434 – Are You Leaving Life On The Table? – 7 Tips To Reclaim Your Life

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James Schramko

Podcast highlights:

01:33 – Get away from that screen
03:22 – Where to get your stoke
04:38 – Have fun
06:35 – Make your life easier
07:33 – You need this
08:19 – What to focus on
10:07 – Turn it off

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Transcription:

James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com, and I have a question to ask you. Are you leaving life on the table?

We often hear the expression, “You’re leaving money on the table,” and we obsess about putting all those optimizations in place to make sure that we get all that profit. And we work and hustle and grind. Well, that’s what people talk about, almost with a charming affection. But I don’t agree with that. I think a lot of people are leaving life on the table, and that’s why I’ve put together this short podcast, where I want to talk about 7 tips to reclaim your life.

Why is this important? Well, it’s going on around us. People are just not aware of it. I think they’re in a bubble. We see people who are really working hard and stressing and getting frustrated, but I don’t think they’re having a happy life. I’m not saying it has to be easy or it has to be a hammock lifestyle. But I do want to put some perspective.

I want you to stop for a minute, just listen to this podcast, or read the transcription, and think about where you’re at. And I’m specifically talking about identifying if you are in that bubble, or if you’re on that hamster wheel. I’m going to share with you some ideas on how you might get out.

1. Go analog

The first thing I would recommend is to do something offline. Get away from that computer. Because we’re talking about Internet marketing and online business, it’s very tempting to be glued to that device. And I’m sure if you’re on that computer too much, your loved ones are going to be telling you. Your partner or spouse, your kids, who are probably playing PlayStation because you’re not spending time with them, they need you. So get offline for a while. Shut the laptop, and get out and about. Go for a walk, do something healthy. Get out of the bubble.

I think a lot of people in the expert space just can’t even recognize it. I watched a movie, which was with Robert De Niro, and it was about him being an intern. And in that movie, the lead character, a lady who’d started up a business, was at all times glued to a phone or a computer and her life was going on around her and she couldn’t see it. And it was frightening, and I think some people would look at that and not even realize that that’s what’s happening.

So she was kind of caught in the spin cycle. Now I’ve been in it. I was in that phase, especially when I was rearing young kids, and I had a mortgage, and I was working very, very hard, and I didn’t really have a choice in my mind. But I did used to take the dog for a walk every day, and I also used to release from the computer and play PlayStation as my little escape, a kind of a drug-free escape, if you like. Now, I surf.

My question for you is, what could you do offline? What could you do that’s analog? Could you pick up a pen and a paper and sketch? Could you go into an activity like surfing? Write down something that you’d like to do and commit to doing that in the next week.

2. Create your own high

The next thing is to generate your own “stoke.” Now that’s a surfing term, “stoke.” But what it really means is you don’t have to have others stimulate you. You can create your own high. An example is when I’m gliding down through a crystal-clear wave and it’s starting to arch up in this sort of barrel shape and I have the hugest smile on my face, I’m generating my own fun by harnessing Mother Nature.

You can find natural highs in Mother Nature. You could climb a nice mountain and look at a beautiful view, you could catch a wave as I do, you might be able to go for a lovely ride on a trail or something. Get out and about and generate your own high that your body creates, you’re releasing those pleasurable chemicals without the need for an app, without the need for alcohol, without the need for someone else to do something for you to feel that pleasurable feeling.

So I suggest you make an action item to climb a mountain or walk to the beach. And a lot of these things do not cost anything. They just need your attention. They need you to shut down the computer, and go and generate a natural high.

3. Are you having fun?

My third tip is do things that bring you joy. When I’m coaching people, I go through a diagnostic survey, and often when I’m asking people to rate themselves from 1 to 10, this item will pull up like a 1 or a 2. And this is, “Are you having fun?”

So ask yourself the question. What is the point of all your grind and hustle? Who do you want to spend your time with? And what activities do you want to do? What do you actually look forward to? What are you so excited to do when you wake up in the morning that that is your last thought as you go to bed, as your head hits that pillow and your eyes close, what are you looking forward to to do tomorrow that brings you joy?

I think surfing’s taken years off my life. It’s made me look younger and feel healthier. I feel more like I’m in my 20’s again, and I think that it’s actually reversed the aging process. It sounds crazy, I’ll probably live a little longer, but I definitely feel healthier, and a lot fitter, and more vibrant and more aware and alert. And I’ve done those crappy jobs in the past, which is why I don’t have guilt for how I live.

You are entitled to design your own life, so you can build joy into it. I think for some entrepreneurs, they will feel guilty sitting in a cinema during the day, on a weekday. They might feel guilty having a game at PlayStation during the day. They might feel guilty going for a bike ride during the middle of a workday. But you do not have to feel guilty. You are an entrepreneur. You create value, and you dictate your own life, and the most important thing to know is that you choose.

So I’ve learned that if I don’t enjoy something, I start making sure that I put in a system or a plan so that I don’t have to do it anymore, because I don’t want to do things that make me unhappy any more.

4. Recurring business

The fourth tip is the recurring business model. If you have a recurring business model, and I’ve got plenty of posts about this, it will automatically make your life a lot easier. You’re no longer stressed or desperate about where the next feed is coming from today. You don’t have money problems, and you don’t have time problems.

And if you didn’t have to go hunting for that next order, if you could do something else today, in fact if you woke up today and there was nothing in the calendar, which is the situation for me predominantly these days, at least 4 days a week, if you didn’t have to have something on the calendar, what would you actually do today? Because you could choose, and that’s what a recurring business model delivers for you. That’s what I teach in SuperFastBusiness, and in SilverCircle at a higher level.

5. You need a team

The fifth tip is to build a team. You need to be able to write down every task that you’re doing, and then transfer it to someone else. That’s how you get your life back. You get your life back by getting help. You build a team and you get help.

If you don’t want to build a team, that is OK. Just get someone to help you. Hire a service. Hire someone to build your website. Hire someone to write your content. Hire someone to run your AdWords campaigns. But just don’t do it yourself, because DIY robs you of your life. If you’re doing anything that’s not your highest purpose, or where you can create the most value, you are stealing your own life away.

6. What are the right things to focus on?

Tip number 6, focus on the right things. I’ll credit Peter Drucker with this. But instead of focusing on lead generation and all the other things that seem to come up all the time, think about what the most important thing is, and often in a business I think it comes down to two things. One is finding an offer that converts, and refining your conversion percentage. And two is focusing on frequency.

So if you don’t have a recurring business where frequency is a given, at least focus on how could you resell someone who had already purchased from you in the past. How can you help someone buy just one more item instead of just one? Perhaps they could get two, with an upsell or a cross-sell or an appropriate recommendation.

Because of all the things you could do, few things really matter. And it’s easy to think that everything must be treated equally, but it really doesn’t. And recently when I was travelling, and I had all of my things stolen from me, I had nothing. I had no phone, laptop, watch, wallet, even clothes. Just when I was swimming, it all got taken from my vehicle.

What I found out is that ultimately, these things, some of them are probably unnecessary. I was able to consolidate four keys down to two, when I had the locksmith redo my locks. I was able to consolidate three devices down to two, because I decided that one of them was good, but it wasn’t really necessary. I was able to refine the repurchase of the clothes to consolidate my favorite items and not worry about the least favorite items.

So sometimes we’re putting too much emphasis on the things that aren’t important at all. Focus on the vital few things.

7.  Escape the noise

Tip number 7 is turn off the noise. Turn off your alerts. Turn off your social media. Remove apps from your phone or your computer that you no longer use. Remove your bookmarks that are sitting there, staring at you in the face that you’ll never go and visit again. Delete or purge from your hard drive all of those folders or files that you’re never going to use again. Or at least archive them so they’re out of view. Get rid of everything off your desktop. Create a little automation rule that sweeps your desktop and puts it into a folder, maybe on Dropbox or somewhere.

That’s really the tip. And I think that if you have trouble rejecting things, and you keep hoarding and signing up to lists and you’re worried about missing out, this can be a curse that is holding you back. So let go. Let go of the stuff. Know that you can go and get it again if you want. If you really want to subscribe to such and such a market, you can go and rejoin their list. I’m sure you’ll have opportunities. If you let something go and you over-prune, you could always replace it if you need to.

But try and go on a reduction. Try a little bit less. But turn off your phone volume. Turn off your alerts. Turn off the notifications. Just see how peaceful that can be. And if you do that, then I think you might get your life back, and you’ll no longer be leaving life on the table, because you’ll be living it.

You know I’m passionate about this. I’m James Schramko. If you enjoyed this episode, please give me a rating on iTunes or share this with someone who you care about, or maybe give it a social tweet or something, so that if someone is stuck on social media, that they could find this and perhaps it gives them a few tips to free themselves up a bit. Thank you so much for listening.

Restructure your life using the training resources and support  inside Jamesschramko.com

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