Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Happy New Year to everybody. I hope everybody had a great New Year's Eve. Hope celebration into New Year's was a wonderful thing that you enjoyed. If you went to a party or you didn't go to a party, and it was just you and your significant other, your spouse, your husband, whoever it was, I hope everybody enjoyed the fact that we have gone from 2024 into a whole new year. So before we get into the podcast itself, I want to go back and talk about Christmas. Christmas is very important to me. I believe that because it represents the birth of Jesus Christ. It provides me something that is wonderful. If you said, imagine the possibilities, it's almost unimaginable, but it provides me an opportunity to accept Jesus as my Savior and have life forever living in heaven with him. It's a great opportunity. It's a great thing. Now I have a personal relationship with Jesus, and I think that's a great thing. I don't pray well. So the conversations, and it's actually a conversation I have with him, are interesting. And sometimes he answers my question or my conversation, what I'm asking him or asking for right away. And sometimes he doesn't. And those times he doesn't. I almost feel like he's a mentor in that he doesn't want to give me the answer. What he wants me to do is discover the answer on my own.
[00:01:40] And if I don't do that, if I get stumped, then he will eventually give me the answer. And I think things are done in God's time, not mine's. I just want everybody to have that same thing, because I can tell you it's awesome, it's cool, whatever word you want to use to describe it. Now, I know everybody doesn't feel like I do. So I just want a simple agreement. Those people that don't feel like I do, I want you to agree that you can feel that way. It's okay. That's probably not the word, but I'm going to use it. It's okay to feel that way. And the only thing I ask of you is that you allow me to pray for you, because I'm going to do it.
[00:02:25] Hopefully one day everyone that listens to this podcast, everyone on the planet, will have the same feeling that I have, the calm comfort that goes along with knowing what your future is, knowing where you're going at the end of your life, and everything else. So know enough on that. Let's go back to July 1st.
[00:02:45] July 1st was the day that I published my first podcast. Subsequently, I did one on the 1st and 15th of every month from there until the end of the year, until the end of 2024. So I did 12 podcasts. Now my daughter created and maintains a website for me and I think that's great. It's imaginethepossibilities. Life is the URL for it. So I have a website, I have everything. And I posted my first podcast and I was elated.
[00:03:18] I did the second one, the third one, and did all 12 of them and each one of them I think I got a little bit better. And I learned things about podcasting and recording and everything else. So it was good. Now I want to take a minute and thank a couple people. I want to thank my wife. She's been my number one cheerleader when I was. And if anybody's listening to podcast one, they'll know all the details. But when I was covered in self doubt, let's just say that she kept encouraging me and trying to get me to post a podcast of complete one and everything. So her encouragement was one reason I finally got this point. Another reason was my daughter. She was the same way. She was encouraging me and obviously designing the website and everything else with all of that and Jesus, I finally did it. And I have been elated since then. It's been a fun adventure so far and I look for more fun in the coming years ahead. So anyway, and I want to thank a couple more people. A couple more. I want to thank my son, I want to thank all of my grandchildren, everybody in the family. And I want to thank a lot of friends, Rick and some of them, Glenn, that all encouraged me to do this. And it took me a while, but I got there and I just want to thank everybody. So here's the deal.
[00:04:55] It's January 1, 2025.
[00:04:58] We've got a whole new year, a clean slate. We can start and do whatever we need to do to accomplish the things we want to accomplish in this year. Now, I know we all have some things that we probably didn't complete in 2024 that we hoped we would. So let's focus some attention on those first and get them done, get them completed, get them off our list and everything. But let's start looking at the new year and what we can do and what we can accomplish. And I believe everybody can accomplish remarkable things. So let's figure out how to do it and get it done. I'm moving into season two. This is season two, Episode one, and I plan on doing the same thing this year as I did last year. I'm going to publish a podcast on the 1st and the 15th of each month. So that's 24 for the year. Also probably going to throw in some other stuff, maybe a podcast or maybe some other things that I'm looking into doing. So hopefully we can start helping each other, helping each other reach our goals, making ourselves better and all that. And that's the real motivation for me of this thing is the whole thing started because I believe that the only way I can be successful is if everyone around me is successful. And success is defined by the individual. I can't tell you what you have to do to be successful, and you can't really tell me what I need to do to be successful. But together we can be successful. We can figure out how to do it, what we need to do. And I'm here to help if you need some help with it. Here's something I think we all need to practice this year, and we may already have been doing it, but forgiveness. We probably left 2024 with some things that we did that maybe weren't good for someone else and probably angered them or something. And we also probably had people do the same thing to us and probably angered us some. So we need to practice forgiveness. And when you think about forgiveness, it's healing for us. It may help the other person tremendously, it may make the situation as bad, better, may make it great. But to forgive helps us if we have anger over it or we're unhappy because of it or whatever. To forgive another person will heal some of that and the same thing. Ask for forgiveness. If someone's hurt your feeling, then talk to them about it and maybe reach the same situation where that you both realize that you were wrong. And all of a sudden instead of anger and everything you feel love, hug each other and everything's good with the world. So let's just try to do the best we can do and practice forgiveness in 2025.
[00:07:59] That's one of the things that's important. The other thing I talked about in my very first podcast, how long it took me to get to this point, and it took me two years. And most of that two years was because of self doubt. If you're like me, you're gonna find yourself doubting your ability, doubting your skill, doubting whatever it is. But it's something that keeps you from reaching a goal. You need to get over that self doubt. When you think about where you are today, look at how far you came when you started out in your career, in your personal life, in your spiritual life. Look where you started and look where you are today and think about the things you accomplished moving forward. Those accomplishments are important. Realizing that you've come a long way since the day you started is important. And once you do that, a lot of the self doubt goes away. If you need help, ask somebody. Talk to your spouse. Brenda knew I had self doubt and she encouraged me through it. Jesus knew I had self doubt and he encouraged me through it. To say it just, poof, one day went away is not true. It took a while, but that's all right also. So just practice it, get better at it, get rid of it, I guess is the real way to say it. Here's something else.
[00:09:22] Anger. We need to let go of anger. The thing about anger, Emerson said in a quote that I really like, for every minute you spend angry, you lose 60 seconds of happiness. Now think about that. If you get angry, it doesn't just, it's poofing, it's gone.
[00:09:47] It's a problem.
[00:09:49] It affects us physically.
[00:09:51] I think in one podcast I talked about it, but I got angry. And I'll tell you about what I got angry about in just a minute. But I got angry and I was headed to my doctor's office. When I got into the doctor's office, the first thing they did was check my blood pressure. Well, my blood pressure is normally really good, but it was, according my doctor, out of sight. It was, it was way too high. And she asked me, her name's Brenda, too. So Brenda asked me why my blood pressure was up, was I taking my medicine? Yep. She said, do you check at home? Yeah, it's normally good. She said, okay, why is it high now? And I explained that my anger comes out in a certain way when people, this is so unlike me, but it's a habit. I know it's a habit because Brenda, my Brenda, keeps telling me about it. I get in the car and I start driving and somebody does something in front of me. They turn without using their turn signal. Or we're on a road that the speed limit is 45 and they're going 25. I get angry, I get upset by it, and I fuss at the person, which is really unlike me. I tell them, you need to move on up, get up to at least the speed limit, whatever it is. But I get angry about it. When I get angry, I talk out loud and Brenda says she'll sit over in the passenger seat. And then she's like, they don't hear you. I'm like, what? She said, they don't hear you. You're the only one upset. They don't know they're doing anything wrong. They probably don't care they're doing anything wrong because they think they're okay. They're just driving down the highway and you're the one all upset. That will manifest itself in physical issues like my blood pressure being up. So Brenda, my doctor told me, said, let's just chat. I'll check your vitals and all that. Then we'll let you sit a little bit and calm down. So we did. And it was about 10, 15 minutes went by and she said, let me check your blood pressure. She checks it. It's back where it's supposed to be. Anger and getting upset will truly be manifest itself as a physical problem.
[00:12:03] Having blood pressure go up like mine did is scary. Now it's a habit. Like I said, this whole thing with. And it's only habit I've got. Well, let's not say it that way. It's a habit that I've got that I've had for a while and I need to get over it. I need to break the habit because that's the only thing that's going to fix it. Need to break the habit. I need to get in a car and drive around for an hour without saying anything, without thinking anything, without getting upset. I need to get rid of this habit because bad. That's it. That's it. So how that relates to my happiness is important. Like Emerson said, if I'm angry, I can't be happy. So that's another issue in anger is your unhappiness. And so I really.
[00:12:52] I'm going to commit to everybody here. I'm going to work on this thing diligently for the next two months and see at the end of two months if it isn't significantly better or broken completely. So there's my commitment to you. I want to talk about three things. Those three things. The first one is a statement.
[00:13:13] They're part of my positive affirmation, and I think they're important. And I think there are things that everybody should look at. The first one is I will become a better version of myself one day at a time. Baby steps. Every day we ought to do something, maybe multiple somethings that make us better. Better personally, professionally, or spiritually, or all three. But we need to focus on that and we need to pay attention to it and we need to work on it. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I'll strive to always be moving forward. Now think about that. Isn't it a Good thing. If we're looking at reaching goals or dreams or whatever, we need to always be making progress to that, to reaching it. So just think about that each day. That I want to always be moving forward. I don't want to regress, I don't want to fall back. I don't want to stop making progress. So that's important. And here's one I think, and like I said, these are part of my positive affirmations, and they can be part of yours if you want to. But I will not let others impose their limitations on me. How many times have we let people in our life say, well, you ought to do it this way, or you should be doing this instead of that, or you really can't do that. You don't know how to do that. Well, if I don't know how, I'll find out. I mean, we got Google, you know, if I don't know how to do something, I'll go on Google. I'll go to YouTube, I'll figure out. I'll find out how to do it and then figure out how I can do it. But don't let other people. Don't let the naysayers of the world affect how you act and the things that you want to do personally in your life. Don't let them drag you down to their level. Just ignore it, be a duck. Just let it run off your back. Don't pay attention to it. The last thing is. I want to talk about setting goals for just a minute. Now. I believe in goal setting. You can pretty much ask anybody. I got a promotion one time, and the president of the company, it was a fairly small company, but the president, the vice president and my director that I was reporting to came down to my office in Atlanta to tell me about my promotion to a director. And they explained everything. They explained what they expected me to do moving forward, told me about the pay raise I got and everything else. And ask them. After they were all done, this conversation started between the three of them, and I interrupted them for a second, asked them, I said, is it okay if I call my wife, if I call Brenda and let her know about this promotion, everything? They should. Sure, go right ahead. So I called Brenda and I told her about the promotion to raise and everything. She was very excited about it and proud. She mentioned words, she was proud of me. And that was great. So we got done. I said, I love you and hung up. And I turned back around and I had a. Trying to think. I think it was a compact iPad.
[00:16:20] It's Like a smartphone today, except it didn't make phone calls. And so I had my goal in there and. And my goal at the time was to become a director. And I just accomplished my goal, which was great. So I turned around and they were still Bob and Joe and Nick were still having their conversation. So I started typing into my iPac.
[00:16:45] I put an accomplished beside the goal I had, and I typed in new goal in. So they happened to have this little lull in the conversation. And. And I believe it was Joe turned around and he said, what are you doing? And I said, I'm setting a new goal. I said, I'm taking my new goal. I said, I just completed the one I had. I said, I got another goal. I need to move. I need to make myself to help drive myself. I guess I need to set a new goal so I'll know what I want to accomplish next. So I finished typing. He said, can I ask you a question? I said, sure. He said, what is your goal? Do you mind telling me? And I said, no. And he said, what is it? I said, I want your job. He's vice president of the company. Joe, I want your job. And he laughed. And he said, well, that's good, because I want Bob, who's the president of the company. He said, I want Bob's job. And Bob piped up and said, well, that's great, because I want to retire.
[00:17:36] So we left it at that.
[00:17:39] And I did. I set a goal to be vice president. Ran out of time, ran out of energy, ran out of time, because I wound up retiring before I reached that goal. But that's okay. I made progress and stuff in it. Here's the second thing I want you to think about when it comes to goal setting. I think goals need to be reasonable, practical and attainable. I think that's important. I see things talking. I see people sometimes talking about big goals, impossible goals, and I sometimes agree with that. But I don't really agree with. I think you've got to set goals that you. You can obtain. It would be like me setting a goal to become president of the United States. That's not reasonable, practical, or obtainable for me. Talk Southern. In case you all hadn't figured this out, you know, I'm not sure that I'm equipped or could ever be equipped to be president. And besides that, I don't want to really be president. So reasonable, practical and obtainable. The second thing. Dream, dream, dream big. Dream big with understanding that at some point, whatever you're dreaming will in all likelihood become a goal. So dream big, set your goals high, dream big, make them your goals, and keep going through life one step at a time, one day at a time.
[00:19:00] That's all I really wanted to say today, so let me close this thing out.
[00:19:06] I appreciate everybody that listens to this podcast and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking time out of your day. We're allowed 24 hours a day and for you to take 15 to 25 minutes, whatever the podcast happens, to be long and listen to it, I really, truly appreciate that. So keep that in mind and keep listening. I'd appreciate that too. Think about the fact that as we go through life, we just need to get better one day at a time. That's all we need to do to be successful. If you don't know something and you want to know it, then figure out how to. You want to learn to paint, play a piano, whatever it is, figure out how to do it, do some research, whatever you need to do, and then move forward with it. That's truly what you want to do. Everything doesn't have to revolve around your professional life. A lot of stuff needs to be and truly does need to be about your personal and your spiritual life. So keep those in mind. Try to balance that out. Hard thing to do. Here's the thing. I wish you much success and I want you to remember that your future belongs to you. Stay humble, be kind, love deeply and laugh often. I hope you have a super day and I pray that God blesses you and a super way. Take care. God bless.
