Do you ever think about your future self? What type of person do you wish to be to your family, your employer, your community or your friends? In this episode, Jimmy shares his approach to achieving his life growth plans and how you can do the same.
Episode Keys
- Why living your philosophies can become a powerful motivator in your interactions with others.
- How to reflect on the day, months and year to gain greater traction in your goals and control of your mindset.
- Journaling is a tool that helps you document your deepest thoughts and outcomes to provide a basis for exponential growth.
- Who you should be seeking to give a greater holiday than they otherwise would receive!
- How to think about your future self and to become the person today you desire for the future.
Podcast Transcription
Good morning to you! Flying solo this morning, your host Jimmy Williams for Live a Life By Design. My co-host with the most, Lori Few will be joining us again next week. She has this thing, I don’t know, called life. She lives it well, and she discharges her duties as professional philanthropy. She does homemaker, she does wife, she does mother, she does all these jobs, and she does them so well. Hey, thanks for joining me this morning. I want to tell you, this year is coming to a halt in just a couple of weeks, but man, what a great year it’s been. You know, we think about what has taken place in our lives over the last few months, and we’ve seen a lot of great activities, great relationships, great projects occur. Maybe you’ve seen some of those in your life. What are some of the things that if you reflect for a few moments, you could take as the highlights of 2022 and say, this has truly been a growth year for you?
You know, this podcast has been heard now in 58 countries, as we often state, and we are just so amazed that we have listeners in so many locations across the globe. But the beautiful thing about that is, is that you continue to find value in what we are hoping to give you each week in that positive, powerful message that there is opportunity and hope. We just have to look for it in our lives. And you keep sharing the links to this podcast, to others. Just this last week, I was talking to someone that I’d run into while my travels took me wherever, and I meet them at airports, and I meet them at dinners, at restaurants, and just inadvertent people. And they ask me, how come I’m so cheerful? How come I’m always smiling? They looked at me of that brief moment that sitting at the airport, now I will grant to you when your flight’s been delayed two times, for example, the weather has been a problem, and you are still smiling that my friends is a positive.
This lady asked me, she said, I’ve noticed you, you just keep smiling. They told us now we’re delayed twice, and you just keep smiling. What, how do you do that? You know? And I explained to her our philosophy here at Live a Life By Design. One of the great things about having your mental capability strengthens where you can control your emotions, is that you really impact others inadvertently. There’s no intentionality for me just to reach out and talk to people at the airport. They are attracted to the person that you have now become, and that is the way with success. You know, Jim Rohn, my mentor, said, you will never achieve success. You’ll never catch. Success comes to that person who has changed to attract it. So you’ve become someone that others are attracted to, and that’s how success works in life. No matter how you define success, that is still the requirement of you as a person.
And today, I want to take just a few moments to visit with you and give some reflection from my life over 2022. Hopefully you’ll see some things in here that will bring about a remembrance for your life and what’s taken place for you. But you know, I, I looked at my journals and I reflect on my journals every week as to the entries I’ve made, what have been the topics, what’s been on my mind at certain times. And I noticed several points. First and foremost, I always write down where I am located at the time of the entry. When I’m writing in my journal, where am I? And I note that in the upper left, I note the city and state where I am. So for example, I might have said, I am in Chicago O’Hare Airport, and I’ll put Chicago, Illinois in the upper left hand top of the page.
And then to the right, I put the date that I am writing and the time that I am writing. And I’ve noticed something about this last couple of weeks in my journals when I’m writing about the personal things in my life, things that are going on, my thoughts, my my philosophy of life, what am I doing to become a bigger, better, and bolder person on my own terms? Just as we espouse here every week on live life by design. And I noticed a correlation among these entries. One of the things I noticed is later in the day, if I’m writing in my journal later in the evening, say it’s 8, 9, 10 o’clock, for example, and I am away from home. So ta think about that. You’re away from your most comfortable place and it’s later in the evening. Now, you folks know I’m an early morning person.
I like to rise away before the sun and get my feet on the ground before anyone else moves in my house. So I was writing a notice that I tend to do more deep thinking of the entries I place in my journals late in the evening, more philosophical in my approach to writing the entries in terms of the questions and comments I give for myself. And one of those. This last week was a deep, deep question. Now, I have, have never lacked understanding of my purpose on this planet. The reason that I’m here, the reason that I am in the career that I’m in, I love what I do. I know I am called to do what I do, and I love to work with people. That is what I am doing in life and am rewarded for doing so. But what I wrote in my journal one late evening was a simple question, and I drew a big box around this question.
I printed it in big letters versus my normal cursive writing, and I drew a big box around it so it’d be pronounced on the page. And I asked myself in deep thought, why am I here? And I underlined the word here, h e r e. What it gave me in my thoughts was that I reflected upon this year and the lives that I touched. And to be very, very honest, the lives that I touched were so much more and impactful to me than I probably was to them. My co-host, I don’t wanna embarrass her. I’m glad she’s not here today, to be very frank. So I can tell you this story from my heart. She is such a wonderful friend, a very understanding person, and she shares in the passion of positivity just as I do. It’s almost kindred spirits, if you will, that she’s such a good friend and she gives of her time so willingly when she has very little time or margin left in her day.
That to me is someone that impacts me in a profound way to say, yep, she gets it. She understands why we’re here. That’s the way I want you to start thinking about your days. Why am I here? Am I achieving that for which I was placed on the planet? You know, I believe it was Albert Einstein that made the statement one day, or I’m sorry, it might have been Mark Twain that I recall that made the statement, there are two days in the life of a person that are most important, and that first one is the day you were born. And the second of course, the day you realize why you were born. And those are two important days. But you can have that same importance of days every day with the right mindset. This Christmas season is a time of reflection for me. I always enjoy spending the holidays with family, seeing friends that I haven’t seen in maybe a few years or months. I enjoy seeing my team smiling and laughing as we have games at our Christmas parties. I, I’d be very honest with you, I just love the whole season of Christmas and New Years.
A few years ago I was in a local Walmart, and while I was in the Walmart, there was a time to check out and I had just a few items, you know, 10 or 12 items and had more than I could go through the expedited lane. And no one was in that lane anyway, to check us out. So basically I got in line behind a young woman and two children. She had two sons, and they were probably, I would just guess, I don’t know the person I would guess that they are somewhere around maybe four and six or five and seven, these little boys, their faces had shown that they didn’t really have a whole lot of lifestyle at home, for example. They, they had been basically at the point in time leading a pretty rough life. And I looked at the young mother who had to be in her early twenties.
She looked rather disheveled. It looked as though you know, that she had had a pretty hard life herself and had a pretty rough day in total. And it was about a week before Christmas. And I noticed that she had had in her cart some mostly food, and she had very few things that couldn’t be purchased with some assistance, and I’ll get to that in in just a moment. But as she was laying the items on the conveyor for the person to check out her groceries and things, and sh the little boys were just vander around and, and they were kind of being told with her mother to be still and stay right near the cart. And you could tell just like a small kid is ever, we have energy abounding, right? So I noticed the little boys and I said, hi boys, how are you?
And they just looked up at me without responding audibly. And then I said, have you seen Santa yet? Just a very innocent question to a child that would bring great joy in their eyes. And I’ll never forget what the older boy said. He said, no, we, we don’t have a, a time to see Santa and we don’t have Christmas yet. Now he said it like that a week before Christmas. We don’t have Christmas yet. I’m using the exact wording he gave me. I was a little, little bit shocked by that. And then I realized that the mother was attempting to pay for her groceries. And the lady at the, at the checkout had said a number that apparently was more than the young lady had available on her assistance card to pay for her food for this family. And I just quickly looked at her as she was digging through her purse, very frantically, and she was looking for anything she could as far as money.
And she started laying change out on the, the counter for the person checking this out. And I realized that she was not just gonna have enough change. She’s gonna be several, several dollars short. And so she said, well, I’ll just have to take this back. And she started sorting through the groceries that she thought might not be as critical and started putting them back to have the person put it back in the shelves. And I looked at her and I said, do you believe it’s better to give than receive now? She looked at me and she just kind of glanced. She said, what? And then I said, do you believe it’s better to give than receive as a philosophy? And she said, well, yes sir, I do. I said, wonderful. I said, well, I have just a few groceries here. Do you mind if she rings those up with yours and you can just give me my groceries?
Now, I said that with a big smile. I understood she was being frantic and I was trying to take her mind off of her situation to give her what I feel like is a pay it forward scenario. And she said, well, no sir, I don’t even have enough today to buy the groceries I need from my children and me. And she said, well, do you believe in that philosophy? I said, I absolutely do with my entire beam. And she said, then why don’t you buy our groceries today? And I said, you know, you are absolutely right. And I told the lady at the checkout, I said, you just keep those groceries, put ’em in the sack that she put back, give those to her and keep that register running. And I’m going to add mine to it. When we got through the additional groceries for this young woman, which I’m not saying this to brag or anything, but was a little over $147 was all, and she didn’t have the funds to feed her children at that level.
As I’m driving home and she’s pushed her cart away and she said, thank you so much, this will make our Christmas a lot better than it what it could have been. And the little boys, I’ll never forget the smile on their face, it just burnt in my memory, the smile on their faces. And, and hopefully they had a better day, if not a better Christmas, just because someone thought of them on this special time when they were needed it most. As I’m driving home, as I said, I reflected on this, and I thought for a moment, wow, I said, it only took $147 to help a family have a better day and a better Christmas. I got home and related this story to my wife is you said, well, this is one time that you wrote a check with your mouth that your wallet had to cash.
And I said, honey, I intend and catch that word. Now as you listen to me. I intend on writing more of these beneficial checks to people of need. So, so over the years, I have actually bought groceries, I’ve bought clothing, I’ve, I’ve bought everything you can imagine for someone that might have needed help. And I’ll be very honest with you, I don’t know if it helped them as much as it did me. The intentionality that I gave to reaching out and finding those that needed help are really the benefits. And I received far more probably than they did with a tank of gas I bought, or the groceries I bought or the clothing I bought. I’m not saying all that to brag ’em me. I’m just saying there are many people out there today that need you to show up as your best self. I wanna talk just a minute about your future self.
You know, we need to change. We need to grow as people. There’s a a statement by ne navel ga Godard who says, assume the consciousness of being the one you want to be and you’ll be saved from your present state. So if we think ahead of who we want to be, we actually start acting in that frame of mind. You know, one of the things I’ll get to do this time of year is in that reflection mode is looking back through the journals and also looking at the relationships that have deepened this year. Then I also think of those relationships that are now lost perhaps through a death or move or something of that nature. Then I ask myself, well, what goals have I accomplished in 2022? And then you have to look at your goal report. Now you have to be honest with yourself.
And this year with everything I had going, I had some pretty big, hairy, audacious goals, and I’m only going to achieve about 70 to 75 percent of those goals this year. And I will have grown far more than most of my friends could grow in five years. You must push yourself if you wish to achieve a greater result in your life. And I’m a big believer in goals. I like to set goals. I actually have had goals. Some of mine were 25 and 30 year career goals that I have seen come to fruition. These goals have been met, but it took a long time to get there. So how far have you come in 2022 in your personal goals? Do you believe that the failing to hit a goal is just a loss of the entire year? That’s not the attitude. You know, during the goal, you may have grown or you may have received a benefit in the attempt to reach the goal, you became someone different, became someone that you desired to be in the future.
So you have to ask yourself, what about that in my life that I didn’t accomplish, but I grew through the process? And lastly, I wanna ask you this. What about your big, hairy audacious goals for 2023? Have you inked those down on a piece of paper or in your journal or wherever you put them? I’ve already got my planner set up. I’ve got my goals for 2023 inked and ready to go as of the date of this podcast. And let me tell you, I’m going to have to be innovative, creative. I’m gonna have to take ideation to the newest level. I’m gonna have to work with a more of a who not how mindset to accomplish 2023 at the level I desire. What are you doing today to push yourself to your limits? You know, you don’t get a diamond out of the chunk of coal until you put a little of pressure and heat on it.
The same thing works for human beings. Until such time as you become the person you want, you have to continue to apply pressure and apply that heat. In other words, you have to show activity. You have to show meaningful, purposeful activity toward reaching that goal. One of the things I have in life that I love to do is that reflection of my journals. That helps me stay on track for those goals. Now, if you have three or four goals a quarter that you’re working on and you see you’ve not even started on one of them and it’s December, you might wanna put some effort toward that goal. If it’s achievable for you to do so. If not, look at it and consider whether that goal is meaningful enough to maintain or even attempt to achieve in 2022. Perhaps it’s something we work on in 2023.
The point I’m making is you’re not failing as long as you keep fighting, as long as you keep moving forward, long as you keep achieving. This world is not easy to manipulate or navigate, but you must do both. Sometimes you need to manipulate things that happen in the world to your best efforts and interest. Now, I don’t mean by taking advantage of someone, that’s not my point, but sometimes life throws us lemons, right? You’ve heard the old story. What are we to do? We are to make lemonade from those and get a positive outcome. So what are you going to do different in 2023 than you did in 2022 to help you achieve more greatness in your life? And lastly, what sim systems will you put in place to help you grow and achieve your goals that you don’t currently utilize? This is the mindset I’m utilizing as we go through the rest of December to start off January one, right outta the starting gates, running with my best sneakers on.
I am pumped and powered and proud of where we’ve been, but we have such a bigger future to realize. There’s a couple of books out I wanna put on our website. One of those is by a gentleman named Dr. Benjamin Hardy. And it’s a wonderful book called Be Your Future Self Now. And it’s all about that mindset of what you want to be in the future and you start living and thinking that way. Now it comes to being. With that said, I do want you to do me one small favor this week. Our challenge is for you to look around, find someone that you see has a need helpful feel that need this Christmas season. I know Christmas isn’t celebrated by all of our listeners, but this time of joyful season would like for you to consider others be a helpmate to them, help with a, not a lending hand, but a hand up, not a handout to that they may experience a better December if they close out their year. You are incredible. You have capabilities beyond your own recognition, and I hope and want you to realize that at Live a Life By Design, we so earnestly appreciate you and spreading the positive, powerful news that we share each week here on this podcast. You, my friends, are the reason we keep moving forward in this podcast. Thank you. May you enjoy a wonderful day and a fantastic week as you go out and live your life by design.
