As we near the year’s end, we shift from looking back at the year to thinking ahead to 2024. We take a moment to figure out what challenges we’ve faced and spot areas where our life might be a bit off-kilter. This sets the scene for considering what we want to shake up in the coming year. What tweaks can we make for a more balanced and enjoyable life in 2024?
In this episode, I have Sabrina Morris, a lifestyle Promoter and Entrepreneur. Sabrina shares about the importance of work-life balance, employee wellness programs, and workplace vacation policies. Moreover, Sabrina highlights how being part of a supportive mastermind group can bring positive changes mentally, and spiritually.
Tune in as we unravel the keys to a fulfilling life.
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Juggling Work, Life, and Holidays with Sabrina Morris
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to start talking to you about something a little bit more light, a little bit more fun, and that is going on vacation. We all need rest, we all need time away, and sometimes we all oftentimes need a change of scenery, a different point of view, a different perspective. To embellish on this topic, I’d like to introduce you to my guest today, Sabrina Morris, or Sabrina the Lifestyle Promoter.
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Hi, Stephen, and thank you so much for having me on today. I’m looking forward to working with your audience, having conversation.
Oh, for sure. So, I had read somewhere and I don’t remember the exact numbers, the startling facts around how much PTO, vacation time, etc., goes unused in this country right now. We’re in a situation where a lot of people just don’t feel like they can take their time off and they don’t feel like they can essentially take vacation. What do you think people need to do to feel more comfortable and taking what they should see is like just a normal part of their life and something that any person that works reasonably hard deserves to do?
Love yourself. And I’ll elaborate. I am known as enterprise architect, and as an enterprise architect, you go in and solve basically executive’s problems. I have an engineering background, a business background, and when you go in as a niche consultant and solve those problems and you’re wanting to take a vacation so that you can reboot, re-energize, and renew your mind, there’s an assumption that, all of a sudden, you’re not, and I’m going to put quotes, “dedicated.” So what I did is allowed that Sabrina’s not dedicated because she wants to take a break, influence a decision to use the time off or to take the time off. Now, even as a niche consultant, we have a little bit more flexibility because we can take time between projects. I did not. I caution each and every one of you not to make that. Take care of you. Love on yourself. Do what you enjoy doing. I really liked the way the Europeans do it. They work so that they can enjoy life. A lot of times, Americans and American companies live to work. The employees live to go work. Get up, you get ready, grind it out, for those of us who are still commuting, you’re commuting, you got the people who cut you off, you got to resist the road rage, then you get to work, deal with the fact that they don’t have enough staff, deal with the fact that they don’t love on their employees or appreciate what you do, you deal with all of this, and then you have to go back in the grind, drive back home, resist the road rage, and if you can rest, then it starts all over again. So you have to make sure that you love on yourself and your family.
Especially for those of you who are married or have a significant other, love language is quality time. Click To Tweetf you’re not spending that quality time, I’m sure they have reminded you of that.
It’ll come out one way or the other, right?
Yes, it will. So love yourself. Focus on taking a healthier approach to your work lifestyle. Yes, I know everybody’s got to go to work, pay your bills, we have obligations, but you also have an obligation to you and your loved ones.
So, what is the potential downside of loving on yourself? One of the things many people are probably fearing is that, okay, if I decide to work a few less hours, if I decide to not be the person that is willing to take on each additional task, each additional project, if I decide that, okay, I’m worth having a vacation, that something’s going to come down on them, whether it be their work be less quality or whether it be some punishment from the company, a lost promotion, a lost opportunity. Is that an accurate assessment of it or is that something that’s a little bit overblown?
So I think you hit the nail on the head. They do process those things like, “Oh, I want the next promotion.” I had to learn the hard way that there are companies out there that actually appreciate their employees. Maybe you want to take an assessment and say does this company really appreciate me and the quality that I bring to the position? If they do, they will be insisting that you take leave, for many reasons.
Yeah.
Reenergize. And when you solve problems, you have a different perspective. I’ve also done a training on momentum and motivation, and in that class, we talked about how to reboot on your vacation, because some of us need a vacation from our vacation. So there are strategies that you can leverage to do that as well. I say this to say you still need to keep your priorities in life. The company, being that I have worked with lots of C-suite executives, they’re going to keep their priorities. They are going to keep, I’m going to say that over and over and over, they are going to keep their priorities and they’re going to be important to them and they are going to do whatever it takes to get their objectives accomplished. So we, as employees or team members, need to do the same for ourselves.
If you go to work thinking you’re not replaceable, that’s the biggest mistake you can make right now. Click To TweetI have seen so many cases where employees burn out and they had to quit or they had to leave. I had one lady tell me that one of her team members even committed suicide. It’s not worth it. Yeah, it is not worth it. You have to take care of yourself because if you don’t take care of yourself, now what is your family going to do?
Yeah. Yeah, there are so many reasons. So it’s interesting that you bring up needing a vacation from your vacation because I’ve heard so many people tell stories of taking a vacation and coming back not refreshed for one reason or another. Maybe they’ve decided to overplan and be perfectionist about every little thing, or maybe they’re not really thinking about it in the right mindset, they’re trying to make it another version of accomplishing something, “I need to see this, this, this, this, this, and this,” is there a certain mindset we need to come into with our vacations to make sure that anytime we take a vacation, when we come back, we actually are rejuvenated, we actually are refreshed and kind of ready to take on coming back in the way a vacation is meant to work?
That’s a good point, because for a long time, I could never understand why anyone would want to plan every single thing. Like there’s no room to take a break, unless they plan it in the schedule. And then I started understanding that has to do a lot with the personality type. In that scenario, I would say it’s okay to delegate. I know that sounds scary to some people, they’re like, “Oh my God. That’s part of my fun,” because I’ve asked that same question and many individuals say their vacation starts when they start the planning process. Now, when I say, “Okay, guys, you can delegate a considerable portion of that, there are communities out there that will literally plan a great deal of your stay and then you’ll have your free day whereby, let’s say you pick up maybe two things or you don’t be so intense on the, “What is this? Four o’clock? Gotta get up. At six o’clock, we’re gonna do all these other things, and then at noon, we have to eat on noon. If we don’t eat by noon, we’re off schedule.” If you see yourself in that role, I want to challenge you to have a free day whereby you don’t know what’s going to happen. And then, if you say, “Okay, that’s way too much, I gotta know something about the day,” I’m like, okay, I’ll meet you halfway if you meet me halfway. I want you to take the last day of your escape, so let’s say you’re going somewhere for five days, on the very, very first day, because I know you’re a planner, I’m talking to the planners out there, I’ll get to everyone else soon, but for the planners out there, I want you to, day one, scope out a very quiet, secluded place on where you’re staying. You’re going to keep that place in your mind because, remember, you’re going to have one day you don’t know what’s going to happen. However, I’m going to give you a little context so you’ll have some idea. So on the last day, I want you to go to that spot. This is the plan. Okay, so now you’re getting the plans, you can’t say you didn’t have plans, it’s going to be nice. I want you to do nothing that whole day. Sit there and relax. Watch the birds. If you found a place playing in the pool and that’s relaxing for you, I want you to sit there and watch everyone play in the pool. Or journal. Think about a problem that you need to overcome or something you need to work on when you get back and start journaling. Does not have to have an order to it. Just want you to start running through ideas. Literally write those down and just take that last day and do nothing, meaning you are doing something because you planned to do nothing, okay? Plan on something. When you’re hungry, how about that? And then you’re going to have refreshments when it comes by, because some places are all included, somebody comes by and says, “Would you like something?” don’t say, “I didn’t plan to have that,” try something you never tried before and just relax and just breathe. Focus on breathing, relaxing. I like to meditate on God’s word. I’ll take a scripture and I’ll focus on that and then I’ll say, “Okay, God, what do you want to know about this that I needed to be in a relaxed state to really comprehend?” So that last day, planners, do nothing. Plan to do nothing on your last day.
So I’m guessing that when you say do nothing, you don’t mean like pulling out your iPhone and looking at random videos or even reading a book, like you really mean do nothing and allow your mind, allow spiritual, whatever you believe in, whether you believe in God or something else, to guide you to do something different than what you normally do.
Or you can go to sleep. How about that? Go to sleep on the beach, or go to sleep listening to the birds or go to sleep listening to the animals, depending on where you’re staying. Let’s say you’re on safari. I hear, I haven’t been yet, but I hear that you can hear the animals everywhere. Try and listen. Listen to the sounds around you. You brought up another good idea.
Yeah, that makes sense. Now, is this something people can incorporate into life outside of taking vacation? And let’s say something along the lines of the first Sunday of every month, I’ll take half a day or a few hours to just relax somewhere or, after church, I’m going to sit on a park bench for an hour or something.
Yeah. That’s actually an excellent idea. I call that a staycation because some of us have not accrued enough vacation to even take them. So what do you do in that scenario when the company is not allowing you to take any vacation because you just started a new position? How do you work that in? And you hit the nail on the head. You can take a day on the weekend, so many of us live in cities that people will travel from all over the world to get to. So, for example, here in Colorado, that’s known — here, it’s like the ski destination. If you’re a skier or if you’re a snowmobiler or an adventurer, you can take a whole day and do an excursion. Get up early in the morning, do your excursion, and then while you’re on that excursion, because you’re on a time crunch, many a times, you can book a shuttle from the airport to the resort, so on the way back while you’re riding the shuttle, that could be your downtime. You’re not driving, you’re delegating. You’re delegating part of the vacationing or staycation, if you will, to the driver. Now you can take a seat, you can relax, if it’s not dark, you can look out the window and look at all the mountains, take pictures. Just breathe and relax. That’s a good point.
So you talked a little bit earlier about kind of what seems like a somewhat default work culture when you mentioned, okay, you go in traffic you get angry, go to your job and so many studies have shown that more than half of people don’t like their jobs so most likely a job you don’t like and then you go back in traffic, you get angry, oftentimes this involves some sort of escape in the evening, whether it be television, drugs, alcohol, or excessive use of social media, and then kind of rinse and repeat the same day. We’re starting to question that now, especially since the pandemic with the quiet quitting, great resignation, all that stuff, but it seems like before the pandemic for about three or four decades, if not more, that default was kind of accepted, at least, as you said, in the United States. How do you think that that came to be, something that people just kind of accepted, like this is just how life is?
You’re going to have an episode coming up about that, I don’t know if you’ve missed the season, and he’s really great at explaining the whole where did everything originate. He and I had that conversation a while ago, let’s see if I can recall parts of it, but everyone definitely default to the episode that’s coming. I did a lot of research on my family history as well and I found out that, on my mother’s side, there were no slaves. They were farmers and, in that, there’s a cycle with farming. You plant, you harvest, you reap, and then you go to the next, you wait and you plant and you do it again. With manufacturing, that started to change. You’re not on the farm, you are actually reporting into work and now, instead of making the decisions on how much to plant, how much seed to replant, all the strategies that go with being a great farmer, now you’re showing up and having someone tell you what to do and then now you have to show up when they say you show up. Now, strategic thinking, if you will, was not exercised as much because now it’s like put the widget here, turn the screw, move it down the line, do the next one. So in that grind, if you will, I think it just bled into that. And the altar did not start encouraging unless, because I did research on my family, there was a lot of us to move. I mean, my grandfather owned three business, everything from a grocery store to a gas station, and I’m forgetting one of them. And I remember my mother, she was an entrepreneur as well and my grandfather said if he’d done half the things that my mother told him, he’d be a billionaire over and over and over. He didn’t do that. So, for those of us who do not have that family influence, that entrepreneurial influence, then all you know is go to school, go to work, get a job, and continue. You don’t know there’s options there. You don’t know other possibilities exist. So here we go with another challenge, so I challenge each and every one of you to start looking outside of your grind. What are you gifted at? You can say, “Sabrina, how do I know?” What do people compliment you on that you don’t think about because you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t really spend much effort on that, it just happened”?
Yeah. And you can like pay attention to yourself, pay attention to how you’re being responded in the community that you’re around and be like, “Oh, you know, maybe I am naturally good at this,” and this probably ties all the way back around to the first thing you said about loving yourself, because it seems like you have to love yourself in order to even recognize, yes, I am gifted at this and, yes, that is something that matters.
Yes. That’s on point. And kind of back up a little bit, when you’re getting input from other people, consider the source. I’m going to say that again. When you’re getting input from other people, consider the source. Do not take input from people that are negative all the time. Negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative. No, no. I’m talking those are genuinely giving you feedback that you can use, not that negative. If we stay positive — negative, that takes me a different way which I don’t think you should. So, when you’re getting that feedback, and it could be something you see as a hobby and you could possibly turn that into a business. I’m not saying quit your job tomorrow, because that’s a whole another strategy. Do facilitate a game called the Cashflow game, which is done with Robert Kiyosaki, it’s a great simulation. I used to write simulations for companies as well. It’s a great way to simulate your balance sheet. If you simulate your balance sheet, you can actually implement some of these entrepreneurial ideas you may have on the board before you act. And that’s something else I’ll do. I haven’t done that in a long time since Seattle — well, I did one like maybe a year after the pandemic — the plandemic. So, after that, I need to start doing, back to the point, I need to start doing more of these Cashflow games and they’re fun to host and facilitate, because I learn a lot from all of the players as well, and we have a strategy session before we start. We start by saying, “Okay, put an idea in your head that you want to implement in your life.” It’s a simulation. If you’re thinking, “Oh, I wanna buy more stocks,” that’s what you want to do. “Oh, I wanna buy more real estate,” that’s what you want to do. “Oh, I wanna invest in some businesses,” that’s what you want to do. “Oh, I wanna buy some CD,” that’s what you want to do in the game, and then see how it plays out for you. And I would say you want to take a nice sample so even if you have that strategy and work the game 15, 20 times, see how it works for you.
Yeah, you have to try it a little bit over and over again. And just for a little reference, in case anyone listening is not familiar with Kiyosaki and his main book is Rich Dad, Poor Dad, at least that’s the most famous one of his, Cashflow, it’s all about, if I’m describing this right, kind of setting up passive income so that, as opposed to kind of spending your whole life trading your time for money, which is what regular jobs are, you’re actually buying assets that are bringing you income and you can achieve financial independence.
Yes. Ever since I was in I think middle school, my mother would pay for me to go to training outside of the school. And I continued that as an adult. I continued that. And I was taking a class on investing stocks, and the instructor came to class with — I don’t have a good prop, but he had a stack of Benjamins, $100 bills about this thick, he just pulled out, and he fanned them, and he introduced himself and he’s fanning this money, he said, “What are these?” and no one said anything, but if those are mine, I think you should bring them over now and everybody…and so he said, “No, no, no, seriously, what are they?” I’m like, “I am serious, I’m not kidding, I will take the money, do I need to get up and come and get it, is that one of those tests?” He said no. So he was fanning this and I don’t know how many times he had practiced it but he put them back up and nobody got the answer right and he slammed it on the table and they just fanned out in a smooth way and he said, “These are my employees. I send them your work every day.”
So one way of looking at it is having your money go to work for you versus you going to work for your money. Click To TweetThat’s what his message was. Now, I have facilitated the game whereby individuals say, “You know, I like the grind. I wanna go to work the rest of my life.” Yeah, you’ve arrived, that’s what you want to do. Play the game from that perspective. And that’s what they do. The key is to be aware of the multiple ways that income is generated, then that’s why he has the quadrant. Once you figure it out, and I’ll go to the quadrant in a minute, once you figure out where you want to play in the quadrant, and it works for you, stay there. There’s nothing wrong with that, at all. But you need to be aware. And if you’re not sure and you want to look at some of the other quadrants, play there too. So many times, people make a decision based on hearsay or somebody said that doesn’t work. Well, you’re not the same person as them. You have different gifts. You have different skillsets. You have different qualities. You’re unique. So find out what works for your time. Now, the E quadrant we’re all talking about, that’s the employee. You get up every day, go to work for someone else, tell you what to do, they tell you when to go to the restroom, they tell you when not to, they tell you when to take vacations. They can tell you if you want to take a break.
Yeah.
Then there’s the S quadrant which is the self-employed person. This is usually a team of one and they all say, “Well, no one can do it better than me.” Not all the time but that’s how they think. However, is the S for the self-employed quadrant, if you don’t go to work, nothing gets done unless you’re strategic. You have automated systems involved. That’s a whole another topic.
Yeah.
Now, then there’s the B quadrant, for the big business. That’s where you leverage other people’s skills and talent and at least 30, 40, or 50 team members. Now you’re starting to get into big business, so you’re not the only one doing everything. You have a team of people with a collective effort. So a lot of E, employees, work for B, business. Then we have the investment quadrant, that’s where your money goes to work for you. That’s where my instructor when he came into the room, thick stack of Benjamins that I wanted to grab, he was going to give them to me. That’s where you have your employees, your Benjamins, your money goes to work for you and create revenue. So those are the four quadrants and then that scales and when we do the simulation, you’ll want to keep that in your mind and say, “Where do I really wanna play? And what does that look like for me and my family?”
It can be pretty hard when some of the values are different amongst family members. The E quadrant is kind of the standard quadrant. I feel like that’s the quadrant most people find themselves in. And for someone that’s never experienced life outside that E quadrant, never known anyone outside of the E quadrant, anything else can be a little bit scary or weird looking. Judging by the number of people who are unsatisfied in the modern world, there’s a lot of people out there where the E quadrant just doesn’t work for them. They don’t want someone telling them when you can go to the bathroom and when you can whatever else, what you should do, when you should do it, and where you should do it. And so they’re going to try to find a way to get into one of the other three quadrants. And so that can sometimes become a difficulty, say, because the E quadrant usually involves the standard nine-to-five workday, as we know it for most, at least the post-industrial service sector kind of continuing on that lineage from agriculture to manufacturing to now where most of our jobs are in the service sector, it’s mostly going to be nine to five, and so if you suddenly have a career pursuit or an income, financial pursuit that puts you into one of those other three quadrants, you’re probably not working the standard nine to five, you’re probably going to have different hours, you’re probably going to have the flexibility of saying, “Oh, I’d rather go to the grocery store on Tuesday at 11 because no one else is there,” and that’s wonderful, but guess what, I’m sorry, it’s Friday night and it’s the night everyone goes out but I got some stuff to do.
That’s where it becomes key to delegate. And I went to another training at the church that I go to, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs, and every year, we have a major, major train. Whatever you want to focus on around your business, you can get it there. And I went into one of those classes and the instructor kept saying over and over, he must have said it a hundred times, delegate, because so many people are so bad at doing it and I would challenge each and every one of you that if you cannot go on a Friday because you’re stuck doing all this work, that you delegate the work. Oh, you’re on a nine to nine job, and some of us even in the E quadrant are on a nine to nine. They pay you from for eight hours but they expect you to work 12 and 14. I’ve been there. I’ve done that before. So I tell everybody don’t be stupid like Sabrina, learn from her mistake. So, for those of you who are branching over to the business quadrant or you’re branching over to the investment quadrant, yes, there’s a lot to learn. There is a lot. I’m going to repeat that.
Because you need to delegate and trust, right?
You know, that’s a good point. That comes with your ability to choose between —
Yep.
— and you don’t get that opportunity to necessarily do that in the E quadrant. Some managers, even their leadership weighs on who they can delegate. Not talking about that scenario. I’m talking about those who do not get the opportunity to interview and choose their team members, you are going to have a learning curve. You’re going to have to learn what type of person works well with you, what type of person used to be looking for for that position. One thing my mother would always say is if you don’t know, you can always learn it. Start reading. Now, there’s so many classes on YouTube and you can pay for a class and watch it at your own leisure. There are so many things that you do to help you with the whole delegation.
Yeah, and I know there’s also so many personality assessments and even kind of work-related personality assessments to help people because I think one of the traps that some people will fall into when they start getting choices on who to hire is hiring themselves. And what I mean is like I can relate to this person because this person is like a carbon copy of me, but then that doesn’t really fill it out because everyone has strengths and weaknesses and you need to fill in the gaps, in a way. It’s like, “Well, I’m not naturally strong at this so I need to hire someone who’s better at that stuff who may be a very different person than me.”
Can you say that again? I think that is so not understood. That’s it. That’s exactly what you need to do.
Yeah, exactly. To put it in a slightly different way, I guess, but still say it again, I’ll just say that, oftentimes, the person that you need is a person that is very different from you in many different ways because they can do the stuff that you’re not naturally good at and then leave you to do the stuff that you are naturally good at.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And that’s an excellent criteria.
So you also talked a bit on your story, how you fell into that trap of where, a lot of people have that, especially when they start doing salary as opposed to hourly employment and it’s like, “Well, there’s a competitive landscape, you might get laid off, you might not get the promotion so we’re gonna start expecting more than the standard 40 hours a week of work from you.” What is your general method how you first came to the realization that there was something else out there and that you shouldn’t be doing this anymore and then got to where you are now?
My mother. I have mentioned this a couple of times on other podcasts that my mother was a huge influence and help in my life. One of the awful challenges that I faced early in my career, I wrote about it and dedicated it to her memory, and when my mother was still on the earth at the time. When she was watching me go through this time where my doctor was literally begging me to quit my job and she kept reminding me, “Baby,” she called us all baby, if you were one of her children, you know exactly what I mean. She would say, “Baby, you do not have to stay at the job. You have options.” She would say that you have options but I have written — my mother, you can read it all in her face, you knew what she meant. And I said, “You know what,” because I had done so many other types of training. I was always training on the stock market. There’s a group that I was listening to, we train in that area, so when I say I facilitated the Cashflow game, I also acted. There’s one thing to play the game and not take any action. You just wait. Well, play the game, so I’ll give everyone an advice. There was one scenario where I thought about buying a second home for the sake of having a second home, just to go away in the second home to a place where it was nice. Sunny. I did play this game and I lost. And I don’t lose. I play Cashflow game, I usually win, so much so that a lot of times I just don’t play so that it would be fair for everyone else. But this time, I lost so quick and it shocked everybody on the board. They’re like, “You lost. You lost. Oh, my gosh.” I did something that I shouldn’t do that I was thinking about implementing in real life. So when I say what do you do? If you know you’re overworked and underpaid, if you know you need to quit. If you have a doctor that you’re in that situation, you can quit your job. Try it. You can start looking at what other options have you opted for while you were working? Now, that’s nothing, you’re going to have to start some time. You’re going to have to start somewhere in some place. And I would say start by taking some classes or start by getting — you’ve heard that term of “side hustle”, to expose what you’re good at.
Yep.
There’s opportunities in direct marketing companies and the training is amazing. It’s amazing.
So then you’re right back where you started. But if you go and you find out, “Oh, this is not good for me,” now you can pivot and work on another potential side hustle, based on what others say you’re great at or easy to you or what’s easy for you to do, then you can pivot, go down that path. You can have challenges. When you don’t know, this is what my mother said, study, learn, and get an answer, implement and keep moving. But there’s two things that a lot of people don’t do. First, identify there’s a problem, maybe there isn’t. Identify there’s a problem. A lot of times they like to sweep it under the rug because it’s easier but it’ll come up in other ways. Your loved ones that telling you you’re not spending enough time or your doctor is saying you need to quit your job or you keep going to the doctor all the time because you’re overworked. The second thing was expose yourself to different things by taking action.
Yep.
I had one of my directors who say you need to do it anyway. I don’t care if you don’t want to go and your knees are shaking together, go anyway. In other words, you have to squash the fear. I know some people say a little fear is not good. No, Sabrina doesn’t agree with that. No fear is good. Have a no fear mentality. Now, I’m not telling you jump off the top of the roof, let’s not go crazy, right?
Yeah.
I’m not saying go do something off. I want you to explore new options as long as it’s not illegal, we’re not going to go there, or something that’s against God’s word, you’re not doing any cray-cray stuff. But something that’s going to give you an idea of how do you know you’re a writer if you don’t write? How do you know — Publish it. Not just write. “Oh, I can write.” Well, okay, but get it published and see what happens.
Oftentimes, also, people are a little bit afraid of embarrassing themselves and one of the things that I talk about quite a bit is because I live across the street from a school that has a basketball court and I would like to use this as an analogy because people oftentimes look at those basketball courts and they would look at that one guy that’s just amazing. The guy that’s just killing it, he’s making all the cool moves, he’s scoring tons of points, getting all the amazing assists and rebounds and I like to say to people, think about that one guy. There was a time in the past when he wasn’t that good yet, when he had to show up and almost embarrass himself on the way to becoming that badass. And so now, he is the man on the basketball court. Now everyone’s looking up to him and everything like that, but at some point, he wasn’t playing that good and he was still showing up.
Right. Or he was that person in the middle of the night that nobody out there going around shooting hoops and nobody else was playing him or he’s playing his dad or his cousin who’s better than — who’s a pro.
My idea is to get from one place to the next and what I call settling for less, living by the script, possibly exactly what we’re talking about, I go to work, I get angry on the commute, I get there, I get angry about my boss, I get home, I get angered by the next commute, and then I take that out on my loved ones at home and whatever, to get from that point to the point where you’re really thriving. I always feel like there’s four barriers to that success, with the first one being awareness, as you said, because you said you have to be aware, you have to understand that there’s other options. Awareness then action. You said that you have to do something. And then some form of sacrifice. And what I mean by that is a sacrifice in the form of some kind of hard work or some type of taking chances, some type of getting yourself out there when you don’t want to, when your friends are getting a beer, you’re working on finding clients. And then, finally, responding to failure, so responding to some sort of setback. It doesn’t have to be failure, that’s a word that people have a lot of different feelings about right now. There’s always going to be some kind of a setback on that journey.
Yes, that’s it. That’s it. And going outside of your comfort zone and even if you have a setback or a failure, and I’m going to use that word because, sometimes, failure is something to be excited about because you learn from it. Now, there’s so much metadata or data about what happened that you can go back and assess what happened and then make an intelligent decision on how you’re going to pivot. So the fact that you fail is like, “Ooh, okay, that doesn’t work but we’re gonna figure out that,” and then you can uncover a whole another realm of possibilities that you didn’t see before.
On your personal journey, did you have any of those experiences where you had to accept a setback of some kind and really take those lessons?
Oh, yes. I have some that are going on right now that I can talk about.
I’m assuming they’re more significant than losing one of those games of Cashflow?
Yes, very much so because what can happen is when you implement and you take action, you can actually lose some of those Benjamins that that is part of it. But to the point, you have to take a step back and assess and pivot. So what happened? Then, like I said, you look at the metadata, you look at the result. Many times, you either have to change your approach or reassess. As an enterprise architect, one of the things we would always do is we start with a high level of what is happening. I call those the high level sentiments. So, in every business that I do, I have what I call my big picture view, all of my high level activities that have to take place in order to accomplish a physical goal. Now, you can get metadata or data about each one of those high level activities. If the data points are not accurate, then you can go back and find out, okay, what do we need to change? What should we address to get the results we want? Now you have to know where you’re going. You have to know where you’re going. When you pivot and you implement, those two key words, pivot, implement, pivot, implement, now you have more data, did you implement in the right direction? Did you go in the right direction? If you did and you’re getting better results, great. I have background in lead too so everything can always be improved, no matter what. It can always be improved. We want to take another step back, yeah, we’re going down to the right direction, do another assessment, new golden objectives, okay, this is what we want to hit, let’s implement, take action. Did we hit it yet? Yes. Okay, we’re doing better. Or maybe we fell a little short. All right, let’s take a step back. It’s a repetitive — it’s always happens.
Yeah, so we all have to pivot sometimes. Sabrina, thank you very much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, giving us some ideas about what we can do, starting with loving ourselves and then going out and finding what it is that we really want to do and what really works for us given all the infinite possibilities out there in the universe. I’d also like to thank everybody out there listening today. Hopefully, you’re ready to go out there and make the life that you really want.
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About Sabrina Morris
Sabrina The Lifestyle Promoter has spent over ten years as a specialized consultant solving problems for corporate executives. As a problem solver, she applied her experience as an Enterprise Architect across all aspects of business. Her background as a Strategic Business Analyst, Change Strategist, Systems Architect, and Software Designer impacted her effectiveness as a problem solver. In addition, she leveraged the wisdom of her mother, who was a successful Real Estate Investor and Entrepreneur. As a passionate problem solver and writer, she helps those who want more than the status quo—those looking to make a unique shift in their lives and desire a lifestyle transformation.
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