in the world. Do you think is revenue? But it's actually people in leadership, it's management, it's understanding people's emotions, it's consumer behavior. The
goal is financial, but the growth is emotional. The growth is meant. Notice the difference there. So ask yourself, with the goals that you're setting for the end of the year and the goals you're setting for twenty twenty two, have you focused on the growth plan? You may have a goal plan, but do you have a growth plan? What do you need to learn? What do you need to develop? How are you going to know you're in the right direction? What are the pivots in the strategy
you're going to make? What are the shifts? And the sixth waste successful we will spend their time instead of wasting it is that they understand the value of both therapy and coaching in their life. We're living in a world where therapy is booming, and I love to see it. I think therapy is such an incredible practice, such a need in today's society and in today's world and forever. Whether you're a beginner, whether you're a leader, whether you're a artist or musician, whatever it may be, we all
have trauma we need to unpack. And I share a lot of clients with therapists because I find that therapy helps people make sense of their past, and coaching helps people work towards their future, and together this is an incredible combination. So while most of us are talking to our friends and family and hopefully finding moments of vulnerability, finding moments of connection and depth there when we're ready, it's amazing to take it to the next level of
therapy and coaching. Working with a professional in each of these areas can make a huge difference in our life, and I've found that everyone at all stages of their life needs a coach to help plan and get curious about the next five to ten years of their life. So I hope that today's session has helped you in understanding where some of your time is leaking, and that's really what's happening with most of us. It's not that we're wasting time. It's not that you're sitting there doing nothing.
It's that time leaks away and we can't control time. Trying to control time is a battle that we're always going to lose. There's never going to feel like there's enough time. We're always going to want more time, So we can't get more time. We can't control time. What we can do is make sure that we're investing and spending it wisely. So stop putting pressure on yourself saying I keep wasting time, I keep doing the wrong things. I'm not doing the right things. That guilt will actually
block your growth. I was speaking to a friend about this the other day, and we were talking about how beating yourself up doesn't make you work harder, right, critiquing yourself doesn't actually push you with joy. So when my ego says arrogant things, or when the voice in my head says negative things, what do I do? I laugh at them both. I choose to laugh over critique. When I hear my ego say things that makes me feel despicable or wrong, or just sometimes it can say ridiculous things,
I just laugh at it. I think Wow, the ego is so funny that it can come up with these things. And when I'm critiquing myself, I laugh at the critiquing voice too, because I think, Wow, it's hilarious that I'm able to talk to myself like this when I wouldn't talk to anyone else like this. So being able to laugh. And this is why in the Vedic tradition and in the Monk tradition, the mind is compared to a monkey,
because when monkeys do something you just laugh. They are being funny, they're being silly, they are just You don't want the monkey to be anything else you're able to appreciate. It's just a monkey. It's fine, it's gonna be funny, it's gonna be silly. It's gonna trade a credit card for a banana and then want it back. It's gonna go and run around. And so when we see the mind and the ego behave like a monkey, just laugh. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of
On Purpose. I am so excited and so grateful for this to be out in the world. I hope you tag me and share your best insights when I see you post. I'm always looking through them so you might see you on my feed. I'll see you next time. Thanks everyon