Life Happens In Moments

 

Life often takes us by surprise. Yet, it is in these moments that we often find life-changing opportunities. Patrick Donohoe has two stories that will make us rediscover how life happens in moments. When you come face to face with these situations, do you run away, show up differently, or just live in the moment? Find out how we can grab on to these opportunities in this episode.

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Life Happens In Moments

If you knew you were going to rub shoulders and interact with a billionaire, would you show up differently? A few years ago, a friend of mine was befriended by a billionaire. Since then, he has sat in the Owner’s Box at the Cowboys games, traveled by a private jet and spent the weekend in this waterfront mansion in La Jolla in California. Every year, he gets to spend an entire week in either the Caribbean or the Mediterranean on a 300-foot private yacht. On top of this travel, the business and investment mentorship has been invaluable to my buddy.

He told me the story of how they met and it’s going to blow you away. It happens that this friend of mine loves to vacation in the Caribbean and goes there every year. He was staying on the island of Saint Martin in the Virgin Islands. It was a typical day on the beach. He was relaxing. Let’s call him John. He goes up to the bar to order some drinks. While he was waiting for his order, he gets into this conversation with a gentleman who was sitting at a table, apparently waiting for his guests to arrive. I have two nicknames. I’m going to give you one. I call him The Chameleon. He is a brilliant businessman.

First off, he is hard-nosed in business when the necessity arises. He has several decades of experience at this executive level, but he also is a loving husband, father and grandfather. It’s amazing to experience him because he is a totally different person around kids. He runs around, plays and races them foot races. He instinctively knows what part of him should show up in the various experiences that he has in life. As he engaged in conversation with this gentleman at the table, the conversation ultimately led to being invited onto his monster yacht that was in Saint Martin for dinner that night. From that point forward, they became great friends and the rest is history.

I want to give you another relevant story and this story is personal. My two daughters, who are both teenagers, called me in this code-red moment. They were in this heat of realizing that there are going to be tons of people evicted and homeless because of this eviction moratorium based on the quarantine during COVID. There were record levels of heat in the West and there was drought. The Delta variant was a scare because it was going to require masks to be worn again and potential school disruption. It even went to this Bennu Asteroid that was threatening to hit the Earth while the Taliban was taking over the world.

TWS 17 | Life Happens

Life Happens: How we show up is merely based on these primal instincts to be safe.

 

I went home and I was like, “First off, give me your phones.” We sat down and over dinner, had a several-hour conversation and exercise. I calmed them down and then I said, “I want you to take a second, step out of your body and look at the life that you get to live. We’re going to sit here all night if that’s what it takes and come up with 500 things that are amazing about life.” I had to prime the pump and it was a conversation we’ve had in the past. This is how powerful our primal instincts are.

I said, “We’re sitting here, eating dinner. We didn’t have to hunt for food. We’re eating fresh vegetables that we didn’t have to grow. We’re sitting at the perfect temperature because of the air conditioning. We have artificial light so that we can see and experience each other differently. We can look out our window. Because we live on this beautiful hill, we can see the city on one side and then we can see the mountains on the other. There was a sunset happening.” It was one of the most beautiful, picturesque views when they are able to step outside of themselves and actually see it. I said, “Frankly, the world should be in constant awe at the life that we get to live as you compare this life to those who lived 100 years ago.”

It took a few hours to get through this list, but we sat there and I wasn’t going to give them their phones back until we completed this list. After that, their whole demeanor changed. Maybe it was because they got their phones back, but they started coming up with ideas and being aware of things to be grateful for and aware of things that were going amazing. We went into, “There’s not a utopia. There’s no perfection in life. There’s always contrast.” The reason why I tell you these two stories is because there are some fundamental lessons there. The first lesson is how we show up in moments can completely change our life and destiny.

Second, how we show up is primarily based on these primal instincts to be safe and afraid of what’s going on. It’s ultimately this engagement of the fear part of our brain that is in constant operation unless we’re aware. News media and social media understand this fundamentally and most of what is talked about are negative. I would say 80% is negative and 20% is positive, which may be generous. The lesson is awareness of the fact that this is what is taking place with the information that we receive in life, 80% is negative and 20% is positive. It leads us to this necessity of having to have a strategy for determining what’s right, what’s positive and what I can be grateful for. The person that shows up with that state of mind versus the person that shows up in primal in that state of mind, opportunities are either passed on or capitalized on.

When we show up in this way, you have those billionaire relationship moments and that moment changed my buddy John’s life forever. Because I do lots of work and business with him, it has helped influenced my life as well. If we show up in primal, the lesson is that these moments pass by. Our life remains fear-based and stagnant. We’re in constant code red that impacts our health, relationships and ability to earn money. The list goes on. You’re probably asking what the strategies are in order to be aware of this. There’s the strategy that you, as a reader of the blog, are aware of. The strategy, first off, is asymmetric. Asymmetric means that the input, what it takes to do it, versus the output, what you gained from it, is multiple times the input.

Opportunities are either passed on or capitalized on. Click To Tweet

The strategy is simply a morning routine. That routine seems so simple, but what it does is arms you to maximize your day and moments because that’s where all the opportunity is. I’ll put a simple morning routine. It’s like a note that I have because I love talking to people and playing golf with business friends, especially in the summer when I get to meet and see my family. It’s a note that I share with them that’s a breakdown with links to the morning routine. I typically use it as well as a shortcut morning routine. Let me go into a few details of what’s in that note. There’s a short way of doing it and then there’s a longer way of doing that.

The short way is an exercise called priming. This is something I learned from Tony Robbins. It takes ten minutes. It’s life-changing if you can get in the habit of doing it. There’s a longer exercise which consists of exercise, prayer, meditation, visualization and personal development study. What this does is sets the stage for every moment that you will experience during the day. Does it mean that you’re going to be perfect in capitalizing on those moments? No, but it’s going to give you the upper hand. It puts you in that position of control so that the billionaire that you could have rubbed shoulders with or maybe did rub shoulders with, a relationship is established as opposed to a massive opportunity cost.

I hope you guys learned a lot. If you want to go deep dive into this, I’ve mentioned this before on the show. The deep dive is a course that I created and have iterated on. I’ve made slight improvements here and there. Some of you may have access to it. It’s a course called A Path To Financial Independence. I’ve put a lot of this in there, but it goes into a lot more detail and gives you some exercises that have made a massive difference in my life and I know that they will make a massive difference in your life. You can access this course. It’s something you have to pay for. It’s available at TheWealthStandard.com/freedom.

Let’s summarize this episode. Meeting a billionaire happens in a moment. Meeting your soulmate, the love of your life occurs in a moment. A life-changing business, professional opportunity, business idea, or professional idea too happens in a moment. Life happens in moments. The human experience seems to be designed so that we show up in primal and this state of survival. This is a challenge that we all have in common, but I believe it’s designed for us to grow and value the process of growing. You can have a huge influence, maybe in a greater influence, on your moments. The strategies exist, but they don’t work independently. You have to put forth a consistent effort. Practice makes everything permanent. Everyone, thank you guys for the support. Thanks for reading this episode.

Important Links:

Morning Routine 

Challenge – Commit to 30 days non-stop

LONGER WAY – When you have an hour

1. 10-15 min HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training)

2. Cold Shower – start with the last 30 seconds then add 15 seconds a day until u get used to it.

3. 10-15 minutes prayer, gratitude, visualization, and meditation
a. Priming (below)
b. Headspace or Sam Harris
i. https://hdsp.co/buddy/request/SYlktxz/O0nhLl
ii. https://dynamic.wakingup.com/redeemMonth/6ff7fb

4. 10 Minutes of positive Inspiration
a. Brendan Burchard – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brendon-show/id821746377
b. Darren Hardy – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/darrendaily-on-demand/id1449270369

SHORT CUT – When you have less than 30 minutes

  • Previous to Covid, I attended over a dozen of Tony Robbins events. Although there are some hokey parts of Tony and preconceived opinions, he is a freaking genius when it comes to helping people discover their best self then bring it to life every day.
  • His priming exercise is profound. If you have never something like this before, it will feel awkward and weird but just push through that.

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