Sit & Talk: Dream Not For Sale

We challenge ourselves to name the big dream we’d never sell, then we get honest about how life still buys it from us for pennies through small daily choices. We lay out how to stop drifting, protect what matters, and start buying the dream back with simple, consistent actions. 

• naming a dream and why it matters beyond money 
• how comfort replaces courage and approval replaces purpose 
• why “I’m so busy” can be a quiet dream sale 
• survival mode versus a life built for significance 
• choosing purpose over a safe path and the real cost of time 
• how the past can trap focus and shrink forward momentum 
• treating time like a registry that reveals true priorities 
• keeping a “Not For Sale” mindset against opinions and convenience 
• using penny actions to rebuild discipline and direction 
• protecting dreams with boundaries, clarity, and consistent action 

Any thoughts, comments, or questions? 
Look forward to seeing you right here next time on Sitting Talk.

https://aarondegler.com/

Transcript

Welcome To Sit And Talk

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Walk and Talk. Thank you so much for joining us. If this is your first time here, I appreciate you joining us. Actually, it's walk and talk. Actually, we're sitting talking. We just join our live call each week as we have a mental health topic that we really work on mental conditioning just as we do our physical body. We have to strengthen, we have to put in the reps, we have to put in the work. Same is true with our mental conditioning. We have to put in the reps, we have to put in the work. So that's what we do each week on our live call for sit and talk. So let's join our live call. Start without anybody because tonight could be the night you get super rich. Super rich.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Could be.

Name Your Big Dream

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Could be. Or you could just sell out. Could sell out, just never know. As we're waiting on a few more, be thinking about a big dream that you have. And it doesn't have to be anything that you have to share with us, but think of a big dream that you might have. It may be really so far-fetched, maybe you haven't even told anybody. Maybe you haven't even told people close to you because they would say you're crazy. I think it's Steve Harvey that says, don't tell your dreams to small-minded people. Because they won't understand. But think about those dreams.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Sometimes you have to be careful who you tell your dreams to because they might be a dream stealer.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

They could be a dream stealer. They can steal your dream. And then they go and do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yep, before you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Before you do. So be think about that dream. And maybe it maybe it's one you've had since you were little. Maybe it's one you've had since you're a teenager. Maybe it's one you currently have. And it can be a dream of maybe it's starting a business. Maybe it's traveling the world. Maybe it's you know mending a relationship. Maybe it's you want to make a difference. You want to save a bunch of starfish, not just one. Maybe it's you know ultimately being in the best shape of your life. Maybe it's being on the New York Times bestseller list. Whatever it is, think about it. And what if you have that dream right now? And what if I say to you, I want to buy it from you? Name your price for your dream.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Not for sale.

Life Buys Dreams Cheap

Choosing Purpose Over Security

The Past And Time Management

Opinions And Intentional Living

Penny Actions Protect The Dream

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Not for sale. That that's, I mean, that's what most of us would say. Because here's the deal: if I buy your dream for you from you, if you name a price and I give you that money, because a lot of times, what do we hope a dream will do? It will bring us some sort of happiness, of satisfaction, of success. It has all these things attached to it. But if you sell me that dream right now, if I give you money for it, you can't ever have that. You can't ever have that feeling of success or happiness or anything like that with that dream. And I'm sure just most of you would say, just as you did, it's not for sale. You can't have it. There's no amount of money, even if I said I'll give you$10 million. You you have dreams for different reasons besides financial gain, a lot of times. So you'd say, no, it's not for sale. You know, it I you won't you won't sell it. You have a a sign out in your front of your dream that says not for sale. And I offered you a big amount of money, and you just turned me down, which all of you, if I asked each one of you, would you sell me your dream? And my name is Life, I'm the big game of life, and each one of you probably go through and you'd say, No, no, no. But this big life is kind of like the Grinch. Guess what? I offered you lots of money for your dream. But since you told me no, I'm gonna be able to take your dream and get your dream for pennies on the dollar. And you're probably saying there's no way you can get my dream for pennies on the dollar. And the thing is, I'm life. And we're gonna talk about how that sign that you put out that said not for sale, you will sell me life for pennies on the dollar. Because and the thing, and the craziest thing is, you'll I'll life me will be able to buy it for pennies on the dollar, and you'll never even know it happened. That's how sneaky I'll be. Because, you know, a lot of times we don't wake up and go, man, today's the day I'm selling my dream. We don't do that, but is what we do is we sell it in small transactions, we sell it in real quiet ones, in real invisible ones. Um, we sell it when we choose comfort over courage. We sell it when we choose approval over purpose. We sell it when we choose busy over intentional. How many times do we ask somebody, how are you doing? I am so busy. Dream sold. I don't even have to ask you what your dream is. I guarantee you, you just sold it a little bit. Um we also sell it when we choose distraction over discipline. Um, our dream is sold in small daily decisions over and over again. So maybe here's how it here's how it works. How does that look in real life? So, um, you know, maybe you have this big goal, maybe you have this huge, lofty goal of um, I want to change the world, I want to make a difference in the world. Um, and then some bills show up, um, then some responsibilities show up, and then fear shows up, and that dream gets downgraded to maybe I don't need to change the world, um, maybe I just need to survive, or maybe I just need to make it till Friday. Because as we talked about the other day, how many times do we go? Oh, thank goodness it's Friday. I'm so glad it's Friday. Chances are if you've been saying that, you could be selling your dream um in the process of selling it. Um, you know, are is paying bills wrong? No. Is having a job wrong? No. Um, is providing for a family, being there for a family, is that wrong? No. Um, but when survival replaces significance permanently, that's when we quietly sell something that we really care about. Um because there will be times, we'll have seasons when we are in survival mode, we've got to make make things happen. But when that becomes a norm and replaces our significance, then we're quietly selling our dream. Um, you know, we a lot of times our dream of some sort will make a difference of some sort, maybe in our life, maybe in somebody else's life. But sometimes we sell it for a salary. I had finished school, finished college when I was 40. And so what I finished, I finished in May 2015. And I knew the next year, I think in 2015-16 school year, so I graduated, got my bachelor's in kinesiology with minor or in physical education, so a certified all-level P teaching all-level. So I knew Tina Gillen was gonna be retiring. I think that next year, that in the end of 2016 school year. And so I considered applying for that job. I'd just gotten my degree. I thought, you know, and here's the reasons I thought about it, because I thought it is a secure job. I can probably retire then. Probably won't have to go anywhere, it'll be a set salary. It will, it looked really, you know, get I'll start at a certain time, get done at a certain time. It sounded great. And I I kept thinking about it, and even while I was student teaching, and why I'm not teaching now, is because as I was teaching the kiddos and we were doing exercises, all that kind of stuff, I kept thinking that I couldn't make a bigger, a big enough difference in their life. And this is for me personally. I felt like when it comes to physical activity and eating healthy, I felt like I could make a bigger difference in their parents' life, then that would trickle down and make a difference in their life. And so I ultimately decided not to apply, not to go into teaching. Because again, when it comes to when we hear about childhood obesity, I don't believe it's a childhood problem. I believe it's an adult problem that trickles down into our kiddos. So if if you can take if we can work on the parents and change their attitudes and mindsets towards food, exercise, and all that, we can make a difference in the kiddos' life indirectly. And but I was real close to selling my dream of making a difference in people's lives. I was real close to it because I thought this is safe, it's comfort. I I I could be comfortable in that. But I was real close to selling off that dream. I mean, that was 10 years ago. And if I'd sold that dream, there's so many things that wouldn't have happened because as I mentioned before, the difference that I want to make, my big dream is to make a difference. And each week, as I see the number of people that through exercise, through our walk and talk, sit and talk, healthy huddles, all the things make a difference. It makes an impact. And I was real close to selling that off for really pennies on the dollar. And again, it didn't have as much to do with selling it off dollar-wise, it was more about selling it off with my time. My time would have been occupied in that job, so I couldn't do what I do now. So sometimes we sell it off, not in money, but in time, and we sell it that way. We just like we talked about, we sell it with busyness instead of intentionality, and sometimes money can become the ceiling instead of the tool. What does a ceiling do? It holds us down. It holds you down. If you let go of a helium balloon, it'll only go so high because it hits the ceiling. What does a tool do? If a tool is something that is used to build, to fix, repair, expand, all of those things. And so it can, you know, when we look at salary, it can be a tool instead of a ceiling. And what when we dream, what do we do? We dream, we look forward, right? We look at things we want to do. Think about when you're a kid sitting daydreaming, oh, all this stuff. We're looking forward. What kind of car am I going to drive? What kind of house am I going to live in? What kind of spouse am I going to get? What kind of kids am I going to have? It's all looking into the future. But a lot of times we sell our dream because we can't stop looking backward. We can't stop looking at our past mistakes. We can't stop looking at our past failures. We can't stop looking at past hurts. We can't stop looking at past regrets. And when we do that and we live in the past, and next week we're going to be talking about the past and how the brain feels about that and how it's wired to think and emotions and all those things. But we're going to talk about the power of the past next week. But when we do that, when we're looking in the past, dream sold, pennies on the dollar. Every thought we go back and we sit in that past mistake, past failure, past hurt, past regret. We're selling that dream because what does that do? That mistake says, or failure says, you're not good enough. That hurt says they're gonna hurt you again, don't do it. That past regret says, if you do this, you're gonna regret it. And so we sell it. We dream of success, but we sell it for poor time management. We don't schedule it. You know, what do we might say if it matters, what do we do? We prioritize, we make it happen, we prioritize it. You know, when we schedule, that's about time. Back in the day when we all kept checkbooks and we had a registry, and you had to write down every check, every check number, the date, all that stuff. You had to write it down. And now times we might hear that if you show me back in the day, show me your checkbook, I can show you where your priorities lie. You know, where's your money going? You know, what if we had a registry for time? If you show me your registry of time, I can tell you where your priorities lack. It's not because oftentimes, I just don't have time. We all have the same time. The only thing difference is some of us prioritize it in different manners. You know, every one might see people that make the exact same amount of money, but some might drive a really nice car and live in an itty bitty tiny house. And some might be live in a big house and drive a little bitty tiny car. Again, same salary, it's just how it's spent, how it's prioritized. Same thing with our time. Time exposes what we truly value. Where we spend our time, whether we say it or not, and sometimes we don't like to say it, but that's what we value. Um, it will, it will, you know, if we were to do a registry, it would tell us what we value. Um, whether we do it intentionally or or unintentionally, it will show you what we value. Um and and the thing is about when we sell our dream and think be thinking about your dream. We don't sell them in crisis moments. You know, the price of gold, if anybody's following the price of gold, it's like$5,000 an ounce. So Kim and I are watching this story on the Today Show, I think. It's talking about go get your jewelry, you know, go find any unwanted pieces, gave like three or four websites, places you can send them into, free of charge, shipping, all this stuff. And so it's saying, you know, hey, now's the time. It's it's and so even Kim said I might have some jewelry that I might want to sell for the price of gold. But and it's those moments that our dreams are sold. It's not in those, oh man, I gotta have, I gotta, I need some money. I gotta need some money for for food or for rent or for gas money. It's not sold in those crisis moments. We sell it in the ordinary moments, and we do it all the time. The alarm clock goes off, and we just hit the snooze a couple more times, or we just turn it off altogether. Netflix, it's real handy because you're watching something and it goes off, and you're like, I don't know what to watch. I'm just gonna sit here for a minute, and then oh, the auto play comes up next. Oh, that looks interesting. Well, let me sit and watch this. When scrolling replaces maybe conversations, when fear replaces our actions. I'm scared of a mistake, I'm scared of a failure, I'm scared of re of somebody hurting me. What if I have some regrets? When we say, maybe next year, maybe next year will be the year. We don't lose the dream overnight, it doesn't happen that way. We lease it out little by little by the alarm clock, by the Netflix, by the scrolling, by all the different things until one day we wake up and realize that we're living a life we never meant to live. Because and the thing is, you you can't remember the exact moment when you put out the for sale sign. Because you thought for sure, wait a minute, I thought I had not for sale out there. And then, wow, it it now says for sale. It's kind of like Back to the Future when he takes his picture of his siblings and they start to vanish little by little because he's doing certain things, and that's kind of what happens for our word not. It starts to vanish little by little by little until we go out there into our and look at our sign and we look around and go, oh my gosh, it says for sale, and we're not sure when that happened. So, so how do we correct that? What do we do? We have to have our not for sale sign in front of us all the time. So that means we're not selling it, we're not selling it for comfort, we're not gonna sell it for fear, we're not gonna sell it for distractions, we're not gonna sell it for other people's opinions because guess what? Who's got opinions? Everyone, everybody, and mostly assholes. That's very true. And and here's the thing. I I kind of I kind of misspoke the other day, and I said, I think in a generation nobody will remember you, but it's really long, and that's about a hundred years, it's in a century. Within a hundred years, there will be no one around that remembers you. How about that? Within a hundred years, but yet you are so concerned, and I say you, and I and I, you as in us, me included, are so concerned what other people think. But there won't be anybody around a hundred years that'll remember you. So, why do we fear other people's opinions? I mean, it's not about them, it's about us. We are the ones that have an issue with other people's opinions because everybody will have an opinion, good or bad. And as we talk next week about contentment, which is a second key to happiness, and we'll talk about how that's grounded in confidence. And when we have confidence, it is very powerful in shielding against other people's opinions. Because when those bother you to a huge extent, that is a warning sign of a confidence issue. Confidence in what you said, what you think, what you know, how you act. It's a confidence issue. So we won't sell it for other people's opinions, we won't sell it for laziness. I I'll go to the gym tomorrow, maybe the next day. I'm not quite ready. And we won't sell it for convenience. So we have to keep that not for sale signed up so we can be living intentionally because life will happen to us regardless. We will all, none of us will escape death. None of us will. We will all have that day. So how we're gonna are we gonna live it intentionally or just say, whoop, life happens. It's kind of like, you know, in other words, it happens, and sometimes we just say life happens, but when we live it intentionally, life happens for us, not to us. So think about that. Do you want life to happen to you or for you? And for you is living intentionally. So we're we begin to be intentional with our time, we begin to be intentional with our energy. Because if you have a infinite finite amount of energy, why would you waste it on negative people or negative things? You get to choose. We're intentional with the relationships. How do we want to grow this relationship? How do we want to invest our time and energy into this relationship? We're intentional with our health, whether it's exercise and eating, seeking out medical advice. Are we intentional with our health? Do we want to live and be the best? I mean, Americans are living longer now than they ever have before. So we have an opportunity to have a long life. Why would we not want to be intentional about our health? Be intentional with our focus. What are we focusing on? Are we focusing on other people's opinions? Are we focusing on the goals we want? Are we focusing on our dream? Because guess what happens? Have you ever some of you might have cats? We do not. Kim had one cat, but her mom killed it. And if you read her book, you know what I mean. But a laser. If you have a laser, and what does the cat do? It'll chase it around like a nut trying to get it. But have you ever heard of laser focused? What does a laser do? It's a beam of light that goes straight to a point. You know, it's not, you know, it's it's not going on the wall this way, that way, and that cat sees that point and it's going after it. And that's what focus is. When we hear laser focus, it's focused on that. So we have to be intentional with that because every day the world will offer to buy your dream for pennies on the dollar. And what we need to do to be working on our dream and put up that sign that says not for sale, is it'll buy it from us for pennies on the dollar. But all we have to do to purchase and keep putting money towards our dream are penny actions. So penny actions are those small daily actions that just as you would sell your dream almost unnoticeable. We buy that dream every day with almost unnoticeable actions, and that's our penny actions, that they build up over time, and we get closer and closer to our dream. Um, we get closer to what we want to do. So we start saying, not not next week, not next year, not next week, today, this morning, this afternoon, this evening, now.

unknown 23:54

Okay.

Closing Questions And Thanks

SPEAKER_00 23:55

And the thing about dreams is they don't require perfection. We don't have to be perfect. But so our dreams don't require perfection, but they do require protection. We have to protect our dreams. It it's we have to surround it, we have to protect it with discipline, we have to protect it with boundaries, we have to protect it with clarity, and we have to protect it with action. That's how we protect our dream. So, really, the challenge and the question is is think about that dream that you had and all that we've talked about. Have you been selling it over the years? Is it far, far away? And you realize you've sold it. And but the great thing is, is that you can buy it back. You can get it back. You you have that dream, you have the power, it's in your mind, it's in your brain that you can get it back. Sometimes we drift away from our dream life because we're not making those intentional penny actions, but we can be focused and we can begin designing that dream life again and keep putting in the actions and keeping that sign out in front of us all the time that says not for sale, that we won't sell it. We won't sell, we're not gonna sell our purpose, we're not gonna sell our calling, we're not gonna sell our marriage, we're not gonna sell our health, we're not gonna sell our growth, we're not gonna sell our impact. It's not for sale, and so many times, all of those we've sold and never even realized it because of all the different things we've talked about. And you there's there's a lot of things in life we can't control, but we can control what you're willing to sell. So, no, if that dream is gone by the wayside, life got it for pennies on the dollar. You sold it dirt cheap. You're what you were you wouldn't even sell to me for any amount of money when I asked at the beginning, and you never knew that life got it from you for pennies on the dollar, and got it way cheaper than any money you would have asked for. So that's the simple challenge is is there a dream that you've sold? And if there is, you can still get it back. It's gonna take you penny actions every day to start getting that that dream back so you can put out the sign that says not for sale. And and and maybe you put that dream on there. The dream is whatever it is, not for sale. It's something you see every day. So that sign is right in front of you. Um, any thoughts, comments, or questions? And thank you to each of you for joining us on Sit and Talk. Look forward to seeing you right here next time on Sitting Talk.