Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and I’m a little bit under the weather, so I might sound a little off today. And please pray for me because tomorrow my son and I are supposed to go for a very special father-son wilderness retreat in Idaho, and we need to be better for it. And both of us are under the weather as of yesterday. Actually, by the time you listen to this podcast, the retreat will be over. So, I don’t know if you can retroactively pray if that’s a thing. But anyway, good vibes are what I’m trying to send me and my son so we can feel better tomorrow, because if we don’t feel better, they won’t let us go.

And that leads us to today’s podcast episode, which is what matters most, or I should say, rediscovering what matters most, which by the way, might be the title of my next book. It’s something that it’s a talk that I’ve given twice now, and the first time was impromptu. It was something that I felt just called to share in the moment. And let me explain. So, I was at an author mastermind last month, about a month ago, and the day of, the last day, sorry, I’m a little off, like when you’re sick and you can’t really think straight. All right. So, give me a little bit of leeway on this one, alright? I might be all over the place, but I got notes in front of me that I wrote for that talk. So, here you go.

That morning, I hadn’t spoken at the event, and the last two years, I had spoken at this event. It’s a small 50-person, like a true mastermind of top authors. And I think you have to have sold 100,000 copies of your book, minimum, to be allowed to go to the event. And so, these are all my peers and people that I look up to. I mean, James Clear was there, who wrote Atomic Habits. There are some really incredible authors whom I like. It reminds me of high school. I don’t know about you, but like, when I was in high school, like, “Oh, I’m not part of the cool group. These are the cool kids,” and that insecurity plagues me as a 46-year-old man.

To this day, and it’s when I’m in rooms like that where I’m like, “Oh my gosh, like I don’t belong here.” You know, the imposter syndrome. So, the last day I wasn’t planning on speaking because I’d spoken the last two years, and I’m like, “I’ve pretty much shared everything that I know about selling books and building a brand,” so I don’t feel compelled to share anything else. And on the last day, at the event in the morning, Tiffany Aliche spoke, and she wrote the book, Budgetnista, I can’t think of the name. She has a name, or she’s known as the Budgetnista. And she also has a show on Netflix, and a really amazing woman, and she was sharing a just tragic yet inspiring story about her husband who died of a brain aneurysm.

And he was in his forties, really healthy, fit, and one day he called her and said he had a headache and it felt weird, and he was going to go check into the emergency room or the urgent care. And a few days later, he passed away. And she’s sharing this story, and the room, many of us were in tears or choked up, and like it was just such a gut-wrenching experience that she was sharing. And as she was sharing that, I suddenly felt like, “Oh, actually, Hal,” this voice in my head, I feel like it’s the voice of God or highest consciousness. I don’t know exactly what it is, but you get this like inspiration, right, where you’re like you’re inspired, and it comes to you like an all-knowing.

And I go, “Hal, you’re supposed to give a message today, but it has nothing to do with books or business or anything like that. Your message is about what matters most in life based on the experiences that you’ve endured and the journey you went through to identify that for yourself, and then the changes that you made to your life to live in alignment with what truly matters most to you.” And so, this is the message I got, and I just pulled out a piece of paper, and I just started scribbling, okay, like all these things are coming to me. Like, I should share this story about my sister and this story and this story, and I should share this. And so, I sent a text message to the MC of the event, the host of the event, Mike Michalowicz.

You might know him. He’s the author of Profit First. And I said, “Mike, I feel like I am called to give a message today. It’s not about books. It’s about what matters most in life, and no pressure. Like, I know I’m not on the agenda, but what do you think? Would this serve the audience?” And he texted back. He said, “Hal, I think that’s exactly what this audience needs to hear.” He said, “I think you’re the person to deliver it.” He said, “And would you be open to closing out the event?” Now, keep in mind, this is not like a message I’ve given before. In fact, it’s literally just being written as I’m sitting there in the event.

And like the pressure of, he’s like, “Would you close out the event? I’ll give you 15 minutes. Is that enough to close out the event?” And I said, “Yes.” But also I was super nervous because, again, these are my peers and it’s one thing to, I’m a speaker, but usually when I give a speech, it’s like this is a speech that I have practiced and I have slides so that when my brain damage kicks in and I don’t remember what I was talking about, I can reference the slides and be like, “Oh yeah, yeah. Here’s where we’re going.” But this was none of that. So, I took a bunch of notes and I tried to outline a little bit of a talk.

And at the end of the event, he brought me up, and then he said, “Hey, Hal reached out this morning and he said he had a message on his heart that he wanted to share with you all. And I thought, no better person to close out the event,” or whatever. So, I go up there and I said, “Hey, everybody. Normally, I don’t have notes when I’m speaking. I mean, this is what I do for a living.” And actually, I think I asked, “Raise your hand if you’re a speaker,” and like half the speakers raised their hand. I said, “If you’re like me, you don’t want to have notes because you’re supposed to know what you’re talking about.” I said, “I don’t know what I’m talking about. And this just came to me this morning, and I felt like I was supposed to share this with you. And so, I’ve gotten notes to make sure I don’t mess up.”

I didn’t look at my notes once, so I spoke for the next 15 minutes, and I didn’t look down at my notes, I don’t think even one time. It just came, you could say, came through me. That’s kind of how I believe, right? Like, that you’re channeling wisdom beyond yourself. Or it came either through me, or it just came from the heart, right? A little bit of both, I guess. And so, this is the message I want to share with you, and this is a message I think that we could like this could be every week, like every week, it could be a conversation around like, “Hey, what matters most in your life right now?” Because it changes, right? There are certain things that don’t ever change, like health. Health always matters most, right?

Like, if you don’t have your health, as I learned during my cancer journey, it’s like, “Oh, none of my other goals matter if I’m dead, right, if I don’t make it through this journey.” So, health is, to me, always like number one. Because all the other goals depend on you having at least some level of health where you’re alive and you are functional. So, I think health is universal, but there are also things that, during different seasons of your life, what matters most can change. So, for example, if you have kids, I think for most parents, what matters most, the children should be either number one on that list or very high, right?

If you are married and you have a spouse, or even in a relationship, right, especially married, though, and even with kids like, okay, your significant other, that relationship, it better be good because you better put energy into that. It better matter most because if it’s struggling as we can, all, anyone that’s married with kids can speak from experience then your parenting is going to struggle because you’re going to fight in front of the kids, and there’s going to be animosity and there’s going to be tension, and the kids are going to feel it, whether or not you’re fighting in front of them. And so, your spouse matters. So, relationships matter most. I would argue financial security is on that list of what matters most.

So, there are all these universal things that are true for most, if not all of us. But then, based on the season, for example, let’s say your kids turn 18 and they leave the house. Well, not that they don’t matter anymore, right? But if you’re not in charge of their well-being every day, then in terms of where they move on that list, it might not be at the top, right? If they’re an infant and they can’t live without you, then they’ve got to be at the top of your list. If they’re an 18-year-old, that is okay. If they don’t talk to you for a week, they don’t necessarily need to be at the top of the list. In terms of what you’re putting your, and I know that like, as I’m saying this, I always hear people arguing like, “Well, now your kids always matter most.”

Do you get what I’m saying, though? If the amount of energy you have to put into that isn’t the same when they’re gone as when they’re at home. All right. So, we can agree there are seasons of life and things matter at different times. So, when I gave this talk at this author mastermind, I told everyone the title of this message is What Matters Most but it has a question mark at the end. I said, “Because I can’t tell you what matters most to you. Like, this is a very personal thing, and while there are these universal things that do matter most for all of us, ultimately what matters most for you in your life at this time is for you to decide. It’s a very personal thing.”

And I want to share a quick story with you on how I realized that I was living out of alignment with what mattered most to me, and I didn’t realize it. I was lying to myself. So, the year is 2016, and I was 37 years old, and if you would’ve asked me, “Hal, what matters most to you?” I would’ve said, “Family, my family, hands down, my wife and my kids.” And I would’ve said that for a few reasons. One is I think you’re supposed to say that. Of course, family should matter most. But more importantly, or more honestly, like in my heart, I truly believed that my family was the most important thing to me.

But here’s the disconnect, and this is where I want to invite you to consider for yourself. Because where we’re going today is identifying what matters most to you, looking at where you are out of alignment with what matters most to you in terms of how you’re spending your time, the actions that you’re taking or not taking. For example, if you say health matters most, but you’re eating unhealthy food all the time, you’re living out of alignment. If you say family matters most, but you’re working all the time and you’re not spending time with them, you’re living out of alignment. And so, for me, I would’ve told you my family was number one, but if you would’ve said, “Hey, Hal, let me take a peek at your schedule,” immediately, I would’ve gone, “Oh, why do you want to look at my schedule?”

And you would’ve seen, “Oh, wait a minute. Hal, you say family’s number one, but you sure do work a lot, and it looks like you even end up working sometimes in the evening because you don’t get work done when you’re supposed to be off. And it looks like there are some weekends where you’re gone away from your kids, traveling, giving a speech, and even just some Saturdays, it looks like you had to work on this last book project that you weren’t supposed to be working on, but you’re behind deadlines. So, you had to tell your wife and kids, “Hey, sorry y’all. I’ve got to work today.” That was my reality.

And I ask this question a lot when I speak to any group of professionals, whether it’s entrepreneurs or, last week, I spoke to an author group, another different author group than the one I’m talking about. I also spoke to two groups of attorneys. I’ll often ask, “Raise your hand if you have a family, either a significant other, or if you have kids. And usually, it’s the majority of the room that has kids, 80% or sometimes close to 100%. And I say, “If I were to ask you if your kids are the most important thing in your life, kids and spouse, raise your hand if you would say your family is number one.” And every single hand goes up.

And then I say, “All right. Thank you so much. Put your hands down. Now, if I were to look at your schedule, would it be obvious to me that you just raised your hand and said, as your top priority, your family? If I were to look at your schedule, would that be in alignment? Would it be obvious? Raise your hand if it would.” And usually it’s like, I don’t know, 10%, 20%, maybe at most, 30%. I doubt that, though. It’s not very many hands go back up. And so, I want you to think about this throughout the entire episode today. Again, I’m under the weather, so I’m already feeling myself fading, so I’ll probably keep it under 30 minutes, but what matters most to you? Is it health? Is it your relationships? Your family? Is it financial security?

And often what ends up happening is because financial security, like when we’re struggling financially, that becomes urgent, and it becomes like an emergency, and then all of a sudden that which matters most, which is really the people in our lives. In fact, let me pause. I was going to tell you a story, and I want to tell you this story because it’s very important to set the precedent here. The year was 2016. I started to tell you the story. I was driving in my car, and one of my best friends in the whole world, Jon Vroman, I’ve had Jon on the podcast before. He’s the founder of my favorite group that I belong to. It’s called Front Row Dads.

And Front Row Dads is a mastermind for fathers. And the tagline kind of tells you what the group’s about, and the tagline is, “Family men with businesses, not businessmen with families.” And it’s based on the idea that very often when you’re an entrepreneur, it’s mostly entrepreneurs in the group, but it’s like, I’d say there’s probably 10%, I’d say significant chunk of men that don’t consider themselves entrepreneurs necessarily, but they just want to be the best husbands and the best fathers that they can be. Although there are also dads that are not married, that are divorced in the group, so all types of dads are in the group. And there’s also a Front Row Moms group, which I imagine is just as great, but I’ve never been a part of that.

So, Jon calls me, and by the way, he wasn’t the founder of Front Row Dads at the time. So, he was an author. He had written a book called Front Row, oh gosh, I’m embarrassed. Front Row Life, I think, because he was the founder of a charity called the Front Row Foundation, and that charity sent people braving life-threatening illnesses to the front row of the event of their dreams. It was kind of like Make a Wish. The difference was it was front row, and the main difference was it was for all ages. So, Make-A-Wish, I believe, is just for children. You have to be under a certain age, whereas Front Row Foundation would send people in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, you name it. You could nominate your grandfather to be a recipient, that kind of thing.

And so, he was the founder of Front Row Foundation at that time. He had written a book, and he was a college speaker, and he said, “Hey, Hal.” He called me. I can picture where I was on Highway 71 here in Austin, Texas. I was driving home, and he said. “Hey, I was talking to a friend the other day, and the friend said, they asked me what I did,” or it wasn’t a friend. Sorry. It was a new acquaintance. And he said they asked what he did, and he said, “Oh, I’m an author, I’m a speaker, and I run a charity. It’s called the Front Row Foundation.” And the guy said, “Oh, tell me more.” And he tells him all about the foundation. And then the guy says, “Oh, are you married?” He says, “Oh, yeah, yeah.”

After five minutes of talking about what he did, and it was all related to writing, speaking, foundation, then the man asked him, “Are you married?” And he said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a wife and I have two boys.” And he said he got off the phone, and it just struck him that when he was asked what he did, his family was an afterthought, that they were like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I have a wife and two boys.” And he said he just realized in that moment that he was not living in alignment with his highest priorities. And so, he called me and he said, “Hal, I want to figure out how to align my work so that where I spend most of my time during the week, I want to somehow align it with my family so that there’s alignment between what I say matters most, my family, and how I actually am spending my time in a way that supports not only my family, but other families.”

And he said, “So, I’m thinking about if we have the Front Row Foundation, I’m thinking about Front Row Dads.” And I was like, “I love the idea.” And then here’s what he went on to say that really struck me, because up until that point, I was just thinking about, “Oh, he has this cool idea of having a business that’s aligned with his family values. Awesome.” Then he said, “Hal, here’s what I realized. At the end of my life, what’s going to matter most to me are the people that I spent my life with, my wife and my children, and my friends and my family,” but he said, “More than anything, my wife and my two kids.”

And he said, “And my kids, they’re not going to remember how many books I sold or how much money I made, or how successful my business was, or how many mortgage payments that I made for the family.” He said, “They’re going to remember the quality of our relationship, of our connection, of how much time, the quality time that I spent with them.” And he said, “So, what am I doing? I’ve got to get my priorities in order.” And so, that planted a seed where, not at the moment, I was like, “Yeah, you’re right. I mean, that is amazing. Our kids aren’t going to remember how much of all these things that we think are so important, that really won’t matter in the end.”

Like, think about that. How many of the things that you spend your time doing today will really matter at the end of your life? I’m not saying that everything you do has to be a thing that matters at the end of your life, right, like the emails that you answer today. So, this isn’t about an all-or-nothing pursuit where you go, “Okay, I’m going to quit my job and just somehow live with them 100%. I’m going to homeschool my kids.” That’s not what this is about. This is about leaning further in the direction of alignment with what matters most. In fact, I’m going to encourage you to just take a baby step. A baby step. The first step is actually to write this down. Write down what matters most. To me, that should be a question that dominates our thinking every single day.

And when I say dominates our thinking, that’s a little bit of an aggressive word, but at the very least, like, it should be a journaling question that we’re answering on a regular basis, right, what matters most to me in my life. And hopefully, you write those answers down and then you put them into the form of an affirmation where you’re affirming every day. These are the things that matter most to me, my health, my wife or husband or my significant other, my children if you have them, financial security, right? Like, all those things matter and then some.

And then, if you follow my affirmations formula, right, step one is affirming what you’re committed to, so what matters most to you, that you’re committed to. And step two is affirming why that’s a must for you, so why it’s important. So, you’re reminding yourself why do my children matter most to me? Why does my spouse matter most to me? Why does my health matter most to me? Why does achieving financial security or freedom, why does that matter so much to me? That’s the second step. But then the third step is which actions will I take and when to ensure that I am following through, in this case, that I am living in alignment with what matters most.

So, if you’re new to the way I teach affirmations, let me run through those three steps very quickly. Number one, affirm what you’re committed to. In this case, you’re affirming what you’re committed to that matters most, which in general, that should be what you’re committing to in general. Like, why would you commit to the things in your life that don’t matter most? Like, that would make sense, right? So, step one, what you’re committed to. Step two, why it’s a must for you or why it’s important, why it’s important to you. And step three, which actions you will take and when? And this is how I structure all of my affirmations, which are simply keeping my most important commitments and the reasons they’re important and the actions I’m going to take to ensure I follow through. It’s always keeping it at the forefront of my mind, keeping it top of mind so that I’m present to it, so that I can align my thoughts, my words, and my actions and my schedule with what matters most to me.

So, a few months after that conversation with John, that’s when I was diagnosed with cancer and I went through the hardest few years of my life. And eight months of those, I was in the hospital for the majority of them. I was away from my family in Houston, three hours away more often than I was with them which, that was one of the things that made it the hardest. Not just that I was sick from chemo and all of that, but I wasn’t able to see my kids. And even when they would FaceTime me, I felt horribly ill for about three out of every four weeks of the month. So, where’s it going with that? I told you I was a little off today, ba, ba, ba.

Oh, so it was during cancer that I had my real epiphany and it was that seed that Jon Vroman planted about what matters most is our family, that at the end of our lives when we look back, that’s what we’re going to, I believe, either regret that we didn’t live more in alignment with what matters most, and you can call that your values, right? Or that we did. And so, I realized, oh, I’m a workaholic. I say family’s my number one priority, but I work way too much. In fact, you might remember, I don’t know if it was in the Miracle Morning movie, I think it was. I don’t know where it was, somewhere. But I remember saying, and I just remembered this, that I used to schedule, like my son would want to play during my workday and he was three years old. Oh, God, if I could, anything to go back in time and have this to do again.

But before I had cancer, I would be like, okay, buddy, I can play for three minutes, or I don’t remember the exact time, but I remember like give it 5 minutes, 3 minutes, maybe 10, I don’t know. But I feel like I remember there being like kind of short time periods. And now, I mean, it pains me as I’m remembering this just because nothing mattered more to him or me than us spending time together. But before I had cancer, I would set the timer for five minutes, and so, we’d play for five minutes, action figures, whatever, and I go, okay, daddy, let’s go back to work. How sh*tty, pardon my French, but that sucks. That sucks. I regret that big time.

And so, let’s fast forward. So, before cancer, I was a workaholic and I put my family to the side more times than I could count, and I didn’t even realize I was doing it. And after cancer, what are some of the things that I do differently? Well, even when I was still going through chemo and I was back at home, I was exhausted, but I made it a point because I couldn’t really play with the kid. Like, I didn’t have a lot of energy during the day. But every morning, I woke my kids up with a stuffed animal puppet show every single morning. I was their alarm. So, during school, for the entire school year, I would wake them up with these two puppets. It was a rainbow unicorn and then this goofy-looking guy we called Durpy and I would do a puppet show for them and they would just crack up laughing. I made it really funny. And then I would put them to bed every night with stories.

So, that was one of the things that I did when I was at a really low point, right? I had every excuse to be like, I’m too sick, I’m too fatigued to spend time with my kids. I made sure that I bookended my days every day with what mattered most, my kids. That was post-cancer after realizing I was not living in alignment with my family being my top priority. And so, I would start with the puppet show in the morning. Wait, I’d wake them up and I’d put them to bed every single day. So, that was one little thing that I did.

And then I started taking them to school. And to this day, my daughter is now 16 and my son is 13 and I drive my son to school every morning and I pick my daughter up. Now, I want to be really honest about this, that is a major inconvenience for all of my professional goals, meaning I also help them get ready in the morning. So, essentially, three hours out of my workday, so almost half of my workday is spent helping the kids get ready from school, driving to school, and then picking up from school. And please, none of this is like, oh, look at me, I’m so great. Like, I’m not, please, I hope that’s not coming across that way. I’m just telling you how it is.

And so, for me, I give up income and I give up productivity, two things that I definitely value. They are on the what matters most list, but they are underneath my wife and they’re underneath my kids, right? So I, and being that I’m an entrepreneur, I realize that not everyone can do that. So, you’re going to have to modify these things. I’m just giving you real life examples that hopefully spark ideas for you on how you can align your time and your schedule with the things that matter most as best you can. And maybe that just means, again, waking your kids up before you go to work and putting them to bed in the evening if you have kids, right? If your health is your priority, which it should be for all of us, for me, another quick before and after, before I had cancer, I ate what I thought was really healthy, but when I got cancer and I looked back and I’m like, what are the things I put in my body that are not natural or that are not healthy that might have caused my cancer? Because what’s interesting is I probably ate healthier than most people. In fact, that was my identity. Like, I only eat organic vegetables and I only have grass-fed beef. I spend the extra money because I feel like I’d rather spend the money on the front end than spend it on my medical bills, right? The irony of that statement that I was making that I thought was, I think, I’m pretty healthy.

However, again, it’s interesting that we lie to ourselves unintentionally, right? We believe our own story. So, my story is family is number one, but I wasn’t living that way. My story was I am a very healthy person, but let me tell you what I was doing that wasn’t so healthy. Number one, I started taking Adderall. Adderall, which is a pharmaceutical drug, and this isn’t my expertise, I just know that it wasn’t made from the earth. It was made in the lab. I have read articles about the side effects of Adderall that are not good. That it’s methamphetamine. I mean, again, you can do your own research. I’m not here to speak. Again, I don’t have any scientific pedigree to be able to speak on the harmful side effects of Adderall. I just know that I was taking it every day, that it gave me headaches almost every single day.

So, because of the Adderall, and by the way, this is because and this is an important point, I was valuing productivity above my health. I was valuing productivity above my health. So, whether or not the Adderall had side effects, I wasn’t even looking into them because I just wanted to maximize my productivity. And so, I was taking it and it gave me headaches. That might’ve been my body’s sign of being like, hey, Hal, you shouldn’t take Adderall. It’s giving you headaches. But instead of listening to my body, I went, well, no, no, that’s okay. I used to have, what was it, Excedrin. It’s like the most hardcore Excedrin you can take, Back & Body. So, it had aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine. So, I would take that every day in the afternoon to counteract the effects of the Adderall that I was taking and the headaches that I would get. So, I would take this, and I don’t know if you’ve seen the latest research on acetaminophen, but it’s not good, right? It even says on the bottle, can cause, I believe it says, bleeding of the liver. Bleeding of the liver. Eh, I’ll ignore that because it helps my headache. You know how crazy this is, right?

And then, what else were I doing? I was having one beer after work every single night, one beer. And again, I justified, well, it’s only one beer. That’s not, like most, a lot of people drink way more than that. You know they say comparison is the thief of joy. I think comparison is also the thief of excellence because if we compare ourselves to people that we view like, well, people do worse, some people do this or that, and that’s worse. So, I’m healthier than most people. Like, I don’t know if it’s a lie that we tell ourselves, or not even a lie because it’s true, but then we justify harmful behavior because other people do more harmful behavior, right? Like, I only smoke crack once a week and some people do it every day, so I’m better. I mean, that’s an extreme example. But that’s what I did.

So, I took Adderall every day. I took Bayer Back & Body to combat the effects of the Adderall. I also drank a beer to mellow out in the evening every night. I also ate vegan ice cream, which that’s not healthy. And again, this story of, well, it’s vegan, like, yeah, and it’s filled with sugar and preservatives. So, anyway, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to go too far on this health tangent, but I just want you to reflect this on you. Like, are there things that you are putting in your body that you know, deep down, if you stop and you’re honest, and maybe you would justify it by saying, well, it could be a lot worse, I know people that do way worse, are there any areas that you’re doing that, right?

And so, for me, after cancer, it’s like, oh, I’m not going to justify things that aren’t good for me just because other people might do worse things. I’m going to strive for impeccable integrity in my diet. I’m going to strive to eat things that are not synthetic, that are not processed, that are not made in the lab, right, but that come from the Earth. To me, that’s the easiest standard of like, is this meant for the human body? If it comes from the earth, it probably is. And for me, that’s organic vegetables and still grass-fed beef and all of those things.

So, I said I was going to go in under 30 minutes. We’re at 31 minutes right now. Let me wrap this up by inviting you to simply consider those three questions and do it in writing. Do it in writing. Journal this. Do it in combined writing and silence, right? Like, ask yourself the question, what matters most to me? And then close your eyes and put your hand on your heart and set a timer for five minutes. Ideally, first thing in the morning when your brain isn’t fatigued at the end of the day, you can do it whenever, do it now. I mean, now is better than not at all. But I like to do things like this either before bed as I’m falling asleep or early in the morning when my brain is calming or calm.

And so, what matters most to you? Write down a list. Don’t judge it. Just write it all down. And there’s your thought joggers – health, relationships, and I’d get specific, like which relationships? Significant other, spouse, children, parents. That was one thing after my cancer, too, is I started pouring into my parents and my sister a lot more because, again, I realized, oh, I’m a workaholic, I don’t have time to talk to my mom and dad. And now, I called them multiple times a week. Sometimes every day, I call my mom, I call my dad, I call my sister. But yeah, because again, they are on my what matters most list and they’re very high. And then also, financial security, like, yes, that matters most. Like, that’s on the list.

So, what matters most to you? Why does it matter? Why are these things important? The more you can articulate that, the more you will tap into the meaning and the importance and the heartfelt connection you have to these things. It’s one thing to just make a list, right? That’s intellect. You’re like, what matters most? Health – check. Relationships – check. Money – check. Yeah, you can check the boxes and write them down, but no, no, no, it’s why? Why does health matter most? Wow. Because if I don’t take care of my body, I’m not going to be around for my kids. If I don’t take care of my body, I might join the 50% roughly of people that are going to end up getting cancer in their lives. Ooh, if I don’t take care of my body, I won’t be able to have energy to be a grand– like, what are the reasons that really matter?

And when you connect with the why, the reasons why these things are so important, why they matter most, that’s where you really get traction to make change in your life. Without the whys, without the compelling reasons of why these things matter most to you, it’s a lot easier to dismiss them and go, eh, it doesn’t really matter. I made the list, I wrote the list. It doesn’t matter. But when you connect with the why behind and underneath each of the things that matter most, now, you’re compelled to step number three, which is what changes are you going to make? Which actions are you going to take? What changes to your schedule? And that’s the most effective way to make changes, I find, is to change my recurring daily and/or weekly schedule.

For example, my wife and I play pickleball once a week because it’s in alignment with my health priority, but that’s not why I do it. I do lots of things for my health and exercise, but it’s because my wife loves pickleball. I like pickleball a lot. She likes it even more. And it’s a chance for us to spend time together and do something. Not to mention we play with other couples. So, it’s like checking all these boxes of what matters most. What matters most? Health. What matters most? My relationship with my wife. What matters most? My relationship with my friends, right? Like, all of these things are fun, is on that list. Fun matters, enjoying life, and I’m knocking all of those out with that two hours of– or actually 90 minutes of weekly pickleball that we play.

So, for you, what does that look like for you? What matters most? Why does it matter? Take time. This is not just a BS podcast where you’re like, yeah, that was cool. That got me thinking. No, like you need to sit with this. Schedule time, and not even just one day. Write this down. What matters most? Why does it matter most? And which actions are you going to take? Then, make that a rough draft. If you can do it on your computer, you might want to journal by hand, but may move it to your computer so you can keep editing it and adding to it. Make this a living document that you revisit day after day after day for weeks, months, years because what matters most to you will change and evolve over time.

But I believe, think about this, at the end of our lives, when we look back, we’re either going to look back with regret. Why? Because we didn’t identify and live in alignment with what really mattered most to us. What else could cause us more regret than to look back and to realize we did not live in alignment with what matters most? It’s like when I look back and that story I told you of my son wanting to play with me three years old, I can picture him, he was so sweet and innocent and beautiful, and I would set a timer for five minutes to play with him. Like, that’s a regret that I have and I can’t change it, but I can change everything else. You can’t change the past. You can change everything else.

If your kids are grown out of the house and you’re like, oh, my gosh, I was a workaholic. Oh, there’s no point in living in regret, but it’s okay to visit regret so that it gives you a little bit of a fuel, a nudge to make changes moving forward. So, if you didn’t do the right thing in the past, you can’t change the past, you can change everything else moving forward.

All right, goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning Community, friends, family, sisters, and brothers, I believe we are all one family, the human family under God. And it is my great privilege and pleasure to be on this journey with you. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your life. And I love you so much. Have a great week. I will talk to you next week.