What does it actually mean to truly live a life that matters? As much as I always speak about money, wealth, and business, living a life that matters is about the richness of your days. It’s about meaning, impact, and living life on your terms.
We need to examine ourselves and our minds, and get clear about what we really want out of life. Spending time with your thoughts will help you take intentional action toward the goals that are relevant to you.
So today, I want to help you conduct that self-exam by following a framework that will reveal who you are, what you have to offer, and the steps you need to take to get closer to your unique vision of significance.
Once you have that clarity, you will start making choices today so you can get closer to the life you envision for tomorrow. You can start living a life that matters right now, so I can’t wait to share this framework with you!
IN TODAY’S EPISODE I DISCUSS…
SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS FOR FUTURE EPISODES: www.askMelnow.com
TAKE THE FINANCIAL FREEDOM QUIZ
OTHER RESOURCES:
CONNECT WITH ME:
GET MY BOOK:
What does it actually mean to truly live a life that matters? As much as I always speak about money, wealth, and business, living a life that matters is about the richness of your days. It’s about meaning, impact, and living life on your terms.
We need to examine ourselves and our minds, and get clear about what we really want out of life. Spending time with your thoughts will help you take intentional action toward the goals that are relevant to you.
So today, I want to help you conduct that self-exam by following a framework that will reveal who you are, what you have to offer, and the steps you need to take to get closer to your unique vision of significance.
Once you have that clarity, you will start making choices today so you can get closer to the life you envision for tomorrow. You can start living a life that matters right now, so I can’t wait to share this framework with you!
IN TODAY’S EPISODE I DISCUSS…
SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS FOR FUTURE EPISODES: www.askMelnow.com
TAKE THE FINANCIAL FREEDOM QUIZ
OTHER RESOURCES:
CONNECT WITH ME:
GET MY BOOK:
What does it take to truly live a life that matters? What does it actually mean to live a life that matters? Well, it's one of the conversations that I get a chance to have with audiences all around the world as I go around and speak because as much as I speak about money, about wealth, about business, about achievement, it really isn't about the achievement. It isn't about the money. It isn't about the wealth. It's about living life fully, to live it richly to live it in a meaningful, impactful way, to live it your way. And I had an opportunity recently to do a keynote presentation around this whole idea and the framework it takes to live a life that matters. And in this episode, I thought I would share that training that specific keynote with you on this episode of the afternoon entrepreneurship. So welcome to this episode of the afternoon Entrepreneur Show. This one's gonna be a good one. Let's talk about how do you live a life that matters? See in the episode. This is the absolute Entrepreneur Show for entrepreneurs that one operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth. So you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect. So you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an absolute entrepreneur. This is so good. Here's the thing I'm going to kind of carry on from where Brendan went. Now I've got a framework for you which, you know, if it's a training with Mel, there's a framework involved. And I'm gonna give you some things to do on the money side of the world to have your world. But here's what I what I realized is that I think that the important thing for us to understand is, as I started to think about this idea of living a life that matters, I realized that too often, we start to look outside to figure out if we matter. And as you all know, in 2019, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer, they found a what turned out to be a seven and a half centimeter tumor in, in my bladder and and what people don't know is that what I started to do every single day at 5pm, I live on the beach, I would walk down on the beach. And I would take a walk on the beach, and I had my phone with me and I would record a video of what I was feeling what I was thinking what was going on in my head, I would put the phone down, I get in the water for 20 minutes. And then I get up on the rocks. And I visualize for 20 minutes come back up. And now I've I've got all these videos from back in 2019 every day on my phone. And I was talking with a dear friend of mine on it a couple of weeks ago and he happened I happen to bring it up. He says have you ever done anything with the Wii? As I said, I hadn't looked at them. And he says, Would you be willing to release one I go I don't I don't know. They were just a personal thing. To me. It's like releasing the journal. And he said send me a few. And in the process, I started to go back through these things. Now I'm not going to say that it was easy to go back through and listen and I actually released it. 60 seconds of the very first one I did it was a week after I got diagnosed before my surgery before we knew how bad it was before we went to any treatments or anything. But the theme of all of them was to examine my life. And I think that there's a saying Dr. Cheese had. And that is a saying of an unexamined life is not worth living. And I'm gonna I want you to think about it in a little different way. And that is this. But an unlived life is not worth examining. That's me with my uncle Yoda. And here's why I think this is important is that if we don't value ourselves first, we can't place value in the world. So in a sense, I believe that we need to be selfish, so we can be selfless. It's not all about me, but I gotta get me right. Yeah, I remember telling the kids at the karate school. I said two things. You got to get clear in your mind. What are you going to stand for? How are you going to show up? And this has nothing to do with what you do for a living has nothing to do with what you do in your daily life. It actually has to do with who you are the Be. It's not your title. It's not your job description. It's not your CV, it's not your resume. And so what I want I'll walk through as this. As I reflected back on what I did with post cancer and up to the cancer. What were the things, the questions I asked to allow me to, to examine my life. So I could show up because people have heard me talk about the sole idea of legacy. And I remember my wife 12, going on 13 years now. And she would hear me talk about legacy. Now. She came from Philly. So she thought legacy meant that I wanted some statue, on some steps, like a rocky statue. And I go, No, no, no, no. See, we think that legacy is something that happens when we leave this earthly place. But I don't believe legacy is that I believe that legacy is created each and every moment. Our interaction right now, Brendan's interaction right now, that is legacy legacy is created in the moment. And if we realize that we have the opportunity, with a handshake with a smile with a wink with, I'm proud of you, to create legacy to change a moment to do something, you find that life matters in the moment. And when we look at life through that way, we start to look at things differently. So I want to walk you through this framework, that's going to ask a couple questions for you. And I think that this is the thing that we start to look at, in doing what we do. And the first thing is this, we have to examine your person. This is answering the question of who I am. Who am I, it's too often we get into, you know what social media expects of us or for or what our parents expect to us, or our society expects of us, or people expect of us. But who am I who am I defining need to be, you get to live this existence, not someone else. And so, there's a couple of things, there's five things I want to walk you through here, just as ideas of how you can examine this. And the first thing is this, you're gonna see it in you. Too often, we look at our imperfections, which to me, is the gold. But we have to see it in ourselves. The possibility we have to see the gifts we bring, we have to see that, but not just see it. We have to be willing to accept it. To be willing to accept it as our being to accept I'm a good dad, I'm a good wife, I'm a good, you know, whatever. And that's not enough. And what I want you to do is phrases and questions as you start to examine your life. Am I seeing it? Am I accepting it? Am I nurturing it? We've all been given a unique set of gifts, some that we have to continually develop some that were innate. Are you nurturing it? Are you respecting and given the reverence to the gifts that you have to be here right now? Which leads me to this, are you willing to receive it, I can tell you that it was hard for me early on, it still is to receive compliments to receive accolades to receive, hey, you got this. And so what we are pushing away is the very gifts that other people are acknowledging. So we have to see it, we have to accept it, we need to nurture it, but we need to be willing to receive it. So we can do the last thing. And that is to give it you weren't given the gifts of your life. to hoard it, yes, you need to be selfish to develop it. But you need to be selfless to give it and so we need to look at it through those eyes. And so when I look at who I am, I start to ask those questions, those questions, am I seeing it? Am I accepting it, nurturing it, receiving it, like giving it that leads me to the second piece of this framework. And the second piece is if I examined the person I have to now examine the potential if the person is who I am, the potential is who I can be. Now there's three things here I want you to look through to acknowledge the question of what is possible, what's possible in this life. What is possible in this moment, to not look through the eyes of problem but look through the eyes of solution every Everything around us was simply a thought everything around us was simply a possibility. Everything around us was a dream. But it's now a reality. What is possible for you? What when I had the martial arts studio, the black belt test was a four hour test. They went through their forums, they went through their techniques, they would sport every black belt. And the last person they sparred, was me. They had three minutes with me 180 seconds. But by the time they got to me, they were absolutely destroyed, exhausted, they had nothing left. And my blackbelts knew to get them on the edge of collapse. And I got in there with them. And I said, you have 180 seconds. That's it. Stay with me. 180 seconds. It's not about winning. It's about moving through it. And they would get through it. And they looked at me. And when we're giving them the belts, at the end of the ceremony, your parents are thinking I'm abusive, all this stuff. But I looked at I said, tough exam and said, Yeah, shouldn't four hours, right. And they looked at me and said, Yeah, he said, the exam was 180 seconds, it took me four hours to get you the point to give you the test. The test that there is more inside of you than you believe that test that there is more possibility than you see that this becomes the first reference point for you, in many cases, that when you think you can't go any further, whether it's work, whether it's health, whether it's relationships, whether it's school, whatever it is, let this be the point for you to see possibility beyond what you think. And I think that that's the thing we need to look at, then we got to examine for our potential to what we believe. What we believe becomes so important because if we don't believe it, we won't take the actions to do it, we will tiptoe through it. We have to believe in it and then ask this last question. What are you willing to do? When I had two surgeries, I had a bunch of treatments. That was first surgery in July 2 surgery in August, I had the treatments in December, they cleared me they said you're good with cancer, you were clear, we don't have anything. I went back in in April of 2020 for another scope. And I'm laying there, as my surgeon is going through the scope and I hear him say, oh, that's something you found another tumor. I thought it was out of the woods. I started to spiral into darkness into resentment and into fear into all those things until someone asked me if you knew the outcome, how would you show up from here on out? If you knew at the end of this? What the outcome was? What would you do each day? What are you willing to do each day, I said, I know the outcome, I'm gonna beat this thing I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get through it. He says, then the rest is just needs to be written just like life, we know the outcome we want for our life. We just don't know what the journey looks like, now we start to look at it and say, What am I willing to do to make the possibility and the potential, the reality? And if we understand that now we've examined our person, we've examined our potential, we now get a chance to examine our path. And when we examine our path, it's about where I decide to go. This is driven by I think three things also. The first is what is that internal calling, you all have a yearning inside of you all have something inside of you that's pulling you along, that's getting you in a place where you're sitting, that there's this aching of what I want to do an aching of the kind of father I want to be the mother, I want to be the wife, the husband, the leader, the spokesperson, whatever it is, what's that internal calling. Too often we suppress it because of judgment. We suppress it because of what's the sizes, we suppress it because of fear because of imposter syndrome. I'm telling you that you cannot suppress it, you've got to let it fly. The world deserves it. The world needs it. It's the reason it was given to you. Then in that path, if I now start to define that internal calling, is to start to look at and say well, what is the external impact that I want to have? See, I realized really quickly someone said to me, Oh, you, I bet you got your life's priorities. And in order when you found this whole thing out, I said, Yeah, I realized that there is no priority list, there is a single thing. And it's just life. It's just life. Go limit. And too often, we're waiting for permission, too often, we're waiting for a sign, here's your sign, you're alive, you're breathing, you're seeing you're hearing, that's your sign. The world needs your impact. And then rely on this, it's not the great thing that we're trying to accomplish. It's not the statue, it's creating and stacking the moments of legacy. That I'm going to show up each and every moment with the reverence that it deserves to know that I can change your life to know that my smile, my Thank you, my How are you today is enough to shift. And then when I stack enough of those moments, together, I shift things, I changed the legacy. That leads me to the fourth piece of this. And the fourth piece is is is your progress. This is how I grow the things that I want you to be here. And the first one, you're gonna go, what is he talking about? I said, I want you to be greedy. I want you to be greedy for growth. I want you to be hungry for development, I want you to want to be more not because of lack of contentment, lack of happiness, but because in the process of growing is the content. Because I'm in the game, I'm alive when I'm growing. So I want you to be greedy for growth. I want you to be curious about life. I want you to be committed to this life that matters to create an examined life that I know if I matter to myself, I will matter to others. I want you to be true to your word. First, the word to yourself, and then the word to others. To be truthful, to be honest, to be committed. And then it allows you to ultimately be generous. Give it all away, give it all away. You know it's leaving it on the field, it's leaving it on the stage, just give it all away? Because that is what's going to create a life that matters. Now, how does this translate because I think that we get a chance to have choice each and every moment each and every day, how we show up how we do things, how we play with things. Now I want to give you a couple things that relate to money. Because that's what I do to how to make your money matter in this construct. So there's just a couple of things that I want you to think about. And that is this is this idea of first. No, your Why? Why do you want the money? It has nothing to do with the money. There's something bigger to it than its freedom, its impact. It's something bigger. Now I get it. Some people might say I'm just trying to pay bills, I've run out of money, I get it. But beyond that, there's something greater then create a vision for your life. What does that look like? What do you want it to look like? What do you want trying to accomplish? Be specific, make it holistic, it's not about the money. It's about the lifestyle. It's about everything you do, then you get a chance to create the plan. So we've got the why we've got the what we've got the how, what's the plan to make it real. And from there, define your legacy. That's what happens if you show up the way we did. And then build on that. The rhythm of your habits, the rhythm of your money habits where you're sitting back and say, Great, I have my why I have my vision for it. I have the plan to make it happen. Now I need to define what my rhythm is to look at and say, How often am I going to look at my numbers? How long? How often am I going to look at my vision, I want you to look at your vision at least once a year, once you look at your numbers, at least once a month, because that's what's going to get us moving forward. I want you to look at at how you create things in a way that start to allow you to transfer skill sets and assets to give you the freedom to do the things that you're meant to do the causes the movements and the way we do that is to have the vision and the planning and the action steps with a rhythm to come money habits that matter. Because when we start to do this, you can ask this question at the end of the day, every single day, ask this question at the end of the day that says this, did my choices, did my decisions, or my behaviors, move me closer to my financial and impact goals today or not? Here's what I know. The choices you make with your money today should be in service of the future you're trying to create tomorrow. Let me repeat that the choices that you make with your money today should be in service of the future you want to create tomorrow. And when we start to come from that perspective, what you'll find is all the complexity of money goes away, because I am making choices that we know will feed the future, it is the same as sitting back and saying, I want to lose weight. And here you are buying a bag of you know, Baby Ruth bars and m&ms, okay, but if the choices that you're making today, are meant to serve the future you want tomorrow, and we get that to our soul to our core, we start to make the right choices that start to move us in a way that changed the game for us. And so I look at this in this way, is that if we truly want to live a life that matters, then we have to matter to ourselves. First, we have to be willing to examine what we do, how we show up the choices we make, the way we can relate, whether it's a conversation, and be willing to have the hard conversations with ourselves saying, Listen, I wasn't my best there. Trust me, I've had plenty of those conversations, not only with myself, but those that I've wronged. I learned a lot since I got married, trust me. But the fact is, is this is that when you examine your life, when you turn around and examine your life and show up knowing that the moments matter, that the stacking of the moments is what creates a life that matters. It's not some statue, it's not some name on a building. It's the way you connect in a moment, first with yourself, and then with others and I hope you take that spirit as you start to move through the season that we're in now and into the next stages of your life. Because I promise you when you start to look at it through those eyes and be willing to examine the things in your life, things will shift not just for you, but those around you because it's contagious. I hope this serves you. Thank you so much thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show with me your host Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to mele ram.com forward slash group and I'll see you there