Don’t Slow Down — Simplify

So every day I invest my energy into things and people, and then at the end of the day I'm exhausted, I go to sleep, and depending on how well I sleep, my energy builds back up again.

And the next day I have choice as to where I invest my finite amount of energy. So how do, most people don't make conscious decisions as to where they invest energy.

So the first step really is gaining clarity. Okay, I know my time is finite, I know my energy is finite. What are my priorities in my life?

So the common phrase you hear people typically say that I need to slow down, I don't think those are the right words to use. I prefer to use the word we need to simplify. We need to simplify our life to the key priorities in our life because it's about taking the

X amount of energy we have each day, the X amount of time, and then proportionately investing into those things. I always thought that I find that most people are just spreading the energy way too thin across so many things.

And it's very hard to say no if you don't know what you're saying yes to. So the first step is really gaining clarity of what it is I want in my life, right? And why do I want that? And the only way to get to that is to be able to spend time each day in self-reflection.

And this is not meditation, but just really inquiring and asking yourself through a focus state of what do I want in life? so much of what we do often as entrepreneurs is driven by around us. You know, so-and-so sold 20 houses, so-and-so business grown by 10%, so I feel like I'm

not doing that. But that's their business. That's what they're doing. What do you want?

And we don't spend time figuring out what we want and what actually serves us. And we're quite driven by everything around us and how everyone else is doing. And if we could just articulate clearly and have the clarity around what we want, then it's so much easier to focus our energy and go like, hey, I know Joe is doing this.

He did so great that you're good for him. That's his goals. My goals are completely different. This is what I want.

Then all of a sudden, you don't have the same pressure. You don't have that anxiety. You know what to say yes to because you know what you're saying no to. So I would start there before thinking about even, you know, how much do I need to grow

my business? Okay. So somebody says, you're like, Hey, what, um, so what do you really want in life? And I think maybe one of the most common things that I want to, I want to grow my business.

I'm going to do this, but you would say, actually like go deeper or go different. If someone's doing this self-assessment, you're like, Hey, what do you like? Like what do you want in life? Like the, like, how do you want to live?

Like they're like, I want to, I want to be healthy. I want to spend time with family or friends. I want to, you know, is it like that? Is like, if you're telling somebody to do the self-assessment.

And getting granular, right? Not even just saying, I want to be healthy. What does that mean? Right?

What does healthy mean? You want to be able to run a marathon or run a kilometer? And I think the more clear we can get around those things, the less pressure and anxiety and stress we have in our life.

Because it's very difficult to go through life as an entrepreneur and not compare yourself to what's happening around you. It's kind of almost a natural human thing

to look at others and go like, oh wow, they're doing so well. They did this much this year and I didn't do as well. But for me, I hear often entrepreneurs will say,

what's your number? What's your number that you wanna get to? I'm like, for me, it's not a number. For me, it's like, what's the kind of life I wanna lead?

How much time do I wanna spend with the people I love with my friends? What do I wanna do? And what do I need to do from a business perspective

in order for me to fulfill that? Because at the end of the day, I'm very clear what my priorities are in life. And those priorities,

I know when I focus on those priorities, make me feel the most rewarded, the most fulfilled and happier. So it's not really about pursuing a number

or looking at people around me, it's getting clarity of what I want for myself. And what I want for myself may not be what somebody else wants.

And that's okay, that's their life and I have mine. But working on getting the clarity is the biggest thing.