Ep. 232 - Knowing When to Quit Something

A few weeks ago, Rob asked you what you wanted to hear about.  

You spoke and he listened.  

Today, we complete the top three topics the audience voted on.  

The most popular topics were:  

1. Knowing When to Quit Something (TODAY) 
2. Perfection (The Enemy of the Good) (Thursday, 11/18/2021) 
3. Putting Too Much on Your Plate (Wednesday, 11/17/2021) 

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Links:   

• GET YOUR FREE GOAL-SETTING WORKBOOK  
• Ken Coleman's Tweet - "The unfortunate reality is that 70% of Americans aren’t satisfied with their current work situation. 
  You don’t have to spend the rest of your life feeling miserable at work, because there is a path to work that matters - to work that is fulfilling and created just for you." 
• EntreLeadership's Tweet - "An unmotivated leader can't motivate people.  It's an impossibility.  If I'm bored with my work, then my people will be bored with their work."  -  John C. Maxwell

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If you want to participate in a group chat with fellow audience members on a similar path, you can join the community on our Telegram chat group:  

• t.me/allaroundgrowth    

Subscribe to the All Around Growth Podcast channel for show updates ONLY:  

• https://t.me/allaroundgrowthpodcast  

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• How To Leave a Rating & Review in Apple Podcast App
  • This really *does* affect the algorithm...
  • ...as of recording in November 2021 - I would invite you to do this!
  • The podcast game is changing - help us with a rating and review!

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Have a Question or any feedback for Rob?

Send me an email at allaroundgrowth@gmail.com

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Notes:

Audience Feedback Episodes to Date: 

1. Wed 11/17 - Ep. 229 - Putting Too Much on Your Plate
2. Thurs 11/18 - Ep. 230 - Perfection (The Enemy of the Good)

Today, we get into the topic that was tied for second place:

•  Knowing When to Quit Something

• Financial (Income, Investments) - If you can't dream it, it won't happen
• Physical (Health, Appearance, Exercise)
• Personal Development (Knowledge, Education, Self-Improvement
• Family (Relationship to others, Development of children, Where do you want to live?)
• Spiritual (Personal commitment, Theological understanding, Meditation)
• Social (Increased number of friends, Community Involvement, etc)
• Career (Ambitions, Dreams, Hopes)

KNOWING WHEN TO QUIT SOMETHING

 Our lives have been out of balance.

 Now what?

 We regain balance?

 How?

 SIMPLE - exactly in the manner outlined in the series that just completed last Sunday.

 We work through 2022 goals

 Be specific, and measurable

Eliminate everything else

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello and welcome back to the show, everybody. Today is Monday, November 22nd, 2021. I'd like to welcome you to the All Around Growth Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser, and I am your host. It's a chilly morning this Monday. And this is episode number 232 of the show. And today's show topic is knowing when to quit something. Now, in the err uh last week, in the audience feedback shows on Thursday, I think it was, or maybe Wednesday. I'm not sure which day. We talked about putting too much on your plate. And today we're going to talk about taking some things off your plate and knowing when to quit something. So here's a little backstory on why this is a show topic and why putting too much on your plate was a show topic. Back on November 10th, we put out a poll on various social media platforms asking people which of the following conversation topics would they be interested in. Perfection, the enemy of the good, the art of deescalation, putting too much on your plate, standards, personal versus professional, writing an autobiography, social media revisited, Alan Watts, Finance, Debt Freedom, Love and Passion being a burden, and knowing when to quit something. And based on all of the votes that we got, people wanted to hear about putting too much on your plate first. We spoke about perfection, the enemy of the good. Wednesday, November 17th. Friday, we closed out the week last week by reading The Rudder of the Day by Dan Miller. And today we are going to get into knowing when to quit something. We're going to talk about that as I drive to the post office to drop off some cards. I spent some time last week, or this past weekend, writing cards. Just uh little notes of thanksgiving to share with people that are in my life, those that I care about. It's becoming a lost art, and I would encourage you to do the same. Just go on Etsy, pick up some cards, write someone a letter. Now knowing when to quit something is something I myself have been giving a lot of thought and consideration to. In seven aspects of our life. That's income and investments. And this is a tough goal for some of us, but if you can't dream it, it won't happen. The whole idea with this 2022 goal setting workbook is dream, plan, act. Alright, so we've got financial with income and investments. We've got physical with our health, appearance, exercise, we've got personal development, that's knowledge, education, and self-improvement. We've got family, our relationship to others, the development of children, and where we want to live. Now, in episode number 229 of the show, putting too much on our plate, we talked about, well, exactly that, putting too much on our plate. And today, knowing when to quit something, we take a look at taking things off our plate. Now, I'm going to reference a number of things that I have referenced and talked about from previous episodes. It's no surprise because there are a lot of common threads in the topics that we talk about. They seem to recur and they even seem to apply. A lot of the common threads that is, seem to apply to newer conversations that we have. Which is, as far as I'm concerned, it's not surprising because if we are all here connected with one another for a reason, it's highly likely that we are experiencing some similar things in life, even though our context may be entirely different. And it's also likely that we are and have similar goals and objectives about life, where we're going. a shared ideology of sorts, or at least a similar one, you know, more in common than we do not have in common. So when I immediately when I thought about quitting something, you know, the people oftentimes immediate, you know, if you were to walk up to someone on the street, say, or one of your friends, and say, hey, you know what? I quit. Especially if you said that to your boss, you know, we immediately equate quitting with our jobs. So frequently, that's that's what we do because so frequently we define ourselves by our jobs. And I I I started to notice this a very long time ago in my early 30s. You know, quite frankly, right around the time when Facebook became a thing, because that's when I started really getting into this comparison trap, this this analysis between where I'm at and where other people were at. You know, high school friends, people that I hadn't seen or talked to in like a decade. All of a sudden, you know, I'm I'm concerned with where and what, you know, Eric and Andy are doing. Come on, dude. Why? So, you know, forgive my little side jaunts here, but it it it the easiest comparisons about quitting something, I think, are quitting our job because that is something that we identify so much with. Because, you know, you meet someone, you go to a party, hey, nice to meet you, Mark. What do you do? Well, I'm an insurance representative for, you know, we we all live in this world where we're just defined by the activities that generate the income that we use to quote live. And that's why working through this workbook was such a brilliant exercise for me, because it allowed me to look at all of these other opportunities, aspects of life outside of my career, and due to the fact that I've focused, I've made Financial Peace University my focus for several years now, and have made that my life. I mean, I I've put off buying new pants because of Financial Peace University. I stretched my boots one more season because of Financial Peace University. I started making life changes because of Financial Peace University. I now the things that I do buy now I purchase differently. You know, I'm more than happy to spend twice as much on a pair of pants if I have the understanding that they're going to last me three times as long. See? I could never get any type of clear thinking about anything with the current financial situation that I was in. Bottom line is, I had a lot of non-mortgage debt. That was nothing but a weight on my shoulders. Weight around my neck, a giant yoke just weighing me down. So I followed the program, followed the program, followed the program, began to coordinate the program, and it was only when I began to lead, to coordinate, that I began to truly follow the program. And it was only when I began to truly follow the program that it actually began to work. You know, the reason we don't make progress in so many areas of our life when we're setting goals is because we half-ass it. You know, we talk about and we think we really want something more than we currently have. But oftentimes the reality is that what we currently have, even though we don't like it, it's comfortable. And it's ours. It's like a child in a warm poopy diaper that doesn't want to cries about it, but it's warm and it's theirs. There's some sort of comfort in that. We're all living our lives inside of our own poopy diapers. Even though we have the ability to change ourselves so frequently we choose not to. Since we're going to talk about our jobs, and I want people that are listening to this or people that may listen to this, I want people to understand that I'm not necessarily looking at quitting my job right in this moment. But since it's something that we so easily equate our language to, I'm going to use references like this. There are some people that I follow online. Dave Ramsey is one of them. Followed him for a very long time. As a matter of fact, that Poopy Diaper reference is one from his Financial Peace University courses. And accordingly, as he builds and develops his own business with Ramsey Solutions, he brings people on his team, and they are generally creating excellent content as well. One of those individuals is named Ken Coleman, and it was one day after I posted this poll, as I'm currently working through the 2022 goal setting workbook, and as I am approaching the end of the workbook, getting to the point where I am getting ready to work on the career goals section. I see a tweet from him that reads The unfortunate reality is that 70% of Americans aren't satisfied with their current work situation. You don't have to spend the rest of your life feeling miserable at work. Because there is a path to work that matters, to work that is fulfilling and created just for you. And then we see this picture. Big bold letters, reasons for leaving a job, and three reasons. Number one, you don't feel any connection to your work. Number two, you don't have the opportunity to grow. And number three, you're in a toxic culture. Now really think about that. Do you feel connectivity to your work, to your career, to that which provides you income? Do you have the ability and the opportunity to grow in your career? And the thing that you do that provides you income to live your life. And is the environment that you work in, could it be considered a toxic culture? These are good questions to ask ourselves. And if you can answer yes to one of them, or two of them, it's worth taking a look at your situation and what you can do to change it. If you can say yes to all three of them, you've got some work to do, my friend. But also worth pointing out is this 2022 goal setting workbook that I mentioned earlier gives us the resources and tools to work through seven aspects of our life. Now, those aspects of our life, in order, are financial, physical, personal development, family, spiritual, social, and career. Okay, pay attention to that order. Financial was first. Career was last. And when I started going through this, I began to question the order of operations in which we were working through this through this book. But I kind of let that thought move to the side. And um and I kept working my way through. Alright, Thanksgiving cards in the mail. Time to hit the road. But as I continued working my way through this workbook, I can't verify this. I'd like to run it by some of the people who helped put this workbook together. I can't imagine this was 100% Dan Miller's sole effort, as he is doing a lot of work. There's certainly got to be somebody helping him with the graphics and the editing. But I'm curious, I'm very curious, if there's a reason. I believe there is. And if it wasn't deliberate, I still think that this is the way that I would promote going through this workbook. Is starting off with the financial aspect of the first. You can't help but begin making progress on your goals. Working Financial Peace University and the program that it is a framework for solid financial goals and making progress in all other areas of your life. And the reason I say all other areas of your life is I speak from personal experience. And I know my experience is that my overall demeanor and attitude improved the closer I got to getting out of debt. And then once I finally did, and this wasn't that long ago, guys, uh, it's it's it's it's barely been a year. Basically the entire duration of this podcast. That's the impact that it had on me. It made me realize that I can actually do far more than I'm capable of doing. As long as I act on the plans that I'm making. For so long, I took these ideas from other people, not specifically related to finance, but everything. I would take their ideas, but I know better for me. Oftentimes, I just wouldn't think about the ideas, but before I go down that thought train rabbit hole, the ideas with Financial Peace University are tried and true, and there's a lot of people that bicker and and nitpick about the investment opportunities that Dave Ramsey talks about.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

He should really do more with he's too much and mutual funds on.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Well, these idiots are nowhere close to having the net worth that he does. So I'm going to follow the plan until I find something that's far superior and delivers better results. And you know what? My plans that I've implemented previously in my life delivered me the square root of fuck all with return or with regard to the return on my investments and time, effort, and energy. But once I started following Dave's plan, specifically the way it's outlined in Financial Peace University, instead of just doing it Dave-ish, wouldn't you know it? Results, my friends. And those results, in turn, after I began working the financial aspect of my life, began to manifest themselves in the physical realm, in the personal development realm, with my family as well, spiritually, also, socially, of course. And career is the last item on that list. And it's been recently where there's been some career discussions in my life and at the place of my employee with certain people who have uh found out about this and wanted to talk to me about it, but in a very strange way. Because I've been doing the work on this 2022 goal setting workbook, and simply in life in general. Having that conversation about the terms of my employee was not as difficult as I imagined it would be. And if we all had the ability and the desire to communicate better with one another, that whole conversation could have been avoided. But I'm not here to place blame. I'm not here to uh I'm not here to do anything other than simply observe what's occurring in my life and share it. And at the end of the day, guys, now that I've done some leg work on my financial life, now that I've done some legwork on my physical health, now that I've done some work on personal development, done some spiritual work, a lot of social work over the past few years, I'm in a much better place where I can begin entertaining the idea of making a career transition. It was always difficult to think about transitioning, making a career move because I had created a life where even though I was, and by all appearances, seemed successful in life, I was still broke. I was living paycheck to paycheck. Sometimes people call it the golden handcuffs, but there was absolutely no way I could think about making that change because the change would be too stressful, it would be too much, I was too dependent on my employer. But now that I have a little bit of freedom and I've made progress in some of these other areas of life, I can think about this tweet by Ken Coleman. The reasons for leaving a job. You don't feel and you know what? This is applicable in the when I was sort of assembling some of these thoughts this morning. This is applicable. Ken Coleman's tweet about leaving your job is specific to career. And specific to that that that area of life. The title of today's show isn't Knowing When to Quit a Job. It's Knowing When to Quit Something. And this tweet from Ken Coleman really hits home. So let's look at these three reasons for quitting something. You don't feel any connection. You don't feel any connection to the thing that you're currently engaged in. You don't have the opportunity to grow. You're not limited to growth just in your work. You can grow relationships, you can grow within organizations that you do volunteer work in, you can grow within your church, grow with the ways that you give back to your community, grow with your family. You know, with certain martial arts, there's a belt system, you can grow within that. There's all sorts of ways that you can grow. And the third reason why people quit things is they're in a toxic culture. You know, maybe you've gotten to a point where you're in a toxic relationship and you need to end it. Maybe you're at a point where, I don't know, new people came into the gym where you've been training. That's turned into a toxic environment. So you see, there's far more and above and beyond our jobs and our employment. And those are some things that Ken Coleman wrote about career. Like I said, they're applicable to all other aspects in life. And someone last week wanted to talk to me about the entire misunderstanding about what it is that I'm doing and why I'm looking for a job, said to me, we don't quit jobs, we quit people. And I entirely agree with that. But that's not the only reason why we quit. We just talked about the other reasons. Quitting people would fall under the number three of being in a toxic culture, but there's also the lack of connectivity and the lack of opportunity to continue growth. But that comment about quitting people got me thinking about another recent tweet from Entree Leadership, which is a Dave Ramsey program as well. And the tweet read, Have you ever lost motivation as a leader? And the picture accompanying that tweet was a quote by John C. Maxwell. Quote, an unmotivated leader can't motivate people. It's an impossibility. If I'm bored with my work, then my people will be bored with their work. Close quote. So if you're not motivated, you're bored. And if you're bored, then the people that work for you are going to be bored. Subsequently, they're going to lose motivation. If they lose motivation, they lose connection. You see where this is going? It's all connected. They lose connection, that's one of the three reasons people leave a job. Now, this episode again is not about quitting your job. It's knowing when to quit something. And we are here talking about knowing when to quit something, because initially, like we talked about in episode number two hundred and twenty-nine, we put too much on our plate in the first place. Well, why'd we do that? In addition to people pleasing, which I think is also a result of what I'm about to talk about, the root cause of all of this is simply living a life out of balance. Right? If our life wasn't out of balance in the first place, we wouldn't have put too much on our plate. If our life wasn't out of balance in the first place, we wouldn't be looking at ideas on knowing when to quit something. So once we've acknowledged that our life is out of balance, now what? How do we regain that balance? It's simple. We do it exactly in the manner outlined in the series that was completed last Saturday. We work through the 2022 goals. We are specific, we are specific with our goals, we set goals that are measurable, actionable, time bound, and we eliminate everything else. I had some correspondence with someone about don't tell me what's simple. There's a difference between simple and easy. Simple tasks are exactly that. They are simple. Just because they're simple doesn't mean they're easy. And just because something is easy doesn't mean it's simple. Words matter. But the the unfortunate reality is sometimes words are also hard to understand. And I find that more often than not, when I have understandings or misunderstandings with people about words, it's because I'm not, and I don't have the ability to actually talk with them. And a lot of this comes through text. So let it be a lesson that when there's problems, the written word is oftentimes the root cause of the problem and our ability to or our inability to work through it in a manner that is uh consistent with what we need to do in order to obtain the proper solutions that we're looking for. And with that, guys, I'm gonna wrap up the show. I would encourage you to check out show notes. There are links to the all-around growth chat group there, as well as links to the all-around growth broadcast channel, where if you want updates via Telegram but don't want to participate in another chat group, that's available for you as well. And for those of you who are interested in supporting the show in some way, shape, or form, there are links in the show notes on how to leave a rating in and a review in Apple Podcasts. Now, at this time, most of the listens come through Apple Podcasts, whether you actually use their native platform or not. And this brief one-minute video is a great little detailed video on how to leave a rating and review through Apple Podcasts. At this time, at the time of this recording in November, it's still definitely helpful. Helps expose the podcast to new listeners. So if you like what you hear and you want to spread the word, I would encourage you to do that. And as well as spreading it in whatever groups that you're in, spreading it on social media, and you can do so from the website, which at this time is still hosted on the Buzzroute platform. Believe me, I am going to work on a new site. It is one of the many things to do this winter. A little bit more of a legitimate experience.