Habits and sacrifice
Episode #9: Welcome to the She Builds Show, I’m your host, Stefanie Olson. Recently, I’ve picked up two books, Atomic Habits, and The ONE Thing by Gary Keller, Atomic Habits is a very practical guide to help you keep the habits you want, and rid yourself of the habits you dislike. My biggest take away from this book so far is that changing your environment to create the habit you desire. He has a bunch of different options of how to help you gain the habits you want, but this one, the changing of your environment really stuck with me. We all have things we want to remove from our lives, but we struggle because we have formed these unconscious habit loops that once it starts, we just do the thing we said we wouldn’t do. Sound familiar?
Ready? Let’s go…
SHOWNOTES:
• I took the advice of changing my environment to help curb this habit, I realized, and around this time of day, I’m tired, I need to pick me up, I need to go somewhere, I need to get away from my desk, I need to get out of the truck. So instead of driving physically driving to Starbucks, I’m like, I’m going to drive to a different place… What’s a good place to go? So it came up with Live Life Juice. It’s a local juice company that makes fresh juice daily, bottles it and sell it. It’s to die for delicious and my body really thanks me. Since I’ve changed up this environment cue by just driving to a different location, not trying to make it complicated, I just do not drive into Starbucks, just driving somewhere else. (02:14)
• I struggle with this concept constantly, especially when it comes to work, I do what is urgent over what is most important, I choose conquering the to-do list over sticking to what he calls your success list to-do list. Feels like I’m accomplishing something, but they don’t resolve anything around my one thing, so I decided to try to figure out my one thing… I listed over 100 things that I do and that I have a desire to do what I’m good at, what I’m passionate about, things I hate doing, but I end up doing them, because they’re on my list. I listed them all, then narrowed down over and over until one thing was left… No, no, my one thing is teaching. (4:46)
• Let me dive a little deeper into this for a second. So, in other words that mean the same thing, a sacrifice or to give up. Surrender, renounce, discount, spare, resign oneself to… So what he’s saying is, You can give up work, you can spare work, but you cannot give up, you cannot spare or resign yourself to your physical health or your family or your relationship. Sacrifice means to give up something in a big way for something or someone else. When I think of sacrifice, I can’t help but think of Jesus and the sacrifice that He’s given us. That’s the ultimate sacrifice, right? But what are the sacrifices in my life, in your life, that maybe you’re making unintentionally? Are you sacrificing things that really matter most to you, what are you sacrificing for something else? (06:42)
• And when you go to work and you do the things that you need to do, you need to choose the highest priority item, the unit to work on, and all other items on the to-do list can wait. You can get behind in work, you can’t make up soccer games, there is no dire consequences to all the small things that I should have could have would have done at work. So when you’re at work, use the time-wisely, rank your important work, make a success list and only do that. Do the one thing that is going to move the needle furthest. And when you go home, you do the one thing that you need to do to take care of your family, your relationships, your health… This concept to me just kind of blew my mind because I think that we think in our culture that we need to prioritize work over everything, and that we sacrifice our families all the time. (09:20)
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