Hey, my friend! What is up? And welcome back to another episode of Do Life Big. I am so excited to have you here once again. And I am coming at you from three nights in a row of broken sleep. Thank you very much to my three-and-a-half-year-old, Keegan. Oh, yes, we've been on the journey. We have been on the journey of trying to get him to sleep through the night, sleeping in his own bed. And just as I was about to lay down and follow through and make them go back to his bed, he spiked a fever. And then I felt guilty. So I just said, “Hey, you know what?” This was just last night. “Come in my bed. You can sleep with me. I know you're sick. It's alright.” But three nights in a row now of not very good sleep. But that's alright. Because that's a coffee is for, that’s what my energizes is for and you know who the heck needs sleep anyways, right? Will sleep when I'm dead. All right, I hope that you are doing incredible. I hope that you've been fantastic. And whenever you're listening to this, I hope that your day has been going great. And we're going to dive in.
And today, we're going to really talk about just this whole idea of losing your life to your job or your business. Now, I'm sure that we can all relate to this in some way, shape, or form. Or maybe, you know, somebody who was really just their entire life revolves around their work. You know, we live in a really fast-paced world we do. It's just constant, go, go, go, go go. And if we aren't careful, it's really easy just to get caught up in that go go go hustle mentality and that daily grind of just constantly thinking about, “Hey, what's next? What's gonna come next? What do I need to do next versus really focusing on living in the moment and being present at that moment?” You know, I think back to when I was living in Massachusetts; I mean, I spent my whole life there. I grew up there. I lived there for 35 years of my life. And I just remember it was so fast-paced there. It was so fast-paced. Everybody was always in a rush. Everybody was always hustling to get from one place to the next. And it always stuck to me. And whenever I was there, I would always think back to my vacations that I took to Hawaii. And they never, if you've ever been to Hawaii, you know that. What they say is we'll get there on Hawaiian time. So you'd be on a tour, and you'd ask, When are we going to get there? How long is this tour, or what time we're going to get there? And they always respond with the same exact thing. “We'll get there on Hawaiian time,” which is basically like we're going to take our time, and we're going to get there, or we're going to get there. And I really, really loved that mentality because it forces you to slow down and truly just enjoy the moment.
And one of the things I noticed when I moved down to Florida six years ago was I did notice how slow-paced it was down here compared to up north in Massachusetts. Times are changing now; even in just the past six years of me living here, there have been so many people that are just moving here, and you know we live or people vacation, so it's actually getting super busy, and I can start to kind of feel that busyness come into our life again that go go go everybody rushing from place to place to place again and I really don't like that.
And it's one of the reasons why I really love going to our places that we have up in the mountains of North Carolina because when we're there (it's an Airbnb; we have two Airbnb is up in the mountains; they're near Boone and Blowing Rock) but we rent them all year long. And we use them primarily in the summertime for our families so that we can escape the heat here in Florida, and I love going up there because it is such a different world up there. It is so slow-paced. It is so quiet, and it's so peaceful. And I just love when the kids go to bed at night. Right? Who doesn't love that? I just love when the kids go to bed at night, and we'll go out, and we'll sit on our back balcony, and I'll make my drink. And I'll just look up at the stars. And I'll hear nothing. Literally nothing. No cars, no traffic, and nothing except birds chirping. And every now and then, I'll hear something walking through the woods, and I'm wondering, “Is that the black bear isn't gonna come up to the house.” Anyways, it's just really, really nice to be able to have that opportunity just to force yourself to slow down and enjoy the moment, just be in the moment.
And so I want to talk about this today. And just as go, go, go, hustle, hustle, hustle of being tied to your job or being tied to your business where you're not actually allowing yourself to have that kind of balance, and be able to set those boundaries in your life. So that way, you can still get that peace and quiet, you can still get that calmness, you can still get that peacefulness, and you can still be successful at your job, or you can still be a successful CEO, whatever it is. And so this go, go, go, daily grind lifestyle that we have, it can really suck away you truly just enjoying your life. Because you're spending every single waking moment tied to your job, tied to your business, and it takes away from you enjoying your life and actually living your life.
Your life can sometimes become just revolve around your work, right? And you spend all of your time here on Earth, working yourself just to the bones, missing time doing the things that you truly love that bring you joy, missing spending time with the people that you love. And the reality is your life ended tomorrow. Your job would replace you in a heartbeat. And things would go on. I mean, that's just how it works, right? We're all replaceable. But the people who loved you and who are here on earth with you right now, the ones who are left behind, would miss you forever. So let's not try to be so caught up in a job that can replace you that you forget to spend time with the people who truly matter to you the most.
Now, don't take this the wrong way. I'm not saying that you shouldn't work. I'm not saying that you can't be successful. I'm telling you, I'm saying that you can have both. You can have a successful business. You can have a successful career, you can climb the corporate ladder, whatever it is. And you can have good relationships, making memories with the people in your life that matter most. It doesn't need to be one or the other. You would be irreplaceable to the people who are left behind and who love you. And we spend so much time focusing on just let's just climb up that next corporate ladder. Let's just hustle, hustle, hustle, let’s just hustle our butts off, just to get the next little raise so that we can use that to pay the bills or whatever it is that we can miss the things in life that really matter the most to us. So think about that. You know what really matters the most to you right now really give yourself some time to sit in the silence and think about that. What matters the most to you is what you're doing in alignment with that.
And so we can get into this relentless pursuit really of success if we don't pay attention. Now, listen, don't take any of this the wrong way. Having a job is obviously important, or running your business is important. We all have bills to pay. We all have families to support. We have children. We have vacations that we want to take with our families so that we can make memories because we know that at the end of the day, you can't take any of that with us. But at the end, what you have left are your memories; no one can take those from you. So it's more about how can we find this balance so that we're having success in our job but also allowing ourselves time to spend with the people who matter most to us.
The thing that gets tricky is most people think of success based on how much money you make, or buy, the car you drive or the house you live in, or the jewelry that you have your job title; the list can go on and on and on. But when you look at all of those things, all of those material things, are those things really who you are? No, they're not. That's not who you are. And so when you go down this path, it's easy to lose sight of what truly matters. No amount of money can replace the love and support you have from the people who are closest to you right now while you're here on this earth.
And so we need to start to adopt this mentality of abundance. Abundance, this abundant life, this abundant mindset, where you start to think, “Hey, I can have both a successful business or a successful career, and I can still have plenty of time to spend with the ones I love.” It's just that when we get wrapped up in this idea that we can't have both of those things. Or we start saying it has to be one or the other. That's just a belief in scarcity; that's all that is. You don't believe that you can have both. You think it has to be one or the other.
And this is where going in downloading the free guide that I created. If you haven't done this already, go to kathireuter.com/thinkthisnotthat. I'll put it in the show notes. This is where that free guide will come into play and will really help you out. Printed out, it has a list of all the most common limiting beliefs or negative thoughts that we think about on a day-to-day basis. And what you should think instead of that limiting belief, a more empowering belief, we don't want to get wrapped up in the scarcity mindset of having one or the other.
When I started my first health and fitness business nine years ago now before I started that, I kind of had that scarcity mindset; I didn't believe and didn't really know, to be honest, I didn't really know that I could have both. I didn't know that I could work and be successful, or run a business, and also be a stay-at-home mom. And it wasn't until I started my online health and fitness business that I realized, “oh my gosh, I can have both.” And this mindset of abundance came into play when I realized I can be home and be an awesome mom, and be present with my kids every single day and do the whole stay-at-home mom thing. And then, at nighttime or during nap time, I can be a kick-ass entrepreneur as well. And I can do both.
So let's start to adopt that mentality of we're not just having one or the other; we can have both. Let's stop living in the “or mentality” and let's start living in the “and mentality.” Start living more from this abundant mindset. Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And success is only fun and fulfilling when you have other people who can celebrate those wins with you, right? When you can pick up the phone, or you can send a text message and say, “Oh my god, guess what just happened? You're never gonna believe it. This is so awesome.” Sharing that success and that excitement with other people closest to you. But if you spend all of your time facedown in your work, blinders on, then you won't have time to develop any of those relationships in your life and make those connections. And then when you do start to succeed, you're going to be celebrating all those wins and successes alone. It's relationships and connections. And you don't need a ton of them. And you don't need fifty friends, but you need a couple of really good close relationships in your life that you can be vulnerable with. You can be your true authentic self with that. You can pick up your phone and share the good times, the things that are going awesome, and the bad times. That's it. It's relationships and connections. You need that in your life. But when you give all of your time and energy to your job or to your business, and you don't have that balance at all in there, you don't leave time for that. This is where you can start to feel really unfulfilled.
Here's the truth, when you pass on. At the end, no one gives a crap about your accomplishments or what your job title was, or what you were the CEO of or the revenue you brought in, or how big of a team you had; no one is going to remember you by any of that. What they're going to remember you by is the amount of the impact that you had on the people around you, and how you made them feel when they were around you. That's what they're going to remember. You can't take the money with you. You can't take the money in the bank account with you. What do you want to be remembered by? Let's try to live every day like this. What kind of things do you want people to say about you? How do you want your spouse and your children to remember you by? How did you make other people feel while you were here? These are the most important things in life.
I want you to be successful in your career. I want you to be a successful entrepreneur. But I also want you to be successful and have incredible relationships with the people around you, with your children, with your spouse, with your siblings, whatever it is, I want you to have both. And so we need to shift and start to focus on this balance that we can create. And it's called just like a work-life balance, really personal life, and work-life balance. And here's the deal with this. Most times when you're trying to go after this balance, I'm talking about right now when you're trying to get things balanced in your life, like you know, there's Whoa, this is way out of line. I'm definitely spending way too much time working here. I'm not giving my children the time and attention that they need, whatever it may be for you. Sometimes when you start to get things in balance, you're going to actually have your personal life kind of swing way out of balance before things start to balance out for you. And you have to be patient because sometimes you cannot have this balance right away.
It was kind of like I started my health and fitness business nine years ago. At the beginning. We didn't have the luxury of my husband and I going out on date nights every single week. Because, number one, we couldn't afford it. We did not have the money I was in massive amounts of debt, sinking by $1,000 every single month, so we couldn't afford to do that. And number two, the only time that I had to work my business so that I could earn income so could be home with my kids was at nighttime. So at the beginning, it was really hard. But it was a sacrifice that we had to make, it was completely out of balance at the beginning so that I could get that business going up and off the ground that first year.
Now, it's not a problem, my husband and I can go out, and we can take a date night every single week, whatever night that we want to go out. And it's no issue at all. So sometimes you just have to be a little bit patient with it and wait for things to get in balance for you. But doing things like setting clear boundaries for your work and personal life, like you've got to have working hours. If you have a job and you get up and you go into this job every single day. And you get home at six o'clock at night, and you have your work phone, put the work phone in the drawer; we're not going to look at the work phone the rest of the night because your working hours are done. Now, you're going to spend your time being present at the moment with your family, with your children, with your spouse, with your significant other whoever it is that you're with. And you're not going to look at that phone until tomorrow morning. The next morning when your working hours actually start. It's the same thing if you run a business; what are your business hours and scheduled time for your relationships that really will help if you actually schedule in time with the people who matter most to you just like you would schedule into your weekly schedule.
If you had to get a dentist done (you know, a dentist appointment done), or you were going to be doing your workouts or whatever it was, you schedule these things and schedule in the time that you want to spend with the people who mean the most to schedule time for the relationships, schedule in when you're going to do your date night. Maybe you're going to do a tennis clinic every Monday night with your friends, maybe you're going to do a girls' night once a month, maybe you're going to plan for Sunday cookouts with your neighbors, and scheduling your time with your kids and just remind yourself to be really conscious of this and intentional reminding yourself to be more present at the moment.
You can't spend so much time focusing on making a living that you forget to actually make a life. You weren't born to pay the bills and die. That's not why we were here. You were born to live an amazing freakin life and to thrive and feel fulfilled and have meaningful relationships in your life, and to make incredible memories with the people you love while you're here. These are the things that matter most. So what is that life that you want? and start putting things into place and making some changes slowly so that you can live that life that you want to live and not be so consumed just by working. Work really hard at finding that balance and really just remember what are and who are those things that mean the most to you and go from there.
So I hope today's episode really helped you out. I hope you love it. Thanks for tuning in. I think you're awesome. I believe in you so much. You know I love you. I really do. And I will see you the next time. Bye!
