Did Someone Push Pause; Steve Sims

Hey, how’re you doing? This is Steve Sims, with The Art of Making Things Happen podcast on rather strange times. You see, quite simply, today is not a normal day. We’ve got everyone throwing negativity at us, everyone saying loads of information, loads of facts and figures which can’t be validated, and they really don’t know because no one knows what they don’t know.

We’re in a state of chaos. We’re in a state of distraction and disruption, and quite simply, it’s up to us, the entrepreneurs, to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Now, at the moment there’s a number of things that we can do that we haven’t done in the past. You see, we want to pause now. Now is the time that we can actually look at what we’re doing and refine it.

You see, this is not like times that have ever, ever happened before in the past. We’ve had wars, we’ve had recessions, we’ve had terrorist attacks. We’ve had all of those things, to the point that we know how they’re going to pan out. We know how to react. There’s a recession? Well, you can still go down to the bar and drink with your mates. There’s a terrorist attack, and while security increases, you can still travel the world.

You see, now we’re all on lockdown. For a lot of people, they haven’t been able to leave their house, their home, their area, and go any further than the grocery store. That’s concerned a lot of people, and as one of my earlier podcasts said, social distancing has bothered us now, and quite rightly so, and good because we’re going to do something about it.

But what’s really got to us is the ability that we can’t connect, and where we need to find some beauty, some silver lining in today, and I actually believe it’s in your feet. You see, as entrepreneurs we run at 200 mile an hour. We’re constantly looking forward, constantly looking for the latest opportunity that we can jump in and conquer and dominate.

Now, in doing so, occasionally we get to look left or right and see what the scenery is like, but most of the time our eyes are dead straight ahead. They’re never behind, and they’re never at our feet. They’re never down because, quite simply, if we took a pause to check on our flow status, our chat bot funnels, or any of our other business ideas that sounded good at the time, while we’re looking down just to make sure everything’s working okay, our competition is going to leapfrog us, and get in front, and steal the deal. We’re petrified of that happening.

Well, they’re in the same boat now. Now, you can either be the camp that says, “Hey, I’m going to see how much Netflix I can watch,” as though you’re going to get an award for wasting your life, or you can actually focus on, okay, how can I take the best out of today? How can I refine myself today? How can I sharpen my tools before I get on the battlefield?

Because as far as I’m concerned, whenever we’ve looked at any kind of history, no one’s ever said that when the battle started, that’s when everyone sat down and started sharpening their knives. You’ve got to be prepared for what happens after this. You’ve got to be prepared. You’ve got to work on the greatest asset within your four walls, and it’s you.

If you are the ones that choose to ignore these moments, not refine your relationships with your loved ones, there’s nothing to stop you picking up that antique object, the phone, and dialing people. FaceTime. Get out there and reach out to people. This is the time that we should be doing it. We should be looking at everything we’ve done and fine tuning it, and when it doesn’t make us grow, when it doesn’t make you stronger, when it doesn’t make us more impactful, get rid of it.

One of the things I did was I printed off my credit card statements. I’ve got three credit cards, printed each one of the credit card statements, and over the last three months I looked at anything under $39, and I noticed I had quite a few subscriptions that were so trivial that I didn’t ever notice. I didn’t do anything about them. Of course, those things mount up.

If they aided me, great. Maybe I’ll look at doing a year-long and getting a discount because I bought the year-long program. What other opportunities do they have within that program that I can be learning about during this time? If I wasn’t getting any growth out of it, I wasn’t getting any benefit, if it wasn’t making me smile, cancel it and save the dollars.

You see, you’ve got a beautiful moment now to clean house, and everyone is going into their wardrobe and cleaning out the shirts and skirts that they weren’t wearing, and bought and thought it was a good idea, but never worn. We’re also cleaning out our desk, we’re cleaning out our mind, we’re cleaning out the stuff that doesn’t benefit us, and the stuff that does, we’re going to sharpen before we have to go into the battle.

Now, at the moment is a distracting time, but here’s the beautiful thing. We’re all playing the same game. How you play it is up to you, and I’m hoping you’re going to be one of those that, hey, you want to sneak a binge watch of your favorite episodes in every now and then? That’s absolutely fine. But now is an opportunity that we have never, ever, ever seen come our way before and I don’t want you to waste it.

You know full well you’ve probably got a couple more weeks of this. Why don’t you start learning a language? Why don’t you start reading more books? Why don’t you start cooking? Why don’t you start having those conversations that maybe you’ve never been able to have before with the people in your home or the people on the other end of the phone you need to talk to? Okay?

Don’t waste this moment. I’m not. The people that I coach, the people that I work with in An Entrepreneur’s Advantage and Speakeasy, they don’t. We’re the payable that say, “Hang on a minute, where’s my silver lining? What possible brilliant idea could be conceived in these moments where I can reflect and I do have the time to be able to pay attention to things?”

I care about anyone actually paying attention to these podcasts, I care about anyone that’s taken any time in my world, and I care about anyone that hopefully I’m relating with, that maybe just a tiny little thing I can say can help you. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, there’s a million other podcasts out there. Go and subscribe to one of those.

But I honestly, honestly want you to look for the silver lining today. Wake up tomorrow morning and loudly ask yourself, “All right, where is my opportunity in today?” That opportunity may be just in flicking through a book.

This is Steve Sims and that’s another episode of The Art of Making Things Happen in these strange and distracted times. I want you to do something wonderful with your life. Don’t waste it. If you do see a series you really love, share it around with your friends, but don’t let it consume your life. Until next time, bye.

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