Ep. 13: Prioritize Your Skills (Success)

Learn why your focus should be on developing skills that will lead you to success in the marketplace and in any aspect of life that you want to improve.

Transcript

Final episode of season one

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hi, my name is David Murphy, and welcome to How to Be Happy and Successful, the podcast for and from the Mildly Incompetent. Well, hi everyone. Welcome to episode 13, which is the 10th episode of Advice. And it's the fifth episode on the success side of the site. It's called Prioritize Your Skills. Now, before I get into that topic, I want to talk a little bit about the show itself, the show as a whole. This is going to be the final episode of what I'm calling the first season. So I did three introductory episodes, you know, what is this podcast? What is happiness? What is success? And then I did 10 episodes giving advice. Well, when I finish this episode, it'll be 10 episodes giving advice, five pieces of advice about how to be happier, five pieces of advice about how to be more successful in your life. Now, I actually thought about stopping the podcast after that. You might recall if you've listened to me before, I have said when I first conceived of this first of doing just some kind of website giving advice and then making it a podcast as well, that it'd be like a three-and-done thing. I'd give three pieces of advice and say, do that. I think it's good for you. It's been good for me. Good luck to you. And I realized, oh, I just would have to do more than that. That's just not good enough. I thought maybe when I got to 10, well, that would be good enough. But I there's actually a lot more than 10 that I think is useful for people. But I still thought, you know, I could stop there. I don't have to say everything that comes to my mind that I think is useful for people. You know, there's lots of places in the world you can get advice on how to succeed with things and how to be happier and healthier. And also the truth is not a lot of people are listening to the podcast. And that's okay. I think, frankly, the main reason that no one not nobody that not a lot of people are listening is I don't promote it at all. I have literally told some of my friends, not all of my friends, some of my friends, I do this podcast. That's it. I don't, I don't have social media accounts. I don't, I have a Facebook account I haven't accessed in years. I don't have any other social media accounts. I don't post anything. I don't read stuff on social media. You know, it's actually, if I, you know, depending on how long I carry on, you know, not being on social media will be one of the ways that I'll recommend you make yourself a happier person. And it's not even a question. It is a sure thing that a person who leaves behind social media is a happier person. And I think if the world could leave behind social media, the world would be a better and happier place. And I'm not just some old-fashioned person who hates technology. I think it's been pretty well demonstrated how harmful most social media is to most people's happiness and how destructive it can be to social connections, you know, politics, etc. But if you want to succeed in promoting a podcast, you should be on social media. Most of the time, really, I think nearly all the time, the ideas that can make you happy can are also very good at making you successful. I sincerely believe that. Ideas about being present in the moment, practicing self-compassion can actually make you better at things, more likely to persist with things, more likely to focus on the right things when you're trying to work on something. But in this case, it doesn't work out the same way. You're happier if you don't go near social media, but you will not be as good at promoting your business. You will not promote your business. This is not my business, but you're not even good at promoting a business or whatever, uh an idea you have, something that you think is worth sharing. You won't be good at promoting it if you're not on social media, and I'm not. So, anyways, that's my choice. And I'm not complaining about my audience, whoever you are out there. It's really kind of amazing. I use this app called BuzzSprout, that is my my podcast hosting uh location, and they show me the locations, the cities and the state and the country where people are listening from. So I don't get the actual addresses, you know, or photographs of people listening to the podcast, but it'll say, you know, Oakland, California, you know, my neck of the woods, or it'll say Mobile, Alabama, or it'll say Nova Scotia, Australia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kurdistan. It's amazing to me that people around the world have listened to my voice, try to share these ideas. I find it gratifying and exciting. I would like it if more people listened, mostly because I really think these ideas are correct ideas, and I can say that because, like I said in the first episode, they're not my ideas. I didn't come up with these things. I got them other from other people, and I think they have helped me and will continue to help me as I get better at them. So I wanted to pass them on. And I've decided I'm not going to stop after this episode. I do have more ideas I think are worth creating episodes for. So here's my plan. I plan to do at least one more season, as I'll call it, of ten episodes. Ten episodes that I will, you know, like I've had for the first one, write notes on, plan out, and put together in this sort of long episode format, longer than originally intended. And uh and that'll come out in a while, and I don't know what a while means. That could mean the first episode, second season is in two months from now, or it could be as long as three to four months. I'm not sure. I intend to put out small episodes in between. I actually have some more ideas and things to say about topics I've already talked about, about gratitude, about setting goals and other ideas. And so I think I might just do some sort of quicker episodes. Ten minutes, you know me, that could turn into 25 minutes easily. But me doing less, you know, planning and going back and editing and just trying to get out some ideas, either I think I didn't hit well enough, or I could just explain more clearly or just present more on. In my notes, I call those extra episodes, and I hope to get my first extra episode out within a week of this episode. Now, for you out there, wonderful listeners, the elite, because there aren't that there aren't thousands of you out there. Look, if you like this podcast, if you actually think it's worth hearing, if you think it does good for for you, or if you think it can do well for people, do me a favor. Do two things for me. One, spread the word a little bit. You could put it on your social media accounts if you want to, or you can just tell people in your life, I listen to this podcast. I think it's good. You should listen to it too. Also, email me. You just just tell me you're listening and why. It's interesting to me that there are people all over the world listening, and even people in California where I'm from, you have value also. I've told you that many times already in this podcast. I'm just interested in hearing if you like things about the podcast or if things aren't clear to you about what I say. If there are things you think I'm wrong about, tell me that. I might even mention your ideas in the podcast in one of the extras and tell you why you're wrong. I don't know. Just email me. I'm I'd be happy to hear from you. The email address is info at happy-and-successful.com. So info at happyandsuccessful.com, but there is a hyphen in between happy and and another hyphen in between and and successful. So shoot me an email if you have the time and if the interest. So do those two things if you like what you're hearing here. And if I do build a sizable audience, it's more likely I might go on and have more than just a season two. But it's it's really fine that that doesn't happen. Like for real, you know, I tell people, you know, friends ask me, well, how's the podcast going? And I tell them, well, it doesn't have much of an audience. But, you know, if you write a novel, let's say, and I it's on my goal list to write a book. And when I mean book, I mean a novel. That's not the only kind of book that interests me, but I do hope to write a novel on my life goals list. It'd be on my five-year goals list, but I just don't think I'll have time to do it, and it's not worth doing if you can't put time into doing the best you can. So, anyways, when I write a novel, and I think when any person writes a novel, they cannot spend all their time thinking about, like, well, how many people are gonna read this thing? Is this gonna be a hit or not? You know, of course you'd like it to be, right? You'd want to write a novel and you want to win 17 awards and be a New York Times bestseller and just have all kinds of people saying how great you are. It's nice to have that kind of a dream. But you can't think like that while you're writing your book. You have to just write the best book you can. Make it what you think is a good book. It's the best you can write, and you put it out there, and if a million people read it, terrific. And if a hundred people read it, well, too bad. You gotta move on and write your next book now. It's the same with this podcast for me. It's been a very rewarding experience. If it's been helpful to anybody out there, great. Again, please email me. Just let me know what you think. But, anyways, I do this podcast, I really do it as well as I can. And you might know all the faults that are that are in here, and you might think that's as good as you can. Yes, this is as good as I can do it. So, since that's the case, I'm satisfied with the product. And if a lot of people listen, terrific. I'm gonna keep going. If not, I'll say what I think is worth saying, and then I'll stop and I'll make another podcast after that. So, anyways, there's your intro talking about what's coming up. There'll be some shorter extra episodes where I go back and review some of the ideas before, maybe add a little bit here or there, and eventually, two months, three months, something like that, I'll start a season two. I'll do 10 more episodes that I'm a little longer format again. Oh, and also I'll work to catch up on my articles. You might have noticed, or maybe you haven't, that I started to I I haven't done a lot of articles that are supposed to go with the podcast episodes, because about halfway through the season, maybe a little before that even, I realized I just couldn't keep up with both. And so I put the articles aside and I just worked on putting out podcast episodes. But during this time when I can put out just shorter extra episodes and plan the next season, I can also catch up on my article writing. Okay, on to why you should prioritize your skills. So when I first conceived of the idea for this episode, this is way back in the day when what was mostly on my mind was what am I gonna say is uh in what is happiness? And what is the first advice gonna be on the happiness side of the site? So a long time ago, my original name for it was Learn What the World Values. Now is always what I had when I'd write a list of what I'm planning to do. And if I if an idea came to mind for it, I would jot it down under learn what the world values. And it was only about halfway through the season, and I'm starting to think I better start thinking for real about what I'm gonna say in that episode, that I wrestled a little bit and decided to go with prioritize your skills, which I think is a frankly a closely related idea. I mean, I think it better ties in with the whole idea of this podcast, which is a podcast about personal development. And I'll talk about in a few minutes why I I ended up going with that phrasing and that idea more, but let me talk about this first idea I had about learning what the world values. And I essentially mean financially. What is the world willing to pay for? Learn that. You know, when I'm talking about success on this podcast, I don't just mean financial success, but that is included. I think that's important to me, and I know it's important to just about everybody. And I know when most people want to listen to a podcast or want to buy a book or want to read a blog about being successful, financial success is the number one thing they're thinking about. Not everybody, but it's the what I mean is it's by far the most popular consideration. What do you want to be successful at? Making money. You know, earning a good living. It could be becoming a multimillionaire, it could be making a solid living. What I will call financial success is having the ability to pay your bills, that's important. Having the ability to seize opportunities, uh, the ability to support a family. You might not want a family. You know, you might not want to get married, you might not want to have kids. That's all okay with me. I don't think you're only a good person or only a successful person or only a happy person if you end up being having a partner and having children. But if you do have people in your life, especially children in your life, you want to be able to support them financially. That's important. So that's part of being financially successful. And you want to be able to contribute to charities. That might not be on your mind as far as being, as far as your definition of being financially successful, but it should be. So I'm gonna try to add it there. So that's what I would call being financially successful. It does not require great wealth. Though acquiring wealth isn't gonna hurt when it comes to achieving those goals. Having money, having an income, or having money in a bank account or somewhere that you can draw upon, it really does influence your happiness and the opportunities that you could take advantage of, and the opportunities that, again, people in your life, like your children, if you have some, can take advantage of. So the phrase, money can't buy happiness, it's there is some truth in it. You should not think that every dollar you earn makes you a happier person, and whatever you do to get it, doesn't really matter because the money will make you happier. That's definitely not true. But while there is some truth in the idea that money can't buy you happiness, it's not all true. Money does matter. There's another phrase that says if you think money can't buy you happiness, you're not shopping in the right places. And there is actually, it's not just a funny line, there's some truth in that. Again, if you are using your money to buy nicer and nicer sports cars, well, that's really not gonna make you happier. It'll make you happier the, you know, the the day you drive home the sports car, I guess, and for the first week or so, but then you're gonna have hedonic adaptation. That's gonna go right away. But things like opportunities, even things like helping people, taking advantage of those opportunities, those will help provide you happiness. I have two good friends of mine who are brothers, and they with their families, that's their two friends, their two wives, and their total of six children, they all got on one big sailboat and they sailed from Turkey across the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, and across the Southern Pacific. Took about a year and a half. You know, they stopped and flew back to California a couple of times. They saw a lot of different places, they had a lot of time on the boat and a lot of time visiting just amazing places that I haven't been to, and most people haven't been to. That's an amazing experience for all of them, and they could not have had it without all four of the adults having made good financial choices regarding making an income and then what they do with their money. So money is the only way you can get an opportunity like that. In a couple of months from now, from the time I'm recording this episode, I'm gonna take uh my two older kids to Yosemite. This is a much cheaper trip. I live in California, so we're gonna drive to Yosemite. And if you haven't been to Yosemite, make that a goal for your life because it's one of the most beautiful places on earth. But, anyways, we're gonna drive out there and we're staying in this place called housekeeping camp, which is just a it's it doesn't even have four walls, it's just some canvas uh set up with a couple of cots in it. So much cheaper vacation, and we'll spend four nights there. Still, some money is required to book that place and to drive out there and pay for the entrance fee and to pay for the pizza while you're while you're staying there. So the idea that money doesn't do anything for your happiness, it's if you have that idea, get it out of your head. It's not the most important thing in your life, but it's an important thing for you to think about. I'm probably spending too much time convincing you of what you already believe, anyways. But that means that if you do think that money does matter to you, okay. Don't just live under some illusion that, well, the money will come. If you, you know, money will come if you do what you love or you do what you're good at. You have to think about what does the world think is worth paying for? Don't think about whether or not you think that's fair. You could think about that. That's perfectly fine with me. If you could think it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not fair, it's not even a good idea that advertising executives make a lot more money than teachers. And I am not putting down advertising executives, just saying the world you're better off if society value teachers more, but it doesn't. And you should know that if you've got it in your mind that you're going to become a teacher. Investing in real estate is just about always more valuable than investing in comic books. You should know that. Even if you love comic books, you're unlikely to make as much putting, I don't know, ten hours a week into collecting comic books, and instead of ten hours a week somehow trying to get a hold of a real estate opportunity and then you know converting that into a successful one. You occasionally hear people tell stories, and you might hear this on a YouTube video or in an interview or maybe at a seminar, where they say they never once thought about success or money. They just did what they loved and they threw themselves into it. Becoming a millionaire never crossed their minds for a moment, and yet here they are when they're speaking to you. They've had tremendous success with the series of books that they've written or whatever it is. And what's either implied or explicitly stated by these people or by whoever's presenting them is that that's that's the route we should all take. That's the right attitude. Don't think about success and money, because that will come as long as you throw yourself into what you love. I'm here to tell you it's totally fine by me if you decide to live your life doing what you love. I think that actually is terrific. But don't tell yourself to lie that financial success will definitely follow. I'm telling you those people who tell those stories, I'm not saying they're liars or frauds or anything, but they are one in a thousand. 999 people out of a thousand who don't think at all about, you know, what will be the financial consequences if I engage in this behavior. Year and make these decisions, 999 out of a thousand of those people end up not being financially successful. You know, there are right now thousands of business owners in the United States alone who are opening businesses or trying to make a business work that they thought was a great idea. And they're just so surprised when other people aren't showing up or are hardly showing up. They're not showing up enough to pay the bills because they didn't know that the world didn't value this idea as much as they thought it would. And there are thousands or maybe tens of thousands of college students going to college right now in the United States, and they're not thinking about what exactly am I going to do with what I'm studying? Is my major actually gonna be able to pay for my student loans or help me achieve the life I want to achieve when I'm done? I'm not saying, again, that you shouldn't study philosophy, that's what you want to study, that you shouldn't study art history or whatever it is. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't open a business that you think is a fantastic idea and that you've always wanted to open. I'm saying you shouldn't get caught by surprise. You should know that if you choose to study ancient languages and ancient art, there are very few opportunities that are gonna help you make a good living with that knowledge. And you should know that if you open a business that is of a type that has never succeeded in your city, and first of all, you should know if that's the case, again, you're very likely gonna have a failed business. You should know going in what's likely to happen. Doing so will actually make you more likely to succeed, but at least it can make you make other financial decisions that you know you understand that you're gonna be making$35,000 a year, and you're not gonna spend money like you're gonna make$70,000 a year. And the truth is that most people don't have a driving passion. You know, we're often made to feel bad about that. You know, you you watch videos or go to a seminar or watch a seminar or listen to people do podcasts, and they say, find your passion. What's your passion? Your passion should guide you. And it's as though if we don't have a passion, as it's something that makes us get up in the morning. That's another phrase here. What makes you get out of bed in the morning? The alarm clock. Like, I don't want to get out of bed in the morning. I have to get out of the bed in the morning. Or believe me, I'd be in bed till noon. You know, my kids make me get out of bed in the morning. But sometimes you hear that phrase, what makes you get out of bed in the morning with a smile on your face? And if you don't have an answer to that, you're supposed, you're you're kind of a loser. That's implied. It's not said, but that's sort of the impression. Most people don't have that. A lot of people, a lot, a lot of people, I think the majority of people end up making a living in life, or at least working somehow, whether they're really making a living or not, and working at something that they don't love. It's not their passion. I think it's very few people really that end up really working at their passion. And since that's the case, if you think it's you that either right now are doing something that is you're not passionate about, or you don't have something that speaks to you. You're not a young Steven Spielberg who knows that you want to make movies. There's nothing else you want to do in your life. If that's not you, okay, then really do think, okay, what does the world value? And how can I aim for that? How can I set my goals and then my work my behaviors so I can take advantage of that knowledge and get somewhere? You know, if you have two opportunities and one of them will give you, you know, a career that you just think is tremendous, that you it will fill you with a sense of meaning as you do it. And you have another option that is that will not give you that sense of meaning. You don't hate it, it's okay, but it doesn't give you like a sense of purpose, but it pays twice as much. Well, now you got a decision on your hands. And uh, I know I'm supposed to say you you take the first one, no doubt about it, you take the sense of meaning. I think I would recommend that, but it means something to make twice as much money. You know, if you have kids, especially your responsibility to them, and if the first passionate career, if that is being a stage actor in off-Broadway theater or off-off-Broadway theater, and you literally you really can't provide for your kids a life you think is good, I don't think that's the right choice. But, anyways, that could be a tough decision. But if you have a couple of career choices, and they're going to both be about equal as far as your sense of job satisfaction goes, but one of them pays 50% or 100% more than the other one, take that second one and know it before you get into these things, what the possibilities are and what the world values, what the world's willing to reward for one set of skills instead of another set of skills. Learn that and use that information to make good choices. It's really not a lot of fun to be stuck with the consequences of not having thought ahead. If you haven't had that experience about major and important topics in your life, what I'd like is that you take it from me that it's very disappointing to have realized that you made a big mistake by not looking ahead. And it can take a long time to work your way back and get on the right track. You can do it, you set your goals and you go after them, but it's just so much better to think first. People think it's unromantic to be practical. Be practical, you'll be a happier person. I'm not saying don't be romantic, but you can add practical, useful qualities, pragmatic qualities, to being a romantic person who's romantic towards other people in their lives and about their dreams. All right, so I said a moment ago, if you have two jobs presented to you and they offer about the same amount of job satisfaction, but one pays 50 or 100% more than the other job, you should take job number two. That is clearly a very obvious piece of advice. It's not even worth giving on a podcast that's meant to give you helpful advice. My my point here is that there actually are opportunities like that. You can have two jobs, two careers that give you about the same amount of feeling and satisfaction, and one will pay much more than the other, but they're not presented to you at the same time. In fact, to just make a little aside, I think it's very often the case that lower-paying jobs offer less satisfaction, offer less feeling of accomplishment, not just because of the money. But while it's not universally true, it is often the case that higher paying jobs either require more skills, require more expertise, require you to think more, and therefore you feel like you're doing more. They're a little more interesting to do. So for most people, doing a job that pays more, it's not just a benefit in terms of money, though again, that's important, but it generally offers more interesting work. Again, unless what the lower paying job is something you particularly want to do. Or the higher paying job is something you particularly object to doing. But back to the point I'm trying to make here. Generally, to get that better paying job or better paying career, you have to go out and do a bunch of work to develop skills. And that's why we're calling this episode prioritize your skills, because you have to make something of yourself. You have to give yourself the skills that will get you those opportunities. You know, I went with prioritize your skills as the name, instead of learn with the word values, because it's in line with the general message of this podcast as a whole. It's about personal development, which is just a cliche because you know you see it in bookstores now as a section heading full of all kinds of books that you might feel very cynical about. But the truth is the whole point of how to be happy and successful as a podcast and as a website is that you can develop yourself into a person who's happier and who treats people better and who is more successful at achieving what they want to achieve. When it comes to making money, that means, again, developing skills that the world values, but don't try to get around that. Don't try to get around you working on yourself and really learning how to do something, that will earn a lot more money. If we're talking about increasing your income by 50 to 100%, so you move from being able to earn$15 an hour to being able to earn$22 or$30 an hour, or you move from being able to earn$30 an hour to be able to earn$45 or$60 an hour, and all of these jumps, they're very important in your quality of life and happiness. If you're already making$300 an hour, it might seem that the jump to$450 or$600, well, it's even more important because it's such bigger jumps. I'm not saying it's not worth making those jumps, putting the effort in, even if it takes years to make those jumps. But really, those jumps will not have the same kind of impact on your quality of life. That changing from a person who can earn$30 an hour into a person who can make$50 an hour, that's gonna have a bigger effect on someone's quality of life. And most people can make that transition with planning and with effort. And don't shy away from the fact that that effort will not take four weeks. It will not take a weekend seminar, that's for sure. But it won't even take two months or three months. It'll probably take a couple of years. But you plan to be alive for more than a couple of years, right? And you know you're probably gonna have to work for probably some couple more decades. Spend a couple years, or four or five years even, getting yourself up to that higher level. So prioritize the skills that you can learn and that you can show people you've learned. I've talked about Jim Rohn before, great teacher of personal development. You should go, you know, watch seminars of him on YouTube and read books of his and listen to him on audiobook while you're driving in your car. One of the pieces of advice he gives is you don't take a job for how much it gives you, you take a job for what it makes you. Now, of course, you could think of, well, really, I should just be like an intern earning nothing for 20 years if I develop skills. No, I'm not saying that, neither is he. But you could take jobs that do pay you, but also develop you. And that should be your priority as you take a job, certainly in the early years or when you're trying to make a transition. You should be thinking, well, how would this job make me literally better at the job? You know, you do want to be competent and confident in whatever work you take on. So if you can take a job that's going to increase your abilities to do the work well, good. You want that kind of job. And of course, as I've said, you want a job that will enhance your ability to show everybody that you can do this work very well and give you skills and things to put on your resume you didn't have last year or that you don't have now, you know, that will add to your ability to present yourself to the world. You know, to go back to Jim Rohn, I'm gonna talk use him a lot in this episode, and that's fine by me. There's a saying I learned way back when I used to teach martial arts. And the saying was when you steal from your teacher, steal with both hands. That's a good idea. Don't be shy about it. Take everything you can from your teacher. In this case, Jim Rohn, I never met the man. Uh, because he's my teacher in a lot of these ideas. And he would talk about the phrase, you reap what you sow. And that phrase, you know, it's been around a long, long time. It's so old that it automatically seems hackneyed and not useful to the modern times. But, you know, he talks a lot about it, more than I'm going to now. But I remember the seminar I first saw him in, you know, again, this is on a YouTube video. He said, You reap what you sow. He wrote it on his chalkboard, and he said, first piece of advice, don't try to beat it. And I passed that advice on to you. A lot of us, I think including me, for years, we do try to beat it. We try to get around it in some way and think, but it's not about, you know, starting something and working at it, putting years into it. You want some kind of more clever way, easier way to get to the result that you want. You know, a book that has been very popular and even influential is called the Four-Hour Work Week. You might have heard it, you might have read it, maybe it's inspired you. That's a book that I think in a way tries to teach you to, you know, here's how you can beat it. Here's how you don't have to be like all those people out there grinding away. You can uh, you know, jump to riches. Well, having lived some life and tried a lot of things and had some failures, I've really come to believe in Jim Rohn's advice that you want to accept and utilize the idea of reaping what you sow. See, that phrase is just very often used to criticize somebody. As in you most often hear the phrase, if you hear it at all anymore, maybe you've only seen it in some kind of old movie or something, but people use the phrase you reap what you sow a lot. When somebody screws up and they get their, they get what's coming to them, you know, they hit the face to music and you say, hey, you reap what you sow, you know, that's how it goes. But that's not really the point of the advice. The point, what you can take from it is that, all right, if I start sowing well and then I protect the seeds that I plant, I'm gonna end up reaping something that's worthwhile. It it works. Yes, there can be failures even when you do the right thing. One of the things that you reap what you sow does not mean is that the world is fair. Everybody has what they deserve because they're reaping what they sow. That's not the case at all. There are many people in the world, many children in particular, who suffer through no fault of their own. But this truth does not mean the world is an entirely random place where there's no point in making plans or putting effort in. That's not so at all. If you want to change your life, set goals, make plans, plant seeds, work your behaviors, and you will start reaping good rewards from that. Another great line from Mr. Roan says, you better be good at one of two things planting in the spring or begging in the fall. If you haven't had to do it already in your life, take it from me. Begging in the fall is no fun. And you don't want to become a person who depends upon begging in the fall because you just don't know how to do anything else. You don't know how to plant in the spring. And if you don't like metaphors, you don't know what I'm talking about, go back and listen to set goals and then work your behaviors and then stick with things. This is the idea. See something you want. Say, I want to earn$50 an hour instead of$25 an hour. How can I get there within five years? If you can't think of any ideas, look online. If that's not good enough, find somebody, find some career counselor who can just say, well, here's a bunch of jobs that earn that much money. And here are some within range of getting there within five years. So just find information out and then create a plan to get there and start working the plan. And when you stumble, get up and go back to your plan or make a new plan and get going after that. But the key, the key to you getting there will be you improving your abilities. You need to prioritize your skills. You need to prioritize you. You are the key, the most important part of this equation. Because that's how you're going to move up the chain. The world definitely values some skills more than others, but it does not value no skills. And I know that I'm supposed to make a joke about the Kardashians at this point. But I'll tell you, the Kardashians do have skills. They're highly skilled as self-promotion, which is a skill the marketplace highly values, even if you and I don't very much. Now, there's an idea here that I talked about way back in the first episode. What is this podcast? So it's nice that it's coming up again at the end of season one. And James Clear, the guy who wrote Atomic Habits, he also talks about this idea, which is that, you know, you are what you do regularly. So it's very easy to think. It's just natural for us to think, well, I just I'm not good at that thing. Or I don't do that. That's not who I am. I wish it were, but it's not. So I those options aren't open to me. This is false. You look, maybe you can't do everything. No, it's true. You cannot do everything. Not maybe. You can't do everything. I can't do everything. There's no one who can do everything. But there are so many things open to you, and just the fact that you so far in your life have not done something doesn't mean you can't. Or if you have tried to do something and you have failed, that does not mean automatically that you can't succeed at it. Maybe it's not for you. Maybe you tried very hard at something, it didn't work for you. In that case, you probably should look for something else, unless you can spot what happened, unless you can analyze the process and see I can fix that. But my point here is what I said in that first episode, which is all the behaviors you've done up until now do not decide the behaviors you'll do starting tomorrow. So the behaviors you've done don't control you tomorrow. The things that you've learned in the past don't mean you can't learn new things starting tomorrow. And you will become whatever you get yourself to start doing regularly. What James Clear says, you know, if people sometimes think, well, I'm just not a writer, well, start writing every day. Make yourself spend some time writing every day. You know what you're going to become? You're going to become a writer. That doesn't mean people are going to start paying you to be a writer. It's not quite that simple, but you will be a writer if you're writing every day. You might think I'm not so on exercises. Start exercising every day, or four or five days a week. You know, after two weeks, I will not say that person's an exerciser. That person's a fitness junkie. Six months later, that's what you'll be. You'll be so on regular exercises just because you started doing it. And I'm not calling it easy. It is not easy to learn a whole new set of skills. Or make yourself do all new behaviors. I talked about that in previous episodes. It's a challenge. And it's not even easy to make yourself believe that you're a person who can learn new skills and take on new behaviors. But I've never at any point in any podcast promised that this is easy. That if that's what you came here for, you gotta go find something else. This is not the easy route to success. I'm not trying to make it harder than it has to be, but I'm trying to be honest. It's a challenge. And not only that, but when you go out and learn the kind of skills that will really increase your ability to say earn an income, there's a very good chance you have to find whole new places to work. You'll likely have to leave behind the people in the environment you know. That's a challenge too, beyond even developing the skills in yourself. It depends what matters to you. But do not hold yourself back from making progress in life because it's a heavy burden to like get up the hill and learn the stuff, and then you're willing to do that, but yeah, just change. Who wants to change? It's such a pain. You'll get used to the new life. It's not so bad. It'll be better for you. You'll be a happier person with more opportunities. So go get it. Now I've been talking a lot about making money in this episode. And as I've said, I don't have any problem with that. That doesn't bother me. I'm not embarrassed about it. But you shouldn't think, if you do think, that all I care about is making money or you making money. There are many things in life that are worth doing. And the idea of prioritizing your skills is also about whatever you can develop in yourself. Making yourself better at everything from communicating with people. You know, I talked a couple episodes ago about treating people well. Yeah, so good communication, whether it's being kinder with people or just speaking more clearly so they understand you. Whether it is being able to paint, you always wanted to paint, you've never learned, or you've never gotten as good as you wanted. Okay, there is something you can prioritize and learn how to do. Whether it's raising your kids well, learning how to help them with school if they need help with that. Maybe it's learning to be a good cook. You know, it's funny, I talk in the exercise episode, you know, I say that there's no single piece of advice for making someone happier that has more evidence than regular exercise. Okay. Cooking is not like that. But from my perspective, there are few skills in your life that will bring you and people in your family a bigger boost to their quality of life or your quality of life than learning how to be a great cook. And I say this to someone who's not a great cook, but I am trying to improve. I do some things well. If you can make excellent meals and snacks and desserts, your quality of life and the people, the quality of life of people who live with you goes right up. So spend a year or two years or four years learning to become a great cook. Just a little piece of advice there. It's kind of an aside. But my point here is that, of course, prioritizing your skills is very important when it comes to your interaction with the marketplace. But it's not just about that. It's about just everything that I try to communicate in this podcast. It's all of it, in some sense, about you learning to develop things in yourself. Whether that's an ability to be mindful and be in the moment, or an ability to write a good goal list and keep yourself focused on your goals. It's not about accumulation of things, and I'm not against accumulation of things, but the priority should be you. You building abilities and confidence in yourself. All right, I think I've said enough to get the point across. I think I've made my point, or if I haven't, uh I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say anything else smarter, and so you don't need me to keep going. So we can wrap it up. Just remember if you're thinking, what do I need to think about in order to make my life better? You need to think about a number of things. Truthfully, life is not simple, but your priority should be you and your skills, you developing yourself. Okay, let's wrap up as always with our mantra. The mantra goes, you matter, this work matters, and you can do this work. It's absolutely true. You're important. And I know I keep saying that, and maybe you're tired of me saying it, but I as I said way back in the first episode, I want you to keep saying it to yourself until you're just used to hearing it. Right? So it's not some foreign thing that just say whatever. No, for real, you are. Doesn't make you the greatest person in the world. It certainly doesn't make you faultless, but you're important, you matter, you don't even need to do something to prove that. All right, you matter, this work matters in that you making your life better and more successful matters, and you can do it. Nothing wrong with you that says you can't improve skills. Starting tomorrow, you could start improving some skill of almost any kind. If it's a huge skill, you can start doing a little bit tomorrow. If it's an easy skill, you might be able to learn it in one day. So you can do the work of focusing on your skills and improving your skills, succeeding. Okay. That's it, and that's it for season one. Great. As I said, we've got some extra episodes coming up, shorter. I don't know if you see that as a positive, but I do. And we're gonna get out a number of those. I'm not even sure how many, and in a while, we will start uh season two with ten more, sort of more focused, maybe longer, episodes. Okay, see you soon. All right, this has been the How to Be Happy and Successful Podcast. Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. So if you're interested in reading an article that goes with this uh podcast episode, you can go to the website. The website is www.happy-successful.com. So it's happyandsuccessful.com, there's types in between the words. You can read articles there, you can also sign up for the mailing list there. So when I put up new content, you will get an email saying, hey, there's new content. Go listen or go read. I also offered coaching. So if you'd like some help being happy or being successful or both, you think my ideas are good, reach out to me through the website. If you like the episode, please go add a nice review about it wherever you listen to it. And if you didn't like it, or you just keep that to yourself. And if you really like the episode and the podcast in general, feel free to go to the Patreon page and become a supporter of the awesome. If you have any questions or comments or complaints, go to the website and uh send me an email. I will do my best to respond, though. Okay, I think that's it. Until next time.