Do you ever feel that you are trapped in a certain phase of life and can’t break free? In this episode, Lori and Jimmy share four powerful strategies to break through the barriers keeping you from realizing your greatest success.
Episode Keys
- How to develop a strategy that gives you the power to direct your life trajectory!
- Why you must conquer your negative thoughts to maximize your success opportunities.
- Jimmy’s secret to eliminating “noise” in his world to allow him to accomplish his biggest goals.
- How Lori uses her team to create clarity and wield time management in their vision for success.
- When you should be setting the goals for the day to achieve bigger, better and bolder achievements.
Podcast Transcript
LF:
Good Monday morning, everybody. Yes. It’s the voice of Lori Few this morning, coming at you bright and early and caffeinated as always, but I wouldn’t be here without the most impeccable important. I could go on with a list of I words, but welcome Jimmy Williams, everybody. Good morning, Jimmy.
JW:
Good morning, Lori. Hey, you know, I love these summer mornings. I gotta be honest with you. This is my time of year lately. The weather’s been cooler. It’s been nice just to get out right about that daybreak. What’s that sun coming up from the east and realizing yes, once again, I’m outside without my bathrobe, but Hey folks, we don’t wanna paint that picture.
LF:
No G-rated. Remember? We try to keep it G-rated.
JW:
Yes, family show here. Family show. Yes. Hey, what’s been going on in your world, Lori?
LF:
I, you know, I have just been, I too enjoy the summer. I, I find myself though, I’m grumpier in the morning because I’m staying up later because we have more sunlight and more fun things to do in the evenings. And I, I get frustrated with myself, but then I have to remind myself that it’s okay. It’s just a season because I know, you know, what’s that saying from the famous show, winter is coming or whatever and we’ll all be stuck inside and then I’ll go to bed early and it’ll, I’ll make up for it. Like that’s what I, I try to reason and justify with myself. So I, I dunno.
JW:
We’ll see. I think you’ll win that argument every time as you argue and reason with yourself. But anyway, you know? Yeah, I gotta, I gotta tell you, Lori. One of the things I love about this time of year though, is, is that longer day because man, I got the work early, got off work a little bit early and went and played pickleball with some friends. And I gotta tell you last week and I had the best time. So I’m kind of digging. I get home and it’s not dark. So when I go in the wintertime, I’m kind of a sunlight guy, you know? So I will tell you, I have a, a, a, maybe I’ve mentioned this before in the show. I don’t have an alarm clock. I have an opportunity clock that doesn’t make any sound intrigued now, aren’t you?
LF:
Yeah, I am. How, how do you, how do you know when to get
JW:
Up? It’s a Phillips light alarm clock. So it emulates the sun rising at whatever time you wish to set it. So I’ve got it sitting on, you know, my five o’clock timeframe, but it actually starts shining at like 4 45 and gets brighter and brighter and brighter till it’s at, at its brightest at 5:00 AM. And it sits on my side of the bed. Now, of course my wife, she sleeps with like a welder’s helmet now, but anyway, so she doesn’t like the brightness at 5:00 AM anyway, but Hey let’s talk about this week. What what are we gonna help our people and subscribers with this week?
LF:
Okay. So we’ve got an interesting topic this week. We’re gonna talk about. OK. So let’s back up in the last episode, we talked about the habits of Uber successful people. I, I couldn’t get that word out of my head for a solid week, by the way. So this week we’re gonna share with you the strategies that successful, that you’re gonna make you successful to utilize, to overcome barriers in reaching your highest potential barriers. As you all know, come in all facets of life. They come in physical, mental, financial, spiritual, so to overcome anything that requires focus, tenacity, and vision. So we’re gonna talk about barriers and, and more, you know, if, if you’re from this area or if you live in a city, when you talk about barriers, the first automatic thing that comes to my mind are those giant orange traffic cones or barrels that are on the highway or the signs that says detour. So we’re gonna give strategies and talk about ways that overcome those barriers and those detours for you this morning. And the first one we’re gonna talk about, are we ready for this? If I had a drum roll, I could totally do it, but I won’t try.
LF:
Not that in your mind, please, the first barrier is lacking a clear vision of your desired end result. Ooh. So we talk a, yeah, we talk a lot about vision and we talk a lot about positivity and we talk a lot about goal setting and planning and execution of all those. But I think sometimes even starting somewhere as a barrier is the lack of knowing what you wanna do. You know, you have a lot of great ideas. You have people that you bounce things off of, but really truly honing in on that vision from start to finish, can oftentimes be a barrier to even getting started. I know that sounds simple. And I, and people probably think, oh, that’s easy. I, you know, I can start off and do anything I want, I just have an idea and I run with it. But for a lot of us, especially those of us that are multi invested, multi involved in different facets of our life, whether it be community, family, or, you know, work, oftentimes you get tunnel vision, not lack of vision, but tunnel vision.
LF:
And so that too can be a barrier because we get so focused. Or as in last week’s term, Uber hyper. You know, focused on something that we tend to get lost and we can lack a true clear vision. So some of the things that I do to try to help myself not to have a lack of clear vision or to think of it as a barrier is I really try to prioritize, prioritize the things that are very, very urgent, and then maybe not so quite urgent later on down the list so that I don’t get overwhelmed and so that I can stay true and try to keep clear all the barriers that might get into my way so that I can accomplish whatever goal needs to be accomplished first. So basically a list of importance.
JW:
I love that. So let me tell you, one thing we do in our company is I call it the blueprinting process and like any home you build, you don’t just go out there and start buying lumber and brick and, and hire a crew and go, well, just build this house. I’m thinking, no, no, no. They go, Hey, wait a minute. We need these drawings. We need different elevations, need this land prepared, blah, blah, blah. So what we do in our office is when we hire someone, we give them this little task, if you will, Lori. And it’s called the blueprinting process. I learned from my business coach at Carson coaching and we use this now, every time we hire someone and all it is basically to say, what are your values as a person? We all have different values. And some people by their background may have a value that’s far different than yours or mine, but what are your values?
JW:
And then you ask, well, what are your 1, 3, 5, 10 year goals? What’s some of your lifetime goals. You know, I gotta be honest with you. I never thought that I’d say this, but nobody gets up that morning and goes, Hmm, I’d like to be the CEO of Walt Disney. I mean, you don’t just get there, but going, Hey, you know, I work on that today. It’s a daily process and it works on the same values of integrity and character and leadership. You got to have values, you identify and don’t laugh, Lori, you know, I’m a writer. I like to put ’em on paper. Yes. You heard me folks. You can have ’em on the phone
LF:
As well,
JW:
But I want it on that tree. Right?
LF:
I’m a, I’m a digital, I’m a digital girl.
JW:
I know I get that. But I gotta tell you you’re gonna love this. Cause why I do that is those same goals and things. Guess what? I mentioned it before on the podcast, I seal ’em up in that laminate and I tape ’em in the shower.
LF:
In the shower. Yep. Yeah, well, I mean, I, I much more of a writer now. But I, on certain tests and certain things, I am definitely digital because I can pick it up and carry it with me, go wherever I need to. And I am gonna be totally honest sometimes lately. Oh, I don’t know if I’m coming or going. So there’s a little bit of lack of organization there. Maybe
JW:
Well, here’s the good news. You know, I’m a big fan of Evernote. I like to have Evernote on. So what I do is I take the picture of my handwritten goals that I see all the time. And if I’m traveling, I basically have ’em on my Evernote to review.
LF:
There you go.
JW:
So you know, that just leads me to thinking about what the second barrier could be. You talked about a clear vision to get the dis desired results that they wish to achieve. I’m gonna be honest with you. That second one then has got to be the barrier of distraction from your highest and best opportunities for success. So if you’re lacking clear vision, guess what? You’re taking your eye off the ball. That means you’ve got no focus. That means you’ve got no diligence. You’ve got no persistence. All of these things are just distractions. You talk about those orange cones and pylons out on the road. They get your, you know, they get your attention rather quickly, right? Cuz they’re bright and they’re big. And if you hit one, they’re made of rubber. Not that I’m gonna tell you how I know that.
LF:
Right.
JW:
And they don’t even leave an orange mark on your car. It’s a great thing anyway.
LF:
Yeah. Oh good to know. Good to
JW:
Know. Yeah. Yeah. So what I want to say is it’s kinda like don’t allow life to get distracted to you because of all the noise we have. Now you’re gonna laugh, Lori. This is a very lovely, quiet community in which we live. But guess what? We’ve got our noises. We still got these little things called phones that can go off anytime. If you don’t turn them off, we’ve got teams popping up saying, Hey, you got a message, right? That reminds me, I’ll tell you how old I am. You remember when AOL first came out and you had this desk, you had to put in your computer as a five and a quarter inch floppy. And, and it’s yes. You load up. The best thing you ever wanted to hear was you’ve got mail,
LF:
God mail.
JW:
Oh, that was sexy. Then now it’s, now it’s just ding. And I’m like, oh, I got 400 today. Good may break.
LF:
Yeah. Isn’t it interesting how sometimes all those things can strike fear or anxiety or joy depending on who it is.
JW:
That’s true. And you know, sometimes those distractions are meaningful in a purposeful way. Right? So I’ve been distracted a couple of times, just this week. And the reason being is already today is to say, well, I got up this morning and I had my Bible study already go, but I thought, Hmm, pastor talked about Esther last week. I’m gonna go back and reread Esther in the old Testament. You know, you see where I’m going. So sometimes that distraction’s good. Cause I got a lot of meat out of what she was telling me. Our pastor’s a lady. And then I got a little Digger on digging deeper on it in the morning and I’m like, Hmm. So distractions can be positive. But if you always lack the focus and clarity, you need to move forward on your biggest hair, a audacious goals. You’re gonna have problems with distractions that are not positive. So I encourage you to think about that. Lori’s got a great idea of getting that vision clear, but you got to overcome the distractions, taking your eye off the target.
LF:
And one of the ways that I think distraction really plays into it and, and can be a bigger ordeal than we tend to make. It is our third barrier, which is failing to manage your time to maximize achievement in the direction you wish to go in life. And I am so guilty of this one. It is, it is probably if we had to rank them in terms of barrier barrier ness, I guess I would probably.
JW:
The best barrier, the worst barrier, whatever we wanna call it.
LF:
Yeah. This one would probably be mine. I, I do, I want to be the most time management effective person that I can be. It’s so important. People have really discovered and honed in on the fact that their time is so precious and so valuable because we just don’t know. We have no way of knowing how much more time we’re going to have. And everyone that you talk to, especially like my parents and my grandparents, I just wish I had more time to do this when I was little or this, when I was an adult or this, when I was in my twenties. I’m, you know, I’m having a really hard time right now struggling because our son is gonna be 13 soon. And I’m struggling with the fact that he’s, I’m losing that time. And I feel like it’s just slipping through my fingers and you know, he says things like, mom, get it together. You know, stop.
JW:
I love it too. When, when you hear him folks he’s at that stage, he used to say, Hey mom can I go to country club and go pool? And now he’s going, Hey mom, I’m going pool.
LF:
That’s, it’s so scary. It’s like talking to a totally different person. But you know, we, we talk a lot about time management and you know, scheduling, I’m a big scheduler and it tends to get overwhelming. And, and then you say to yourself, my entire life is scheduled. Every moment, every activity, every, you know, organization wants a piece of my time. And again, it goes back to prior prioritizing making sure that you are, you know, and we’ve talked about this before. You know, I love this barrier topic because it just goes back into so many other things that we’ve touched on in this podcast series. You know, we talk about making sure that when you commit to something that it’s something that you genuinely want to participate in, not just say yes. And I think that that also goes along with time management, we’re afraid to say no so that we say yes and we overcommit and get ourselves into a situation where we lose control of time management. And it it’s so important to, to make time for those important things. And it’s okay to get off track. But I, I am really struggling with this one. So I know Jimmy, I know it’s Monday morning and I know you’re gonna give me a quote from one of your favorite books. I know it’s coming and hit me with it.
JW:
All right. Well, I do happen. Just happen to have
LF:
Lori.
JW:
I knew it. Yeah. So I will tell you this, the key to success, according to Mr. Warren Buffett is learning to say no to 99 things. So you can focus on the one thing that is the biggest goal of all right.
LF:
It’s, it’s so
JW:
True. I may have paraphrase that a little bit, but that’s in this book. And basically what we’re doing folks is talking about the philosophy of the big rocks. If you’re gonna put pebble and sand in your glass and your glass represents your 24 hour period, well guess what, you’re gonna do a lot of things to move that little pebble around and all that, but you’re never gonna get the big stuff done. You don’t have any room for it. Cause all the pebbles take up your time. I always like it to this. I look at my activities I need to do. And I go, which one of these, if all I had was today left on the earth, I’d really want to do. Now, I know that sounds gloomy to some people, but what I’m trying to say is by thinking in that manner, you really only tackle the big, big, important things that you say will leave the legacy or will leave the leadership behind that I need or will leave my family in the best situation, whatever that may be.
JW:
But look at those big rocks and let’s forget about the little grains of sand. And so I’m big in that as well. I don’t take on anything that is below my pay grade. Let me explain what I mean by that. Lord, if in fact I can hire someone and pay them 25 to $40 an hour for something I don’t do their role, I let them do what they do best. And I tackle the things that are $500 an hour or a thousand dollars an hour, or, you know, if your Elon Musk think about it like this, he really sits down and determines what he’s gonna do based on him making $1,100 a minute.
LF:
Oh wow. Really? I did not know
JW:
That someone estimated that I’d read that and I thought, wow, wow. So at 60 minutes that’s that’s pretty good rate
LF:
Wow. And I’m wow. I’m not even close to that, but I, I tend to agree with you on that, that sentiment about let’s find the people and hire the people to do what they’re good at. And it also alleviates some of your time management issues. I mean, and I think that goes back to surrounding yourself with the right people. I absolutely think that’s important. I really strive to do that for myself and to, and for my, you know, work environment. It’s, it’s great to be able to build a team of people that you may not be the best at time management, but you know that there are other people that are willing to tackle those goals and to let them succeed and then come back to the table and share in that because it’s, I mean, at the end of the day, when you’re on the same team, does it really matter? As long as the goal is accomplished and everybody’s happy about it.
JW:
Leadership remember is the process of asking someone to take control of something they would never want to do. And they would enjoy doing it to completion. That is true leadership. So true. You know, we all need to have those people in our world that is a plus and a good person to do those things that maybe we can do, but we’re not passionate about. And to me, that’s what it’s all about at the age of 15 minutes when you’re my age. So our engineer’s gonna say, I couldn’t make out that word cuz that’s, wasn’t the word I was trying to get there. But but you know, Lori, the fourth and final barrier is probably the premier problem that a lot of people have in our world right now. I’m, I’m telling you, I see this more often. When people come into our office thinking about retirement, they think of all the reasons why it won’t work.
JW:
And I simply stop after they’ve had their moment and say, just a moment, give me one reason why it would work, unless focus on that a few minutes. So I’m talking about the fourth and final barrier is having a defeatist attitude that tells you, you don’t deserve to be successful. And man, I cannot take negative stinking thinking, okay. Thinking well, that’s what I call. I stole that from Zig Ziglar too, by the way you know, the best flattery is when you plagiarize someone. So anyway I will say though, here’s the problem in life. A lot of us have seen how easy it is for some people to win the lottery, how easy it is for some people to be born in a family that has significant wealth, how easy it is to be an internet sensation overnight, but they don’t ever understand all the work behind the scenes.
JW:
And before that one day that they became an instant billionaire, you know, Zuckerberg, I don’t believe one day said, Hey, I’m gonna write this program this week and next week I’m gonna go public and I’m gonna be a billionaire. He worked on it for years, perfecting it while he was still in undergrad school. Now he’s, he’s just one example. But I’m saying to you that a lot of us have this attitude that we don’t deserve life to be abundant. I’m gonna tell you right now, I want all of our listeners subscribers. If you hear nothing else from today’s episode, hear me clearly you deserve to have happiness and full abundance. Whatever that may be. I didn’t say wealth, Lori. I didn’t say money. I didn’t say assets. I said happiness, and you’re gonna laugh. I was tweeting about this just last week. And on my, you know, I didn’t know if you knew as a tweeter, I’m a tweeter. Oh
LF:
You are. I tweet I follow. Yes.
JW:
Yeah. I tweet all the time. You just never know what I’m gonna tweet about, but I tweet, matter of fact, I tweeted during church the other day I heard something so good. I tweeted it. So anyway, my wife told me don’t be tweeting during church. Apparently that’s SACS. I need to quit tweeting at church, but anyway,
LF:
Okay, well we’re gonna need to work
JW:
On that. It wasn’t doing the sermon, Lori. It was just tweeting between songs. So anyway, my point I wanna do is say this. I want everyone here to know that they are just as capable and just as honorable and justified in reaching whatever happiness they define. That doesn’t always mean money. That just means more time with family. More time in charity, more time with my friends a, a greater happiness is being out in the woods while the whole world’s noisy around us in the city, taking a walk in the park with the headphones on listening. Some of your favorite jazz music, cause there’s people, you know, chunking up streets and the, and hauling trucks and making loud noise on buses and whatever it might be. And I tell people that defeat attitude is the only thing holding you back. If we can overcome that one item of your entire facet of life, and you say that success is mine, because I’m gonna work for it, I’m gonna work toward it and I’m gonna grab it. Those things can be the overcoming of the barrier of defeatism.
LF:
And I think that that is so true. And I I’ve experienced that as an adult. There were times where, early on in my adulthood, years, I always felt like I was my own worst defeatist. I would say a thousand reasons why I couldn’t walk into the room and asked for a leadership role in a position in an organization that I absolutely a hundred percent believed in. And I just so happened by chance that I had the opportunity to shadow someone who was in a executive director role. And I knew my heart was in it. My soul was in it. I believed in it. And I was so you can’t do this. There’s no way they won’t accept you. They won’t like you. They’re gonna look at you. You’ve not ever worked in this arena before. You don’t really have the experience. And so I had all the reasons that I had defeated myself before I ever, you know, even had thought about approaching the opportunity to actually say yes, I want to do this.
LF:
And when I finally got the courage to do it, it really set in motion. The last decade of me being able to volunteer and I call it the best volunteer job in the world, I live, eat, breathe, and sleep, and it’s crazy. And I love it. And I would not trade my involvement with that organization for any amount of money in the world. But in that mindset you know, and I started out as I started out as a team director, then I went to the MIS director position. And then I was the local executive director. And now I work with the state board as a state field director. And, you know, you are your own worst enemy when it tur, when it comes to saying no to yourself, and you have to believe in yourself and surround yourself with people that are gonna push you in that direction to remind you that you are not defeated, you can do this.
LF:
And we all need those little people in our life to chirp into our ear, to tweet into our ear, to quote Jimmy, that you can do this. And it is valuable and it is meaningful. And if you truly wanna do it, you will find the right way to do it. And it may not happen right off, but you can’t sell yourself short and say, oh, well, I tried or I, you know, I dipped my toe in the water and got a rejection, or I got halfway into the water and decided that I got scared and ran out. I mean, you, you’ve gotta go full tilt, full throttle sometimes, and just believe in yourself and, and get that negativity out of your head. Because if it’s something that you really, really want, you will overcome that barrier. So
JW:
True. That is really good stuff. Great story as well. And I will say to everyone, listening at the end of the day, Lori has done a phenomenal job in her roles. Not one, she’s had many roles in this organization and my daughter has been you know, to be very honest, we a beneficiary of that, that program. And she’s doing so well now learned a lot of skills going through that process as to being a powerful young woman. And that’s just awesome. You know, I, I will say before we end this episode, Lori, I wanna leave our people with a bonus. Ooh bonus. Yeah. Before we, we start wrapping things up, I wanna leave ’em with a bonus. I think that bonus is this. I want you to seek out who you think would be a great role model, a great hero, a great just example for your life, doing the things that you would like to do or in a similar fashion.
JW:
And then I want you to take from them the attributes not doing what they do, but then applying those attributes to your life, to achieve what it is you were called to do. None of us are cookie cutter. None of us do the same thing. I think God put us on this planet for all per purpose and our purpose has to be unique. So I always thought I took Jim ROS Ziglar. I take John Maxwell. I take all of these great people that inspire and make me feel positive, but I apply them to Jimmy, not me trying to be Jim Rhone. I could never be a Jim Roan. I need to do Jimmy. Right? So I encourage everyone take that, learn it, do what Lori was saying, but apply it to you to be the bigger, better bolder person you can be.
LF:
The world can only handle one. Jimmy Williams.
JW:
My wife has said that many times, and I also, she said that a little Jimmy goes a long ways. I don’t, if that’s or
LF:
Recap barriers that we’ve about this morning, lacking a clear vision, distraction, time, extraction, time management, and defeat attitude. These are all things that we’re gonna roll into the challenge this week. So the challenge is to take a few minutes and write down your thoughts as to the biggest barriers that are keeping you from achieving your personal greatness, implement one of these strategies that we’ve talked about this morning to overcome the barrier and experience a bigger, better, and bolder you.
JW:
Ooh, I’ve already got look. If you could see me, you could see, I got goosebumps. I don’t know. Maybe like duck bumps, but they’re not real big, but they’re there.
LF:
That’s not a vision that I want.
JW:
Yeah. Hey everybody. Thanks for joining us this week on Live a Life By Design on behalf of Lori Few and me your co-host, I’m just honored to ride her coattails. Once again, to fame, everybody have a wonderful week go out and make the world a better place. Live a life by design.