That third question, how would you want to matter on this planet? What difference would you want to make? Who would you want to be and what would you want your legacy to be?
Based on that, saying, okay. Based on who I want to be, the mark I want to leave on this planet, right now, the way I’m choosing to live my life, am I being an example of how to live your life to become that kind of person? Or am I being a warning of how not to live your life?
And if people answer that question every day, it’s a very easy way to guide you to doing the right thing. Again, does that mean you’re going to be perfect all the time? Not a chance. Personally, in my own experience, I can’t speak for everybody, but I’ve never met someone who has always done the right thing all the time everywhere, every place and every single moment.
Everyone has their moment of screwing up. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you take that gut check and you say, listen. I’m being a pretty good warning right now. Well, here’s the good news. You have right now in this moment to change your path. To say, listen, I’m no longer going to be a warning. I’m going to choose to be an example.
How am I going to do it? I’m going to clean up my act. I’m going to get my stuff together. I’m going to focus on how I want to live my life. And every day I’m going to take one step forward to make progress towards turning my ideal vision into reality.
And if you look at your life and you’re honest and you’re not being overly confident but you’re just being honest with yourself, and you’re like, listen. I’m being a pretty good example right now. Again, listen, how can I make it better? How can I improve? How can I continue to stay on this path that I’ve worked so hard to build and continue to keep moving forward?
The trick part is that there are a handful of people. I have the privilege to speak to an organization next month called Future Docs. And these are 4,000 students from around the country who are in high school, who decided they’re going to go into the medical profession.
They’re straight A students. They’re some of the hardest working young people out there. They all have to qualify. They need letters of recommendation by their teachers to get into this event we’re doing. And there are Noble Laureates. There are all kinds of very, very high level people in education and science that are speaking.
And I have the privilege to address these young people. And the tricky part is when you’re already doing something that puts you in the place of being an example, sometimes you’re overly critical.
And sometimes doing all the right things but being so critical on yourself is actual being a warning. Which is tricky because you’re doing all the right stuff. You’re a beautiful example of how to succeed in school. How to get great grades. How to do all this stuff.
But emotionally, you’re a warning. Because you’re constantly picking at yourself. You’re constantly beating yourself up. You’re constantly tearing yourself down.
So here’s the other place to use these questions. Comb through what we refer to as those major areas of your life. And say, listen. I’m going to be honest with myself. Overall, I think I’m a pretty good example of life. But I’m going to now comb through each category in my life and see if there’s any place I can improve on that might just be a little bit of a warning.
You know, you’re overly critical of yourself. You’re being a warning. You need to learn how to relax and enjoy yourself more and to really enjoy the process of kicking butt and getting great grades and growing who you are as a person.
If you’re overly critical on your sales techniques, if you’re overly critical on yourself of being an entrepreneur in the world, you need to learn how to enjoy the process more for those guys out there.
And for you ladies, I know you all have that little voice that constantly picks at yourself. You need to learn how to enjoy that process. And how to enjoy critiques from yourself and from others. And really listen to it as ways of people investing and trying to make you better, versus tearing you down or showing you what’s wrong.
And you start to learn these very simple techniques and how to integrate them into who you are as a person. And all of a sudden, everything becomes about helping life improve and helping grow and helping love and expanding who you are as a person and what you do on this planet.
Jack: Yeah. I think it’s important to point out that the example or the warning, there is no neutral. Neutral’s not a choice, right? You’re one or the other.
Jairek: Yeah. The easiest way to think about that is everything in life is either growing or it’s dying. If you don’t believe me, watch a tree.
It’s not that complicated. It’s either growing, giving fruit and expanding and literally getting bigger and getting fruit and offspring all day and all year, or the moment it stops growing and giving fruit, it instantly starts dying. There is no transition period where a tree just sits still. It’s either growing or dying.
