How bad do you want it?
Hi! My name is Coach Jimmy and today we are talking success, and we are talking sacrifice. Sacrifice to success and it’s probably not a really popular topic because so many people want to be successful in life and so many people say, “I want the house and I want the car and I want to make 6 figures or I want the washboard abs or I want to fit in the size 2 jeans or I want to be in that little black dress or I want to travel the world.”
Whatever it is, until they get down to finding out what’s required to make it happen…and I know all about not being willing to sacrificing, quitting, and wanting things, but not being willing to do what successful people do. Because you see, before I got started in business I found myself in my early 20s as a 3 time college dropout who was 100 pounds overweight and had move back in with my parents in my early 20s.
I was all about blaming other people, talking about why I couldn’t achieve what I said that I wanted, so easy to point fingers, and at the end of the day, who I ended up having to point the finger at was the dude in the mirror.
I remember a time when I jumped out of the mirror and I looked and I saw this guy, a 3 time college dropout, 100 lbs overweight, and I didn’t respect who I saw in the mirror and I literally said to myself, “If you don’t change what you are doing, you are going to be alone the rest of your life and you are never going to achieve any of these hopes and dreams that you say that you want.”
There is something right now you say you want. There is something right now that you know you are called to do more than you are doing in life right now. Maybe it’s a physical transformation. Maybe it’s something about creating a product or writing that eBook or creating an online course. Maybe it’s starting that podcast or starting that Youtube channel or just giving back somehow. Maybe it’s a charity you want to start. Maybe it’s creating a business serving and coaching other people.
I don’t know what it is, but there is something that’s been in your gut and the minute I brought it up you knew exactly what it was. You didn’t really have to think about it.
So then we have to have that question, why hasn’t it happened yet?
Why are you still here saying you want something?
And what I am going to go out on a limb and say, I am going to guess that’s it’s because you have not been willing to sacrifice the things you need to sacrifice to get that done. And what are those things, what are we talking about?
Have you earned your leisure time?
I used to have a mentor that shared with me when he was building his business, he kept saying that he was working two full time jobs. One during the day and one at night, but he was trying to build a part time side business that had the potential to pay him 6 and 7 figures. He kept having problems trying to get it up and running, but what he realized was that he was also really passionate about baseball and he played in two or three like intramural baseball leagues and he finally had a mentor of his call him out and said, “Well you haven’t put away your kids college fund yet. You haven’t built this thing you say you want. Yes, you work two jobs but what makes you think that you’ve earned this time to go play baseball?”
When I say go play baseball you can enter that blank with, go play golf, shopping, Netflix, video games, Pinterest, farting around on Facebook, whatever it is that’s time wasted. That’s your leisurely time that you need to sacrifice.
This is what he talked about. He had to make a decision to sacrifice his baseball time and to earn that time back to say, “Okay, this thing that I love, I am going to put to the side until I earn the time back.”
And what I mean by earn the time back?
“Well you haven’t put away your kids college fund yet. You haven’t built this thing you say you want. Yes, you work two jobs but what makes you think that you’ve earned this time to go play baseball?”
I mean once you’ve built that thing, you have created that income, you’ve made it such a consistent thing that it’s not going to be on the wagon, off the wagon type of thing. For me, I took the last two days off of working out, normally every weekday I am up and running, but I then never worry about, “Oh my gosh, Jimmy. Are you falling off your wagon? Are you getting out of your schedule?”
Because I have been doing this so long, I earned those two days that I decided not to go knock it out. You know what I am saying? So you can earn back that Pinterest time that I am trying to think like what else is a super time waste, you know the Netflix, binge watching your shows at night, your DVR stuff. There were stretches where TV no longer became part of my life. Video games that used to be my unwind time no longer became apart of my life. Going out and grabbing drinks in the afternoon or in the evening with my buddies, even to unwind.
I had to sacrifice because I had bigger things that I wanted to do and you can earn that time back. There is nothing more rewarding than when you put that thing aside to do the work and then you get to the point where you get to add it back in because you built the thing that you said. The thing that you are going to sacrifice now, you will enjoy so much more when you get to add it back in.
And who knows, maybe you do maybe you don’t. Maybe that thing you’re sacrificing right now really is the thing between you and your goals. Maybe if you’re talking about a physical transformation, maybe it’s alcohol it’s the reason you don’t have that six pack abs, maybe it’s that donut or the pizza or maybe it’s a food choice. Maybe that’s the reason you aren’t there yet.
Only sacrifice one thing at a time
I am going to encourage you and challenge you to sacrifice one thing at a time.
So many times people try to do a huge overhaul overnight and they can’t stick with it. It isn’t long term. It isn’t sustainable.
For me, whether it was my physical transformation or my business, it has been a series of one little change, put it into action consistently, and then when I saw the result, it got me excited and wanting to shift one more thing. What happens with so many people is they drastically shift like eight things at once, like they go all in, and they don’t see results in the first 3 days, 4 days, 5 days, and they get frustrated. They step on the scale and they are up a pound, even though they are not realizing that they lost three inches in their waste, but “Oh my gosh, the scale says I am up a pound, so screw this I am off.”
Or you jump into your business…man, this happens all the time with people that I mentor. They jump in and try to learn everything all at once and the give it a week and they are frustrated because something wasn’t going right, so they go, “Screw this, I am out.”
Instead of picking one thing, one skill, one discipline, one something that you can execute, and add to the small shift in your current regiment and master that and implement that over one, two, maybe it’s three weeks, maybe it’s a month, and then you look back and say, “Oh. Those are the things that I…” You know you get to see the benefit of your sacrifice, of your hard work, and then you get excited because then you are like…this is how I was.
I didn’t respect who I saw in the mirror and I literally said to myself, “If you don’t change what you are doing, you are going to be alone the rest of your life and you are never going to achieve any of these hopes and dreams that you say that you want.”
I remember when I was losing weight, I still remember the very first time I ever adjusted anything food wise. You are going to laugh because it went from not real healthy to not real healthy, but for me it was a huge step. I used to go to Jack In The Box all the time and I had my favorite combo number meal that I would always go to and I remember the first time I consciously went to the drive through, so I was still going to Jack In The Box, but I went through the drive through and I ordered two chicken sandwiches with no mayo, subbed mustard, and got a diet coke.
So that something now 10+ years later, not in my regimen, but at that time that was a big step for me because I made a conscious effort to do something different. I went with that and I saw some weight start dropping off. Little bit at a time but then I was like, “Oh, okay. Well that little change yielded this result. What’s the next little change I can make?” And I kept stacking little change on little change because it kept me excited as opposed to 8 giant changes where I felt like I was giving something up or I felt that…there is such a thing as too much sacrifice at once.
I would much rather you make a small sacrifice, see some results from it, and then get excited to make another. So people look at my regimen or people look at my schedule and it seems really extreme, ow early I get up, what I get done in the morning, how I eat, but I tell them, “I didn’t just shift into my schedule overnight.” This is ten years basically of little tiny changes over time to where all these things that I do are now just ingrained habits. They’re really subconscious, they are my new normal and normal for everybody is going to be something different.
There are only so many hours in a day
You really have to put blinders on what is it that you want to do, that thing I talked about at the beginning of this. I said, “Look dude, there is something really great that you are designed to do and you already know what that is. You also know there is one thing that you have been not willing to sacrifice that’s keeping you from that.” Is it learning a skill? Is it learning something? You know if you’re talking about business, is it learning email marketing? Okay, great. Then go buy the course.
Don’t go buy 8 courses, and this is the other thing. Don’t go buy 8 courses or don’t try to go be on every social media platform. Pick the one. Somebody has made a course about it, go buy the course. Go master that one thing.
Little changes that you can celebrate and then when that gets going, you can add another. I get this all the time that people on my business or the online entrepreneurs, they go, “Jimmy, you’re everywhere. I see you on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and YouTube and Periscope and Facebook live, well how do you do it all?”
Well I didn’t try to do it all at once, I went and gave myself a season to learn one and then when I learned it there were things that I learned of short cuts for things or things that I could outsource. So once I mastered it, I could either hand it off or I could have somebody help me with it, but it was important for me to master it first.
None of that is going to happen if you aren’t willing to sacrifice something. Maybe it is sacrificing a little sleep, maybe it’s getting up that hour earlier, staying up a little bit later, maybe it’s working through your lunch break. Maybe it’s…again we’ve listed so many other different things, it’s all those time sucks. It’s the Facebook news feed…pick one. Pick one thing and like I said, don’t sacrifice all of it at once because you will feel like…you will get bitter towards it. You’ll get jaded towards it because you’re like, “I am like giving up everything,” and you’ll start feeling sorry for yourself because I have been there.
Give up one thing. Give up one thing and then be super productive with whatever time that fills and earn it back. Earn the time back. Earn the vice back. Earn whatever back and like I said, when you get to add it back in it’s so sweet because you know you did the work. You know you did the work and you just feel so accomplished because you are like, “Yep, I sacrificed this thing, I put it on the shelf, and went and did the work, and I got it back.”
So that’s it! Are you willing to sacrifice for what you really say you want? If you are not where you want to be yet then there is something you haven’t sacrificed over a long enough amount of time to get there. So this is what I want to know from you today. In the comments, let me know, what’s the dream and what are you sacrificing temporarily to get there? Thank you for your time. My name is Coach Jimmy and we will talk real soon.