069 - Pay Yourself First with Your Time

Our best relationships, our best situations, our best areas where we're going to have the most impact, the most enjoyment, the most fulfillment are gonna be when we're investing our time the way we most desire. I wanna share with you a very simple concept today that has paid off for me in so many ways when I've followed it.

We've heard the concept, pay yourself first when we talk about our finance. People have told us to make sure that we don't just spend our money on expenses and things and possessions, but that we save our money. We pay ourselves first, whether it's saving for our vacations, our education, the house we'd like to buy, whatever it might be, but that we make sure that we're putting ourselves at the front of the equation, that we make sure we're respecting ourself, that we're making sure that we are getting our financial and our abundance needs.

Now, this is something that's a simple concept and not everybody does this. Certainly a lot of entrepreneurs don't do this. I know when I started as an Entrepreneur, I didn't do this. I should have done it, and I knew to do it intellectually, but I still kind of ran my life and my business as a self-employed person just making money and as I'd make the money, spending it back out, but not thinking about how I would best grow the business and make sure I paid myself.

Well, similarly, when it comes to our time, perhaps the most important currency we have, we want to be able to pay ourselves first, and by ourselves I mean specifically, whatever it is that's most important to us. The relationships that are most important to us, the people that are most important to us, the activities, the causes.

So sometimes it might be that in our work world, paying ourself first is doing that work that is meaningful for us. That is our soul work that we believe we were put here to do. When it's outside of work, it might be about us investing our time, doing the activities we enjoy most, spending our time with the people we love most.

Investing our time in charitable causes that we believe in, whatever it might be. It's about making sure that we have time to live our life the way we most desire, not the way somebody else is telling us to do this. And so what I encourage you to consider is like anything else in life, we can look outside of ourselves for the control or the approval or the decision making for how we're gonna run our life.

Or we can look inside ourselves. And when we're looking inside ourselves, we can then decide how we're gonna do things, what our life's gonna look. And we can make sure that those things come first. Those things come before we give our time to the cause that maybe is not as important to us or to the TV show that is really not as important, or the email that is somebody else's agenda for us, rather than work in our own business first.

So again, this applies to your business. It applies to your personal. And what I'm gonna suggest to you is there are very few investments in life that are guaranteed return on investment of being high or good investments. And so when we talk about stock investments or business investments, we discuss, was the return on investment high or low?

What was it like? We put in some money. What did we get back? Was it worth. . Well, when we invest in people, when we invest in activities, when we invest in doing things, we also get some sort of return on investment. Now, maybe that's a good return on investment. Maybe it's something that we enjoy. We get to do work we love, or we get to do some activity we enjoy and we get to really share our gifts or share what's true to us, our person.

uh, whatever our truth is, and what I'm gonna suggest to you is just like there are financial investments that'll pay us back well, if we invest in them and we nurture them and we grow them. There are relationships personally that will nurture and grow friendships, business relationships, charitable relationships where we're giving in the community, and that's where we want to invest our time.

So I'm gonna suggest to you that there are plenty of responsibilities for you to do. There's plenty of other people's agendas for you, and that's fine. But we wanna make sure that you're getting to live the life that you choose, the life that you most desire, the life that you are designing. And that's so much of a mindset that goes.

Not only being a four day work week employee, or Entrepreneur or freelancer or side hustler or business owner, but being somebody that's getting to live your life the way you want, that's getting to know that the end of the week you can look back and say, yeah, I had a good week. I got to invest my time and spend my time with the people I enjoy most.

I got to do the things I love. And that doesn't mean we don't work. It doesn't mean we don't have to make an income, but it means we make sure that we are getting our needs met first in a sense that allows us to be energized and to be charged. We still have to pay our bills. We still might have some relationships.

We need to be involved in that we don't want to. But overall, our best relationships, our best situations, our best. Where we're going to have the most impact, the most enjoyment, the most fulfillment are gonna be when we're investing our time the way we most desire. So what I'm gonna suggest to you is just consider a simple thought right now.

What are the relationships that take up your time that really aren't where you want to be investing your time, and how many hours a week are you investing in those relationships? And while you're doing that, what other relationships could you be investing in that would be better for you? That would be more true to you?

A lot of the times we fail to realize that when we're not doing what we're called to do, or what's our highest good or what's most natural for us, that there is a cost, not just to us, but the cost to somebody else, not getting to experience what we would be. So if you think of your favorite musical artist and think about the chances are in their career, at some point somebody told 'em, ah, you'll never be a musician, or You'll never be that great.

And what if that person decided to invest in somebody else's opinion, to invest in somebody else's agenda for them, somebody else's dreams for them. That person might not be there. They might not have shared their gifts, their music, their message with the world, or if they're an author or an actor, an actress, or whatever it might.

So I'm gonna encourage you. This doesn't have to be dramatic or grand. It doesn't mean that the fate of the world is resting upon your shoulders. It's probably not any more than it's resting online. And yet, when we're doing what we're called to do, when we're doing what we love, when we're doing what we know that we're here to do, and we're contributing our gifts, not only are we setting ourselves up to make more money and impact more people positive.

We're setting ourselves up to share the type of interactions, the type of energy, the type of gifts that can't come from us following somebody else's path, somebody else's goals for us, somebody else's dreams for us. And so again, I encourage you to get clear about what is it. That are your most important time investments, whether it's time investments of you investing time, doing things you love, relaxing, creating, and yes, sometimes it might be relaxing and netflixing and chilling or whatever it might be, but at the same time, what are those things that also involve your creativity and your unique gifts?

And they might or might not make you money. So this does not have to be that these. Make you money. These could be things that simply you enjoy doing and you know it's your contribution. I often hear people say that they have heard that question of what would you do if you had a hundred million dollars in the bank, because that's your soul work, and in my experience, that's not your soul work.

That's your ideal lifestyle. If I had a hundred million dollars in the bank, I might hang out and throw some parties and that sort of stuff. What would you do even if you didn't have a hundred million dollars in the. As a father and as a parent, I know I'd invest that in our family and our children. And so that's the thing that I'm called to do.

So I encourage you to, again, think about where you're investing your time in relationships or activities or causes or organizations that are not most important to you, and I encourage you to think about where else could you be investing in Not only that, it would be more enjoyable for. But if you're not ready to, to take that for yourself or be that sort of, uh, selfish, if you have a judgment around that, where else could you invest your time that would better serve the world?

So whatever it looks like for you, if you feel you need to invest your time someplace better, that also serves great. Where else would you better serve the world? and then take this same question to your business, or if you're an employee to your workplace, where are you investing your time? That's not that great of an investment, and where could you invest your time that would get you the most impact for the people you serve that would most likely help you generate the larger income and ultimately create more freedom for you and more possibility for you to create that four day work week lifestyle or whatever it's you're looking to do.

So hope you find this. and if you all have questions on this, please let me know how I can best help. Create what you're looking to create. And then if you'd like to learn more about how you can create your four day workweek game plan, go to four day workweek.com/game plan. And there's a course there where you can start creating your four day workweek game plan if that's something you wanna do.

And this is your roadmap, whether you're going to be. An Entrepreneur or an employee, a freelancer, a side hustler, a, a startup, whatever it might be, getting clear about how you can make time for the most important relationships, the most important activities, and pay yourself first. You can get insight on how to do that.

As always, look forward to helping you and as I look forward, to serving you in the best way I can so you can help more people and make more money in less time. Do what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends, and your life.