Overcoming Distractions: A Pathway to Success and Fulfillment

Foreign. Welcome back to the show.

Today it's just me again and especially, and I talked about this I think last time, but anytime I do a show by myself, definitely grateful for you listening, watching, however you're consuming this content, you know, it feels, I feel a little bit of pressure. I need to, each time I do one by myself, I feel some pressure to provide value, valuable content and I gotta do some, some preparation beforehand. But again, appreciate you listening, appreciate you following along.

And I will say this, if, if you find this, you know, the content valuable, please share with other people. You know, I am trying to grow the, the show, the podcast, as much as I can, but organically too. And, and that's from what I'm finding there are, there are peaks and valleys to this. So trying to work through that. But yeah, if you, if, if you find, find this show valuable, please share it. And with that said, let's get in the show.

So the number one, this is what I found and it's interesting going through, you know, kind of racking my brain from podcasts that I have done in the past with, with, you know, these high level people, also reading books, listen to other podcasts.

It's, it's fun to kind of look back and, and kind of go through those things and kind of take inventory of what I've learned and learning and, and that's how I kind of came up with today's show with, which is the number one reason why you're not reaching your goals. There's probably, you know, you could go through a list of 10, but to me it kind of starts with one.

Um, and that's, and I'm gonna give it away right now, so make sure you listen to the rest of the show and, and, and listen to what I'm gonna add to it.

But to me, the number one reason why you're not reaching your goals are distractions. And I guess first of all, what is a distraction? So to me, a distraction in this, in this environment, what we're talking about, you know, trying to reach your goals is anything outside of, you know, pushing you closer to your goal or goals.

So if your goal is to, you know, I'll use, you know, a kid playing sports, if you're, if you're in middle school and you want to play varsity, freshman, sophomore year, whatever sport you're playing, and then maybe go and play college and whatever sport, right? Anything outside of getting better in that area is a distraction. So if you're going home after school and you're playing video games for a Half hour, hour, three hours, four hours more, right? That's a distraction.

That's not going to get you closer to your goal. You know, hang out with friends. If you're doing that consistently and it's taking away time from training your sport, you know, that's a distraction. If you're watching TV for hours on end, that's a distraction, right. Especially now. There is, I guess in this example, let's say, you know, someone's training for, for volleyball, we'll say if they're watching some volleyball, right.

And, and learning things from that, from better players, you know, that that's probably not a distraction. But to use another example, you know, I, I see people all the time, especially during football season. People forget about all their goals, all their aspirations and they're putting. This may kind of come off bad, but they're kind of putting their hopes and dreams in the other people and other teams aspirations. Right. And I live in Columbus, Ohio. So the House State Buckeyes are.

We have a bunch of wild fans here and they love their Buckeyes. Don't get me wrong, entertainment is good, but if you're consuming your entire day or weekend or week around that event that someone else is playing in that you literally, you literally get nothing out of them. Winning or losing, you get nothing out of it. Right. If you're planning your life around that, that's a huge distraction. And I see it all the time now.

With that said, you know, I'm not saying any of this is right or wrong, this is my opinion. But you know, if you want to look at yourself and truly look in the mirror and say, why am I not reaching my goals and you're doing some of these things, you know, if you're not aligned with your goals and your visions and majority of what you do is working towards that, then it's a distraction, it's getting in the way. So that's kind of what I see as a distraction. And I see it a lot.

And again, I see it a lot with, with football. For whatever reason, that football season just consumes people's lives. To me, I'm like, I'm doubling down now. I'm doubling down, going harder with what I'm doing. And that's not just business, that's family, that's diet, exercise, that's all that stuff to make me a better person. And me watching football all weekend or the week or whatever is not making me a better person.

In fact, again, it's a distraction, taken me away from all my goals and all the things that I want to do with my life. So I think I kind of wrote some notes down here. But I think some people actually want distractions and there's probably a lot of reasons for that and I'm not going to dive into all of them, but I think some people want distractions because they, you know, they're probably not happy with their life and maybe they don't, they don't know the first step to get out, right?

And listen, I, I've been there and there's times where I have distractions. I'll admit it. I play a little bit of Fortnite and I try to play with my kids as much as I can involve them with that. And at that point in time, it's not really a distraction. And you know, I'm kind of bonding with them. There are times where I play by myself, not excessively. I'll play maybe a game a day, maybe that's probably at most, which is basically a half hour.

And to me that's more of a mind numbing thing that I need to do just to kind of get out of the, the work stuff I've got going on that day and anything else going on. So to me, that's not a distraction. But if you're playing video games three, four hours a day and you're an adult, what are you doing, right? What are you doing with your life? That's just not, that's more than a distraction. That's completely derailing your life.

And again, this is my thoughts and opinions and I'm, I'm sure some people listen to this. Probably, I probably, you know, may strike a cord there and may upset people. But you know, this is, this is why you're not hitting your goals or doing more in life. You know, you're blaming it on outside circumstances, whether it's politics, which I see a ton of.

And I'm gonna go on a little bit of rant here and actually wasn't planned on this, but see this on Facebook all the time and I kind of bite my tongue and saying anything because it's not really my business and obviously freedom of speech is I'm all for. But you know, whether you're right or left side of the, of the aisle with, with politics, doesn't matter.

If you're consumed by that and you're posting stuff daily, which I see all the time from people, and you're blaming outside circumstances basically on your life, that's a huge distraction, right? You're blaming, you're putting everything on everybody else on on somebody else and you're not taking responsibility for your life and what you're doing. Now, I'm all for trying to make everyone's lives better and all that stuff. That's completely different.

But if you're complaining about politics and what's going on, to me, that's just, it's, it's not productive. You know, if you've got a problem with something, go out in your community and, and make it better. There's ways to do that and, and complaining about it and posting stuff on Facebook, social media, that ain't the right way in my opinion. But again, freedom of speech, I'm all for it. But you've got to look at yourself and say, is this a distraction?

Am I, am I putting, I guess, faults for what's going on in my life on the government or anything else, you know, outside of what you control?

So rant over with that, with, with politics. Another reason why I think people have distractions or want distractions is it's easier to be a number. And I think that kind of goes back to being a kid in school. You know, they kind of, kind of teach us to be a number, to be an employee. And again, being employees is, there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, you know, I, I know plenty of employees that are awesome employees. I, I have some of my team and they are more than a number.

But I think a lot of people just kind of want to fit in, be somewhat average, kind of skate through life. And if that's what you want to do, that's completely fine. But there's something in you that's itching, that's like, I know I can do more, I know I'm meant for more. Then you got to take inventory of your life and say what distractions are getting, getting in my way. I think another reason why people have distractions is they don't want the pressure or the so called pressure. Right?

To me, it's, it's kind of how you see it and how you feel it yourself. Some people can deal with pressure. Actually all of us can deal with pressure. But it's how you look at it and how you handle it. In fact, a story. Not to throw my daughter under the bus, but she got upset this morning and got emotional about something this morning. And, you know, we kind of talked about not being as emotional, kind of being more even keel.

Think about what's going on, think about the problem, think about what the solution could be and move on from it. It's not a big deal at the end of the day. And same goes with pressure. And obviously the more, the more big things you're doing, the more pressure you're probably going to have. But again it's, it's all about how you see it and how you view it. I also think why people want distractions, they just don't want to deal with hard things.

And this kind of goes back to pressure and, and how you see it. Hard things are, you know, some probably consider what I do hard or risky or whatever. To me, what I'm doing with self storage and real estate investing is the easiest thing that I've done in my life when it comes to business or you know, outside of, you know, family stuff and life stuff. But to me this is the easiest thing that I've ever done to, compared to any of the jobs that I had.

It's just, you know, I, I educated myself, I try to keep an even keel and problems do come up, you know, issues come up, but you just handle them. You think about what the, what the problem is, think about this, the what the solutions could be, you just handle it and you just move on. So yeah, to me it's more eye of the beholder and, and kind of, I think too there's a lot of bad information out there, people saying things are harder than what they really are. I think that's part of it too.

Another thing is, you know, and we've talked about this before, but who are you surrounding yourself with? Are you surrounding yourself with people that. We'll go back to the, the, the football, you know, basically from what is it, September through February, the football months. We'll go back to that.

If all your buddies around you are highly involved with going to football and then it's fantasy football and then it's, you know, maybe you're playing Madden or NCAA together or against each other online and you're kind of consuming your life and, and you know, doing those things, a big portion of your life during that time, it's a huge distraction and it, you know, it doesn't help with the people around you that if they're doing that right, they're gonna, you're gonna be the average of the five

people, three people that you're around. So if they're your friends are doing that, you're gonna kind of go along with them. My opinion, you need to find new friends. But again that's my opinion. Kind of somewhat related story about two weeks ago was talking to a neighborhood friend who is a high level achiever in the financial industry. I Guess we'll just keep it at that. But we were kind of talking about the whole work from home thing and all that, and he's like, I don't get it.

He's like, you know, if you really want to do something with your life and business or whatever, with your job or whatever, it's really hard to be productive at home. Right? There's. And this kind of goes back to a story with the bank chase. The CEO went on a rant about how, you know, people are going to get fired or whatever if, if, if they don't come in the work and work in the office. And I guess there's a whole rant from that. And this is where this, you know, our conversation came from.

And, you know, I think there's something to be said about that. I think we've Covid kind of put a lot of people into an easy rut to where it's like, yeah, I can work from home and it's comfy, and I can probably clean the house a little bit while I'm at home. I can watch a little bit of TV while I'm at home. I Listen, you want an easy life, you can have an easy life when it comes to that.

But don't blame anybody other than yourself if your life's not where it should be or where you want it to be, right? If you're not making the money that you think you should be making, or if you're afraid that you're going to lose your job or whatever, and you're working from home, even if you're working at your office and you're not giving it your all and you're blaming others and all this stuff like, listen, that's. That's on you. Maybe you got to take inventory of what you're doing.

And that's kind of off track from, from the distractions, but I just see it too much of people, I guess, not hitting their potential. It's probably what it comes down to. And this, this podcast probably went a little sideways, more sideways than what I thought I would talk about. But distractions are the biggest thing that are holding you and people back from reaching their goals and doing more in life. And again, that's not just business.

That's family, that's faith, that's diet, health, all that stuff. So if you're not doing the things you need to do consistently and the other thing is being consistent with it, right? Distractions are, again, anything taken, you know, a little bit at a time is okay, right? So going back to video Games. If you're playing a half hour video games a day and you're being productive the rest of the day, whether that's business, work, family, faith, health, all that stuff.

Yeah, you know, there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion. But if you're, if you're filling your life, if you're getting off work, if you want to do something more with your life, you're getting off work, you're going home, hanging out with family, and then you kind of turn on the TV or you turn on the PlayStation or Xbox and you just zone out for the next three, four or five hours, listen, you're not going to get anywhere. That's where you're going to be for the rest of your life.

That's what your days are going to look like. They're going to be the exact same. And I heard this and I'll bring up Dan Martell, I brought him a lot. But if your days look exactly the same as last year, you're going to be the exact same spot as you are next, as you are right now next year, you have to change your days. So that hit me. I mean, I'm like, are my days the same as what they were a year ago? Some days probably. I'm doing my best to kind of change that up to why I am a routine guy.

I do agree with some of that. To where, especially if you want to do more, right, if you want to build business, if you want a better job, whatever it is you've got to have, you got to do things differently. And this is, this is related to fitness. If you're, if you're trying to get stronger and you're constantly lifting the same amount of weight the same amount of times, you're going to look the same forever. You're not going to change, right? It's going to be the same.

So yeah, you got to change things up. So with all that said distractions, it's number one reason why you're not hitting your goals.

And distractions come in a lot of, a lot of lot looks a lot of different ways. I kind of dove into some of those and kind of dove into the ones that I don't want to say trigger me, but just kind of that I see with people that I know have a ton of potential. They've talked about trying to do more, but then, you know, they've got all these distractions around them and, and whether they don't know how to cut them out or they're doing it on purpose or they're subconsciously doing it? I don't know.

But again, that's for you to figure out. Take inventory of yourself and figure out what distractions are in your life where where you're not reaching your goal. So again, appreciate everyone listening, following, paying attention. Hopefully this was valuable. Kind of went on a rant today and you know, I'll feel good about it later getting this off my chest. But again, thanks for listening. We'll see you guys next time.

Thanks for following, subscribing and listening to this episode of the Do More podcast, hosted by John Farling. To learn more or ask questions, go to L4Investing.com.