How are you capturing memories? Are you making progress in life that is meeting your family’s needs for growth? In this episode Jimmy shares the importance of measuring your progress in a practical manner that keeps your motivation and dedication intact.
Episode Keys:
- Why it is important that you record and review life stories to keep your momentum up while living life to its fullest.
- How to review and share your memories with others to inspire them.
- When and what frequency to review your past memories to gain the most benefit from the growth you have experienced thus far.
- Who you should share your progress to enhance your growth as a person.
- How humorous stories of real life can impact others to initiate their own journey of life in a more powerful manner.
Podcast Transcription
Oh, hey, good morning! Good morning! This is Jimmy Williams on Live a Life By Design. I have got to tell you something that has happened this week that is so impactful that I just wanna share it with everyone. Hey, thanks for joining me here this morning. Lori Few is still on sabbatical, enjoying life to her fullest. I gotta tell you, she knows how to enjoy a great time off and she’s doing some of that from the podcast as well as life in general, and I’m proud of her for doing so. She’ll be back with us a little later, but we’ve got some big things to announce. So before I give you this impactful story that I experienced this last week, I want to give you a little update. We’re looking at a transformation of the Live a Life By Design podcast. So you are great listeners and subscribers will continue to get the material we provide, the, hopefully life enhancing and impacting information we provide. It’s just going to change a little bit in the format. We’re gonna also change the title. I will reveal that at a later date for this podcast. And I think, and hope that you’ll be happy with the changes we’re making. I do believe it comes from a lot of input from you, our listeners, as to what we are going to be doing with the podcast and how we can provide you even greater value so that you start your week fully motivated in a bigger, better, and bolder fashion.
This has been a crazy week in, in my world, and, but when I say crazy, I mean a crazy good week. Once every four months I pull down my previous journals. You know, I’m one of those guys, right? I write down things of the day, thoughts, strategies, my theories of life. I write down these things that help me understand me. And so what I do is I pull these journals down from the previous oh years even. I’ll just pick some from prior years and I did this week pick one out. That was a wonderful period of time for my life. And I wanna share a little bit of a story with you there. You know, you have to look at life in a humorous context.
I will say life is pretty simple. We as humans, with our emotions and with our ideas and how we think we control more than we do in the day, make life more difficult. And so, one of the favorite places that my family and I enjoy visiting for vacations, you know, spend a week or two at a time is Laguna Beach, California. Now, if you’ve not been to Laguna Beach, you’re missing out on what I consider to be one of the most pristine places to visit. If you like ocean and you like scenery, food, culture, and just a eclectic, a number of diverse backgrounds of people, this is just a beautiful southern California spot to, to take. There’s a, my favorite resort. There is a place called the Surfing Sand Resort, very privately owned. It’s not a chain, it’s just a wonderfully built and well manicured place to visit the services impeccable.
They did not pay me to say any of this. I’m just telling you the truth, as we always do here on Live a Life By Design. But we picked a suite, as we always do on the North end highest floor of this resort. And I wrote in my journal something unique that day. I wrote that the crashing of the waves at high tide as it came in the building sits so close to the ocean that you can hear these crashing tides as it hits the wall of the resort on the bottom floors. And I walked out and it had to have been around two 30 in the morning, beautiful moonlight, reflection on the ocean as far as you could see to the west. Nothing but water, pure calm water, just rolling in some waves and going back out as the moon dictates in the tide.
And I got to thinking about how much we as humans have as potential to our life that goes unrealized. And then I thought about some of the other wonderful things we love to do there when we’re in that city. And I reflected back on a couple of other stories in my life, and one of those had to do when we were on the beach there in Laguna Beach. And I back then had gained just a little bit of weight. We were in kind of a secluded spotter, I thought. And so me and I, there I am, I I basically just got the, the beach towel down was lying down there with my family and decided I wanted to get in the water. Now, I don’t know if you’ve been to the Pacific Coast, that ocean is rather cold compared to say, the Atlantic to me specifically the southern part of the Atlantic.
And so anyway, I did what any good man would do. You wanna show you can handle the water, no wetsuit, nothing to prepare me for it, just the swimsuit. Just go for it, right? So the best way to get into cold water, as you know, and you’re very brilliant people listening to this podcast, is to just run in, dive in whatever it takes, get fully submerged as quickly as possible to cut the chill. And I think also that, that brisk slap in the face of that cold salt water is something that I believe awakens the body. Things that you didn’t have consciousness of on the body, it will awaken, I assure you, once you get in the cold water. So, you know, I’m pretty tough looking. There’s not too many people around now, a few people have joined us here in this little private area of the beach we thought we had owned for a few moments, but didn’t.
And so it’s all serene, it’s quiet. All you hear is the wave kind of coming in, crashing a moment and then rolling back out, dragging sand and rock with it as it goes back into the sea. And my family’s lying there looking great with a umbrella over them. So they’re in the shade sunglasses on just looking beautiful, as always, my three ladies. And I said to myself, you know, I’m just gonna dive into this thing. So a a giant wave was coming. And when I say giant wave, I’m not talking Hawaii giant waves as I’ve seen out there, but I’m just talking about a rather large wave was coming. I thought how cool it’d be just to dive into that wave when it got close to me. And so I took about three or four deep breaths here at come, and I just dove into this wave dove into the wave and realized rather quickly a couple of problems.
First it was much colder than I anticipated. I didn’t wait for the wave to reach my feet. I ran to it, right? That’s how you face challenges in life. You don’t wait on them to get to you. You proactively run into those challenges and take your skillset and what level that you have of knowledge and conquer, whatever it may be. The problem I realized though, was the water was much colder than I anticipated. As I arose out of that wave, I am screaming, y you know, this is cold, and my family looks away as if to disown me from the others that were looking at me as if I had been a stranger in their land. And they didn’t understand what I was even talking about. So, so I gained my dignity, what little I had left from that moment. And I walked to the shore, I sat over in the area where the water would just about reach my towel and is away from my family.
And I’m just lying there in the sun trying to warm up a little bit. And I swear to you, these environmentalists came up to me and it felt like there were about 15 pairs of hands not hitting me and not in some form of gang violence, but in a sense of almost just touching me and began to roll me into the ocean. And as I’m wondering and puzzled, and I can’t get my thoughts about what’s going on as I’m being rolled to the ocean, I hear the chant, save the whale, save the whale. No, it wasn’t that bad. No one bothered me. But I will tell you it is a wonderful feeling to go to the ocean. This would’ve been in June. The water was quite cold, and we had just the best time. Now I wanna ask you though, what memories do you recall and how have you documented them for your family to share and gain memories as well? I believe that you get forward progress by measuring backwards. It is hard to face the ideal lifestyle of what you wish for your family and you without measuring backwards to see how far you’ve come from a previous point.
The ideal in life will never be realized. And I say that with great confidence. It is so easy for us to dream the panacea of life and to have something in our minds that we know is the utmost best outcomes of a situation, only to be later defeated and left wondering what could have been done differently. And so my point to you today is to suggest that if you have a means of documenting electronically or analog as I do with journaling I like to write these thoughts down. I note the date, time, and location of when I wrote this particular entry. And the fact is, is I look back every four months in these months that of 2023, so this is my second, fourth month if you will. We did one in April, I’m doing one now in August, and I have just been almost laughing with some of the stories I had written as I recall these memories.
And when I visit with my family and tell them about some of the memories, they too get the biggest smiles up on their faces because they recall too what was going on in their lives at that time and how this fun family event impacted them. You know, one of the things I often do too is I like to participate in any kinda sport that I’m capable of any degree. Now I’m not much into bull riding, I’m not capable of that. Too tall, maybe a little too heavy in the middle. But, I do like to play pickleball. Now I’m gonna give you a story about pickleball that I think will help you understand the approach I take in life. And there are a lot of parallels between playing sports and how you live your life outside of sports. So stay with me just a moment.
One thing you’ll note about pickleball is the rating of players as they get ready to play tournaments. You know, there’s a 1, 2, 3 or four level player, one being the best, four being a novice. And so what I tell people is it’s like the, a martial arts pickleball is based upon your skillset and level at the time you are playing an opponent, not necessarily your age or anything else. And so I have to tell you something I did, and I am quite proud. My family not so much, and my wife in particular didn’t agree with my approach, but I had to explain and give her my logic for why this occurred. I’m playing pickleball here a few weeks ago, and I get the wonderful opportunity to play with some fine people, some of them more senior in age, some of them less than my age.
So it’s quite a, a quite a group, a diverse age group. And the fun thing is, is that some of the older, more senior players are, are quite adaptive playing pickleball the control of the ball, for example, the placement of the hit you know, in pickleball, whatever the, the speed. And also they control the pace of the game really well. So I had in particular though, a more novice senior player. She was probably 81, 82 years of age. And she was on the opposite side of the court, we’re playing doubles. And I had a chance to, to serve to her. And so I just kinda lobbed the ball over so it’d be in her court to let her respond with a hit. And, and she did so quite effectively. So I made a mental note, okay, this, this lady is rather skilled beyond what was she of her age.
So I’m just going to play it hard here and we’re gonna, we’re gonna get this match one no matter her age or whatever. And so, I hope none of you think I’ll love me, but here’s what I did. I started my most aggressive play on this lady, and I really did hit her with some body shots with this ball three or four times causing her to lose the point. And you know, it’s a skillset and I wanna bring you back to that. So I never hit her in the face. I always aim for the body shot. So if I can catch ’em and they can’t respond quick enough with their paddle on the body shot, then obviously I get the point. And so at the end of the day that game’s over and I think we’d won 11 to six or so, and she came up to the net, as we always do to be good sports.
We, we tap paddles handles of our paddles. We tapped them at the net to let the other, you know, players know we appreciate them and it’s all in good, good form. And she came up to me and she tapped that paddle and she said, wow. She said, you can kinda hit the ball pretty hard. I may be bruised with some of these body shots. You hit me in the chest and in the abdomen. And, and I said, oh, well I certainly am sorry. And she kinda winked at me. Well, what I then found out in the match later that day with her on the opposite side again she learned rather quickly. So she served me up some shots in the body and one of ’em came right at my head. My point to this is, is to say that never judge a book by its cover, right? Never think you know someone else’s experiences based on their current situation. Always look for the good in everyone you meet and try to be a good citizen. Try to be a good person. Try to be a kind person. You know, it’s one thing in this world, if we can spread one thing and we can spread that one thing in almost a pandemic style to bring back what happened just two years ago, we could spread kindness, understanding, and we could then have a much better place on the planet.
The story I’m trying to convey to you is this. I believe you should go all out on life. Go all out. Do the best you can, exhaust yourself each day, living each 24 hour period to its fullest. You see, we’ll look back in the journals of life someday and realize the words we have written and the experiences that we’ve gained are those wonderful memories that sustain us as we grow older in life. And as we seek to leave a legacy for this world, it is one thing for me to my children say, Hey, I’ve left you some books, numerous volumes of my words, thoughts, comments about life. And I’ve asked that when I do pass, I ask that they can get those down and read them, but not before. I want them then to have something they can look back on and say, our father wasn’t just a student of life, he was a recorder of activity that gave us life.
And what I mean by that is those memories are archived. That they will have something that can live on far beyond my lifetime and hopefully beyond theirs. That’s what Live a Life By Design’s all about. Look backwards, measure from where you were. See the progress you’ve made. Now we’ve got another five months. We’re early in August. Here it is time for you to reach the goals that encourage you to grow as a person. Do not take something easy and say you’ve accomplished much. Take something difficult and say you accomplished a little. The progress is outstanding. It is one of these things in life that you have ultimate control. You can either do it or you can regret it. And remember, an ounce of failure is not very heavy, but an ounce of regret weighs tons on the mind. So thank you for joining me today. I hope and expect you to give us some commentary on our Facebook page at Live a Life By Design Community. Please join us there. Leave some thoughts of how you measure your progress in life. Give us even a story of how you remember life to be versus where you are today. Tell us something humorous that happened to you while you were living life by design.
