Getting CLARITY: A Call to All is a Call to None

Have you ever heard of the phrase "A Call to All is a Call to None?" 

The concept is that when you make an ask to EVERYONE, you're not being SPECIFIC enough, which means the likelihood of getting the response you'd hoped for isn't very high.

Similarly, when we try to be open about ALL THINGS or liked by EVERYONE or good at EVERYTHING, we don't give ourselves the freedom or JOY of really honing in on what we care about. 

In this episode, we are focusing on getting CLARITY so that we can get more SPECIFIC with our lives and really be obsessed with our relationships, hobbies, careers, homes, and more. 

I hope this is helpful for you! If it is, PLEASE share with a friend or on Instagram and TAG ME! 

Love you, thank you!

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Transcript

Speaker 3 0:40

Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am so glad that you're here. Today's episode, the idea came from a walk that I was having with my husband. If you haven't heard me say this before. We started a habit in COVID where when, at the beginning of the workday and at the end of the workday, we would. Leave our apartment and go for a walk to kind of split up the day. Because whenever our, both of our companies went to work from home for that period. It was like between April and no March and April and we lived in a one bedroom apartment. At the time, our kitchen and living room and kind of dining room area where we had a table was all open concepts. So we were literally sitting at our. Little four seat ta, kitchen table typing and having zoom meetings and all the things like right next to one another. And it was just a lot of stimulation. And then also when you. Are done with work. Like there's not really a clear cutoff of work at that point. And so whenever we, maybe some of you, this is like bringing back traumatic memories, but for us, it started a good habit where we would literally close our laptops at the end of the day. And get up and go for a walk at the end of the day to separate the work and life balance. And maybe we weren't doing morning walks at the time then I think we actually started that when we got into our house. I forgot about that. But we do morning walks and so that was a good habit that came from COVID that I always recommend to people because whether or not you work from home, which we actually both happen to work from home now, it's good to have a physical stimulus that tell signals to your brain and your body like I am done with work. So highly recommend that, not the point of the episode at all, but all that to say that that habit we've kept up and a lot of the topics that I think of. Whenever I come on here and talk on the podcast, a lot of the subjects that come up on our walks end up feeling like really good subjects for the podcast. And I always say whenever I come on here, I think of it as though I'm talking with a friend over coffee or a happy hour or on a walk with them. Just one of those places where there's an open space to be vulnerable with one another. Talk about what you're. Going through and just kind of mentally process. And so whenever I've had a really good moment like that with a friend or a family member, or Jared, my husband, I love to come on here and share with you because I think of this as though we are getting better alongside one another and going through this crazy thing called Life together. And so that is where this episode started, was on a walk the other day. So. I'm really excited to get into the topic. If you are listening on YouTube, take a second, leave a comment, drop a comment, make sure you're subscribed. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts and you haven't left me a five star rating and review, go do that now. If you're listening on Spotify, leave me a five star rating. I don't think you can leave reviews on Spotify, and if you're listening anywhere else, please enjoy and whatever methods of subscription or rating or review you can use, I really appreciate it. But without further ado, let's get into the episode. So I'm curious if any of you have heard this phrase. A call to all is a call to none, but the way that it came up, I just said was on my walk with my husband and he is a software developer and he works for a company called Palo Alto Networks. Think that I can say that and he it, it's fully remote, but he also has always really just been passionate about coding and software development. He's very much always been someone who's very interested in technology. I feel like he comes from a very tech heavy family, and that's just something that they all enjoy and it's part of what he likes, so that's what he does full-time. But he also works on his own projects part-time or just kind of like on the side, I guess like a side hustle, but he's not, I wouldn't call it a side hustle'cause he's not like starting a business or anything. But he has a couple different projects that he works on and most recently he's been working on, I'm not gonna say the name of it, but he is. In the phases of launching a personal finance app because personal finance is something that he's really interested in and really cares about, and he's been working on this app for a while and we were on our walk talking about it because he's in the process of getting it uploaded to the Apple store in the Google store and all that, and he's testing things out and whatnot. Maybe I'll have like a free trial or a way for you guys to test it here soon. I'll keep you updated, but. That's not really the point of the story. The reason I'm bringing this up, why I bring this up, is because when we were talking about it, he said, you know, I think I've just decided that instead of focusing on what other people want or, oh, what would the audience want? Like what would the people that would be buying this want or that sort of thing. I'm just really trying to think about what kind of customer I am and the things that I like and the things that are interesting to me, and he's been using the app himself for several months. Thinking and trying to just view it as a customer and thinking like, what kind of features would I like In this personal finance app, it has a tab that can sync up like with your crypto wallet And that's something that he would be very interested in, but not a lot, not all consumers or customers that want a personal finance app would be. And so I thought that was really smart because when you are creating something, you want to attract people that are like you. I'm not saying that in our lives we don't wanna be around people that are variable or. Dismiss opinions of people that disagree with us or anything like that. I'm truly just saying when you're creating something, the best way for you to know if it's gonna be valuable or not is testing it against, what if you would buy it? Would you buy it? Would you like this? Would you want this? We're all so different, but it reminded me a lot of this phrase, A call to all is a call to none. And this phrase came up the first time I heard it was back when I was first out of college. My first job out of college, if you guys didn't know this, was I was a part of a campus ministry and I literally fundraised my salary. So it was crazy, but it was called support raising. And one thing that they told us. Was when you're support raising a call to all is a call to none. And what they meant by that was if you go to church on Sunday and they allow you to get up on the stage or podium or whatever and say, Hey, the next year I'm dedicating my life to this mission, I really need some financial support, da da, da. Then you're calling out to everybody in the room and. The likelihood of all of those people supporting you is probably not very high. A few people might come up to you after the service and say, I'll support you. But the more effective way of doing it, I won't say efficient, but the more effective way of doing that would be setting up times with all of those people individually and asking them face to face because. You know this to be true, right? Whenever somebody sends something out in a big group text of 20 people, you are not, there's no urgency to respond. There's 19 other people that could respond. So you're not in an urgent place to necessarily answer that call. Versus if someone texted you very individually asking you something very specific, you probably would be more likely to respond. It's just the nature of humans. Once you reach out to a group or you try to reach out to everybody, there's fewer people that respond. It's a weird, counterintuitive thing, but the more people that you lump into a request s the fewer people that replied to it. It was the same way whenever I was coordinating blood drives, there's a 10% rule. So if a company is 200 people, the 10% rule says that 20 people will donate blood or you'll collect 20 units of blood at a blood drive there. But the percentage actually goes down whenever you increase. So whenever you increase to like 2000 employees, you would think the 10% rule would say 200. Units of blood will be collected at that blood drive, but it actually goes down. I don't remember what the percent is, but it goes down. The more people that you lump into that, the fewer people that answer the call. So it reminded me of this call to all is a call to none. And when I was thinking about it, I was thinking, wow, this is so helpful because when you're building a business or building an app or writing a book or whatever it is that you're doing, coordinating blood drive, it's really helpful because it gives you that insight on. Really specifying who your target is and really targeting those specific people that would be your ideal customer or would be most similar to you. And in Jared's example, him thinking, okay, these are the features that I would really like in an app. There are gonna be people like me out there that agree with that. It can give you a lot of clarity as an individual as well, because here's the thing, I feel like our whole culture is kind of a call to all as a call to none. Everybody's calling on us all the time. We are constantly stimulated by things on our social media. We're constantly stimulated by the people in our life, ev. Anybody in our life can contact us at any moment. It's actually crazy when you think about it. That should not be the case. Someone shouldn't be able to just send me 40 texts in a row without me responding but regardless. I just think that as a people, we are very scattered and we're very unclear about what it is that we actually want and the things that we desire. And a big part of that is because we are constantly consumed by all of this feedback and noise that is making it really hard for us to hone in on the things that we want. And then we find that our calendar and our bank account and our algorithm are all full of things that we're like, did we even want that? Did we even care about that? That's not even something that I really cared about. I just bought it because that influencer promoted it, and I thought, oh, everybody else is buying it, so why not? Or, our calendar is full of all these activities that we don't really even care about, but we just said yes to and it can make you feel very scattered and it can make you feel very dispassionate and me about things because you don't even know what you care about at this point. You don't even know what you like and so that's what I want this episode to help you with is kind of gaining clarity on what your actual call is, like, what things that you actually care about, and giving you a chance to stop and breathe and instead of feeling like life is happening to you, feeling like you are living your life and you're taking control of it. so the big problem that happens here is when you're trying to be liked by everyone or you're trying to be good at everything, or being open to all options. This can cause. Decision fatigue. It causes a drain on our energy. And really it can cause a lack of identity because if you are buying or spending your time or spending your thoughts or spending your energy on all of these different things, before even really deciding if they're what you want, then you start to go, who even am I? Who, what do I even like sourdough? No, I'm just kidding. But if your social media is full of sourdough and you don't care about sourdough, then something's going on there. So the goal of this episode is to really help you gain clarity and improve the filters that you have on your life so that you can be more confident in your yeses, more confident in your nos, and really feel like you're living your life and not like it is happening to you. So first I have four questions that I think that you can ask yourself. You know, I love to ask a reflection question. So four questions to ask yourself that will help you gain clarity in what you are going toward. And then I'll go into some examples of how you could apply this. So the four questions I feel like will really help you reflect because. Sometimes I feel like we get to a point where we're like, How did I even get here? And truthfully, that question is not helpful. How did I get here is not helpful because it's gone, it's passed, it's it's history at this point. The question you need to be asking yourself is, where do I wanna go? But sometimes that is not so obvious. So the first question I would ask is, what excites you? Even if it doesn't impress anyone, what kinds of things excite you even when no one else knows about them or someone knows about them and they don't feel excited about it, or you're not getting that same excited energy from them? What things excite you regardless of if anyone else is excited about it? A good example of this is what I was talking about before with Jared, with his app, crypto excites him and being able to see his crypto wallet excites him, doesn't really excite me. But that's something that excites him regardless. So that should be included in his app. Question number two is what things recently have felt energizing versus draining, and this is something that I really like to go back to. It's called a life energy list. I used to listen to this podcast. I haven't listened to it in a long time, but it's by Emily P. Freeman, the Next Right Thing podcast. And one of the first things that I heard her talk about was a life energy list where instead of making like a pro and a con list, you make a energizing and a draining list, and you put the things on each side and. Obviously there are some things in life that are on the draining list that we have to do, like paying bills and shit like that, but the focus or the reason that you make the list is that you can reflect on the things that are giving you energy and the things that are taking away energy and try to increase the energizing side or. Focus more on the energizing side and minimize the amount of things that are on the draining side. If you're watching on YouTube, I feel like I'm like an air traffic controller right now, or something like, because I'm making so many motions with my hands. But there's two sides, so it's just like a T chart and you make a energizing list and a drain list. I would highly recommend this because I feel like it gives you so much insight onto what things are lighting you up and what things are really dampening your spirit. The third thing to ask yourself is what yeses have recently been from obligation rather than desire? What yeses have you said? Like family events or friend events, or birthday parties or sporting events. It doesn't matter what it is, but what yeses have felt like an obligation or even like fomo. Like, oh, if I don't go, then I'll feel left out. What have felt like more of an obligation than a des, than a desire, because that's gonna help you figure out what yeses may need to be turning into nos or not. Right nows, and the last question that I would ask yourself is if you could prioritize just. Three things, maybe even two things. If you could, if there were, if someone asked you in 2026, what are your two biggest priorities, what would they be? Because I think that this is something that we forget about. It seems so obvious, like, yes, my family is my priority and building my savings account, or something like those. Those two things might be your priority family and your savings account, but then life continues to happen and you don't have your blinders on and you're seeing everybody else, and you're seeing people spend a ton of money on traveling, or you're seeing people who are going out every Saturday with their friends, and even though your two big priorities, the things that you care most about in 2026 are saving money and being with your family. Those things are making you say yes to things that you wouldn't normally say yes to, or spend money where you don't wanna spend money. You spend time where you don't wanna spend time, and at the end of the year you realize, oh, I didn't really, I said I was gonna prioritize things, but I didn't really. So we need to just remind ourselves what would be the two biggest priorities. Write'em down. Put'em on your mirror. Put'em somewhere. You're gonna see'em every day. Put'em on your phone screen, save, or something like that, because. It really helps you make decisions in the everyday, and I know that the everyday decisions seem so small, but the things that we do repeatedly are the things that build up our lives. And the everything that you say yes to is something that you are also saying no to. And vice versa. When you say no to something, you're saying yes to something else. So I think that question can be really, really helpful. I wanted to give an example or a couple of examples of how this plays out because a great example is with this podcast. So when. I first started this podcast, I actually started it with my sister. It was called the Fill Your Cup podcast. Totally different. If you've been listening since then. Thank you so much and thanks for continuing as I go on my individual journey, but something that I always felt was really fun about that podcast was that we kind of talked about anything and everything, and I guess I still somewhat do that, but I remember thinking when we first started the podcast that I was really into personal development and self-help and growth and all of that, And my sister was more into like entertainment type of podcasts, and so we were like, oh, how are we gonna figure this out? And I feel like we did find a happy medium, but it was almost a breath of fresh air when I got to start over and decided to start over because I thought, this is my lane. This is the lane I wanna be in. Personal development, self-help growth, personal growth. I wanna be a personal growth podcast. And so being able to. Completely revamp the podcast and start over and just focus in on that one. Subject has been really clarifying to me because it's made me realize this is the thing that I'm passionate about and the thing that gives me a lot of energy. And not everybody's gonna like that. Not everybody, A lot of people don't like podcasts in general. A lot of people don't like personal development or self-growth type of books or podcasts. I do. So I'm probably going to. Appeal to those types of people that really like self-help and personal development and personal growth, and that's not everybody and that's totally okay, but there's some freedom that comes from honing in on what it is that you like and you care about, and clarifying that and appealing to those people that do as well. Another example that I thought of was if you're writing a book I, I think I just thought of this because I'm getting a lot of books, social media, like reels and whatnot, promoted to me and there's this one girl that I really like and she was like, when are people gonna get it into their heads? I can rate whatever book I want, five stars. I can rate this book five stars, and I can rate this book five stars. And some of them were like, of course you would rate them five star kinds of books. Right now I can think of like Project Hail Mary as a big five star book right now. I feel like a lot of people are really enjoying. But then she was also talking about this other series that I happen to be reading too called Zodiac Academy, which is not by any means as good of literary fiction as Project Hail Mary, but still rating it five stars. And it just made me laugh. And I was thinking about if you were an author and you were caring so much about what your. Reader's opinions would be, and you were thinking, oh, well I really wanna appeal to people who like. People who like fantasy. But I also wanna appeal to people who like sci-fi. And I also wanna appeal to people who like romance. And I also wanna appeal to people who like thriller and mystery and all of the things, historical fiction, that's too much. There's a reason that there's genres and if you like. Writing or reading about fantasy, that's probably where you should stay in your lane. It would be so much harder to try to include all those other things. And honestly, it would probably not come across as well. People would probably be like, what the F is this? It's like you tried to mash everything into one and it seems so scattered, and rather than having the slew of, let's just say fantasy readers, that would be obsessed with your book, if it was just staying in its lane, you have. A slew of every genre reader thinking, this book sucks. This is so bad. So really just focusing and narrowing in on what it is that you like and then letting that inform your audience. I feel like it's such a good thing when you're doing like a side project or hobby, like a podcast Or writing a book. It's just helpful. Another one that is a recent example for me is job priorities. So I talked a bit about this when I was in my full job search mode that I really had to remind myself. Of what do I care about in a job? Because you get so much noise from other people about what they would want in a job, and for some people it's all about the money. For some people, it's all about the flexibility. For some people, it's about doing something that has a purpose and that they're passionate about. Or for some people it's being in a specific industry or getting specific. Some people love travel, some people hate it, and so. Reminding yourself, what do you care about? Because for me, when I was in my job search, the biggest thing was flexibility. For me, the biggest thing was not money. The biggest thing was I want to be remote or hybrid. I want to feel autonomous. I want to be treated like an adult. And long as I'm getting my work done, I'm not, you know, no one's micromanage me, managing me or anything. And I can fully say, now I'm only seven weeks into the job. But I can fully say that that has. Transpired that has like the priorities that I had are the things that I found and the things that I didn't care as much about aren't really parts of the job, and that's totally okay. And then the last example I'll give, because honestly I didn't realize I was talking so long about this, but the last example I'll give is one that, another one that I had recently was I was redoing my bathroom, like my master bathroom. And I've been wanting to do this since we moved into the house. It was a gross situation, carpet on the tub, that whole thing. And I remember whenever I first saw the kind of idea of what I wanted. It's, it's not a very typical bathroom style that a lot of people have. I guess apparently it is in Japan. I don't know, but I haven't really seen a lot of people have this type of style in their house, like people that I actually know. And so when I was redoing it, I actually did a pretty good job of not seeking out too much. Advice or too many opinions because I knew that people might have opinions that would confuse me rather than help clarify things for me. And so there were really only a couple people that I allowed myself to ask questions whenever I was, was feeling like a little bit confused. That helped me clarify things of what I wanted. But all that to say that If you're doing like a home renovation or you're decorating your house sometimes having all that excess noise in everybody's opinions is more confusing than it is clarifying. So just be really in particular about who you ask and tell them in advance too. Like I remember one time texting my sister and saying, these are the two options that I am between which one do you like? Because sometimes people, if you say oh, do you like hexagon tiles? Or Do you like square tiles? They'll send you way more opinions or way more insights on what they like. And now they have black tiles and they have gray tiles, and have you ever thought about white tiles or have you ever thought about mosaic tiles, a bottle, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it just gets really confusing. And then you're starting to second guess yourself. So. I guess all that to say be very specific with who you ask and be very specific with what you ask. Hopefully that will help you in some clarifying. So hopefully this is making sense to you. If you like this episode or you feel like someone else could benefit from it, please share it to them. Right now. I have been noticing that I've been getting some more traction in the last few weeks, which is great, but we wanna keep that going and so whenever you share it, it does help a lot and especially like if you post it on your social media and tag me, that helps too. So thank you for doing that, and I love you. Thank you.