Mind Readings: Actions, Ambitions, and Strengths

In today's mind readings, some thoughts about two different expressions that I heard recently. Um, one was from uh my friend and you know former high school classmate, Gary Vaynerschak, who said, uh, your actions need to align with your ambitions, sort of yelling at people that people who talk a big game but don't back up uh their talk with the actions that would be needed to create the reality um that would lead to those person's ambitions, someone who's like, I want to be uh uh king of the world, or I want to uh you know the uh lead a fortune fifty company, but they're not embodying those practices that would get them to that goal. That was one uh thing. And the second was uh sort of a corollary, uh a lyric from a very old song that um I used to listen to, uh, a song by uh the musician Jewel, the quote being, no longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from. And these two things I think run really well in parallel to each other.

We all have limited hours in every day, right? You get 24 of them. The wealthiest person on the planet and the poorest person on the planet each gets the same 24 hours every day. So what are we doing with that time? What do we do with our energy, however little or much of it uh as our health permits every single day.

How are you investing your time towards those goals? That doesn't mean you have to work 24-7, right? Sort of the hustle porn that has cropped up in the last decade or so has been kind of silly. But what do you do with your time? Where how do you choose to invest?

And is it an alignment with what you want out of life? Are you giving your time to things that maybe don't advance the goals that you have in life? Or worse, are you giving your time to things that are contrary to those goals? Um, recently I was looking at how I spent some of my leisure time and going, I'm spending some of my time with places and things and people that don't really advance my goals. And I have some pretty aggressive goals for the next couple of years that I want to hit.

So maybe I need to pull back and withdraw from uh some of those places and things and people where they're counterproductive. They're not I don't want to say they're bad investments because things like interpersonal relationships and friendships shouldn't be seen as transactional, but there's clearly cases where you can look at uh a friendship you have and see it's really out of balance, right? It's really unhealthy. And that's where that lyric from Jewel comes in to say, you know what? Maybe I don't want to lend my strength, my energy, my focus, my time to these things that don't make me happy.

Could I instead invest them in things that either would make me happy or would advance my goals? And this goes uh well with uh somebody else asking me recently um you know, how do you how do you maintain such good self-discipline? Because I post about you know my running and stuff a couple times a week in the martial arts practices I do. And I said discipline comes from motivation and motivation comes from purpose. What's the purpose?

What's the goal that you're after? If you have a goal, then you will have the emotional investment, the motivation to achieve that goal. If it's a goal you actually want, and then from that, that breeds the discipline and the habits you need to fulfill those ambitions. When you think about what Gary's saying, your actions need to align with your ambitions. If you're not actually emotionally invested in your ambition, or if you're your ambition is something other than what you say it is, then of course your actions aren't going to mirror it.

Right. If you want to talk a big game about being an entrepreneur, but you actually don't want to do that, right? If you actually don't want the entrepreneurial lifestyle, then yeah, you will talk a lot, but not do a lot. It's the uh the famous Texas expression, all hat no cattle. Um that isn't necessarily something to beat yourself up about.

It is something to reexamine and go, well, what do I actually want? Do you want the financial freedom that potentially comes with being an entrepreneur? Are there other ways to achieve that? Do you want the um micro fame that comes with it? There may be other ways to achieve that as well.

Do you want the sense of control that comes with uh owning your own company? Again, there's other ways to to achieve that than just you know doing entrepreneurial stuff. You don't have to do it uh that way. There's many, many ways to achieve all of these goals, but they all have in common knowing what you actually want, right? Purpose creates motivation, motivation creates discipline.

And so keep those two things in mind. Do your actions align with your ambitions, and are you lending your strength to things that you would want to be free from? And if the answer is contrary to the spirit of either one of those, you know it's time to make some changes. You know, it's time to pull back in some places, invest in other places, and do the things that will lead to your greatest happiness. And like I said, I'm working on this right now.

I do not have this all figured out. Um, I am right there with you on the well, what do I want? Right? I have some very clear financial goals in my life. I have some very clear outcomes from those financial goals about where um I want to be living with my family in a few years and things like that.

So those things are are pretty clear. So now I have to look and say, okay, well, what do I need to do? What actions do I need to take to fulfill those ambitions? And what do I have to leave behind in order to do it? And here's the thing it again, it doesn't mean working you know 24 7.

Everybody in their life has at least some time that is not well used, right? It's not to say that it's not pointless, right? You know, binge watching a favorite show or listening to a new album, going to a concert, hanging out with friends and stuff like that, watching TV and stuff. There's nothing wrong with those things. But like everything, it's in moderation, right?

There's nothing wrong with the bar of chocolate. There might be an issue if you eat 12 of them every day. Right? That that might be an issue. There's nothing wrong with having a drink.

There could be something wrong if you drink an entire bottle of vodka a day. Um there's nothing wrong with watching your favorite show. There is a problem, maybe, if you're spending six to eight hours of your free time every day on Netflix instead of doing other stuff. So when you're in those situations, ask yourself are my actions aligned with my ambitions? And should I be lending my cer my my focus, my attention to this thing instead of the thing that I want that will get me the happiness I'm after?

So that's what's on my mind for today. Hope you found this useful. Ask yourself those questions. I'll talk to you soon. Take care.