Trading Against Good
Without knowing what’s most important in OUR life, anything and everything feels like an opportunity. And if we don’t take up on them, they feel like missed opportunities.
Without knowing what’s most important in OUR life, we try to please many.
Without knowing what’s most important in OUR life, our filters are weakened. “More” becomes our only life metric.
More shoes.
More technology.
More food in our fridge.
More tricked out stuff for our car.
More decorator items for our home.
More paying attention to what others are doing.
More nightlife, more networking, more strangers in our life.
Here in Sunday Morning Joe, I regularly refer to the daily practice I perform every morning — my routine of self-investment exercises that anchors my pursuit of better all-around health. Day by day, month after month, a little morning time reserved to move, reflect, document, and create with attention to what’s most important in my life.
Today marks exactly three years of Sunday Morning Joe. Three years sharing bite-size actions and moments that became the backbone of every elevation I can recall in my life since I started writing.
Sure, I work through challenges and adjustments to the routine — I subtract frequently and add carefully. After years of repeating this practice, I better understand the depth and power of small steps forward every day and how these steps move me closer to states of awareness and happiness. And how these steps move me further away from the desire to have more.
As I think back to the first several weeks writing this weekly letter to you, I was uncertain about many things.
Uncertain about what I wanted to do in my life.
Uncertain about how I would be perceived by others.
Uncertain about what was most important to me.
When I sit down to write each week… it really does feel like an experiment, that in some very small way, eliminates any extraneous noise and weeds away distractions that don’t matter.
What remains is valued. Less, not more. Deeper, not wider. Start lines, not finish lines.
The other evening, while reading a book recommended by a close friend, I was reminded that the path to what matters most becomes clear only when we recognize precisely what we are willing to give away and remove.
I put down the book and picked up a pencil to quietly list my give aways. Then I decided it might be okay to share them, because if I hadn’t removed them from my life, I wouldn’t have the time, focus, and enthusiasm each week to exchange ideas and thoughts with you.
So here goes:
I traded away a steady salary.
I traded away my first language.
I traded away familiarity and comfort.
I traded away an executive position in sports.
I traded away social media influence and attention.
I traded away the established inroads that point towards American society’s expectation of a successful life.
Perhaps if I had been handed this list three years ago, I would have been overwhelmed by the MORE of it all. But that is the beauty of “Small Steps Every Day.” It takes you on the path of less… a little at a time.
And, what remains, is what’s most important in YOUR life.
With gratitude,
Joe
Hi, I’m Joe, the owner of 5 With Joe Performance Coaching. My clients are leaders, organizations, and teams who utilize my Olympic Gold Medal performance strategies and 40 years of navigating whitewater river rapids to streamline decision making and actions when engaged in complicated river currents of business and life.
The best way to interact with me is though Sunday Morning Joe, my weekly newsletter that explores the art of improving performance, overcoming challenge, and aligning with purpose for Sunday readers in search of more depth and motivation. Subscribe HERE for free.
