440 | Charting Your Course With Clarity

SPEAKERS

Chris LoCurto

Chris LoCurto  00:00

If you've already discovered your clear purpose in life, that's fantastic. But now what? How to ditch the confusion and chart your course with clarity, that is coming up next.

Chris LoCurto  00:21

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show, where we discuss leadership and life, and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Chris LoCurto  00:33

Welcome to the show, folks. Today we're talking about charting your course with clarity. We're talking about how to put some clarity to your purpose, the October theme on the show is clarifying direction and purpose in your life and business. So today, we're going to begin with the end in mind. So beginning with a goal or a purpose in life is a really good idea. When you look at Stephen Covey's famous second habit of successful people, it says, "Begin with the end in mind." It means to begin each day, task or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination. Think about that for a second. And then continue by flexing your proactive muscles to make things happen. So what we're saying here is having a goal fixed in your mind before beginning is a really good idea. Now, last week on the show, we talked about making sure that you have your purpose in life, that you understand your purpose in life, or at least that you're seeking to understand your purpose in life. So today, we want to dig even deeper, to help you discover something incredibly important when it comes to purpose and direction. And that is who you are. So we're going to hit three important pieces today. The first being; know yourself and why it's important for you to understand who you are. Now, as I say that, there's probably a lot of you going, "I already know who I am. What are you talking about?" Well, you may know yourself incredibly well. But we want to hit some things to just make sure that you're digging deep enough to really understand who you are. So until you know who you are-and by that what I mean is; until you know your strengths, until you know your weaknesses, until you know your triggers, what you stand for, what you believe, your decision making process, what you're wishy washy on, what your ebbing and flowing with, the seasons, or maybe even the latest social trend, right? Are you ebbing and flowing with what's happening on the news, are you having ebbing and flowing with what's happening in your social life, right? What your friends are doing, what your family is doing, or are you making proactive decisions for you? So the key is to understand who you are, you've got to dig in and learn these pieces about you. A big piece of this is why you do what you do. Understanding how you make decisions is one of the most powerful things to understanding who you are. Alright? So getting to a place and in discovering the things that are affecting your decision making process is going to help you to understand you. This is a big thing that we do in Next Level Life where we help people to understand why they're making the decisions that they're making. Right. And it comes from a whole lot of stuff stemming from your root system. If you're going to know yourself a big piece is to understand, 'Why did I just make that decision to talk to that person that way? Why don't I just make that decision to go numb myself by making a purchase? Why did I just make that decision to isolate myself from that person who's trying to help me? Why do I currently feel rejected by this other person? And why do I feel like a victim in this moment when really nothing is is happening to me, right?' Understanding all of these pieces about yourself, understanding where you're strong, understanding where you're weak, understanding especially what you stand for, understanding how and why you make decisions you do. All of these are incredibly important when it comes to knowing who you are. Understanding why you get stuck in the patterns you get stuck in, right? So many folks in life are stuck in places, and it could just be that they've plateaued and they can't figure out why they're still where they are, why they can't move forward or why for a lot of folks, why they get stuck in crappy relationships, or why they get stuck in spending time with abusive and controlling people, or why they get stuck feeling like a victim all the time, like the whole world is, you know, everything is happening to them. Understanding these pieces is incredibly important if you're going to chart a clear course, right? Because if you don't know, you, well, then you will plan out a course on what you think is, you know, the perfect scenario, instead of understanding how you're going to respond when things happen. So just a example of that is many times in something like Stratplan, we're ripping apart certain areas of a business to discover what's holding it back. And what we will find is, we'll find specific traits that might be happening in a team or through a specific leader or something like that. Then as we're putting things back together again, and saying, okay, here's how we solve this, here's what we do to move forward, this is going to take you months to get this put in place. What we also do is take a look and say, if we don't solve this piece over here that we've already discovered, then this fix that we're putting in place, this action plan, this action step actually isn't going to happen. It's not going to work out. Why? Because we're going to run into the same problems we've run into over and over again. So just look at that, take that example and look at your life. How many times do you fall for the same self-destructive patterns or ways in your life? Right? If it's numbing with alcohol all the time, or pornography or being controlling in people's lives, or being a colossal victim all the time, how many times do you get stuck in the same patterns? Here's what you have to know. Especially for leaders and business owners. Well, anybody because we all lead people somewhere, somehow, you've got to learn to lead yourself really well before you can lead anybody else. Think about that. I mean, it should just be common sense, right? If I can't lead me really well, how in the world can I possibly be expected or expected myself to lead others really well? You can't. Right? because if you can't lead you, what wisdom and knowledge are you going to use to lead other people? So in other words, until you're really self-aware, you're probably going to do more harm than good out there in life and in leadership, especially right? So we've got to know ourselves first. Second thing is knowing God. Now listen, you know, we talked about this, I'm very aware, we have plenty of folks who follow the show that are not believers. I hope that changes. We're glad that you're joining us. And we're gonna continue to always be sharing information to change all lives. But here's what I want you to know, and you believers, here's what I want you to know. You've got to get to a place where you are truly seeking to know God, not going to ride a Pew, and let somebody tell you the things that you feel like you need to hear for, you know, 30 minutes and throw a couple of Scripture verses in there and a bunch of personal stories and, you know, some, some comedy and all- listen, to have a great relationship with any person. This is one of the things we talked about. If I wanted to go date my wife before she was ever my wife, if I wanted to go be in a relationship with her, and I go to all of her friends, and I asked them all about her and I go to her mom, and I asked her all about and I go to her family, and I asked them all about her and I read things that she wrote in school and I read things that she wrote in essays and whatever. What kind of relationship do we have? Zero. I know a lot about her. But we don't have a great relationship. There is no relationship. It is not until I spend time with her, spend time growing in relationship with her, spend time experiencing her that I actually get to know her. I can know a lot about her. Right? I can learn a lot about her. But I must pursue more information about God than just sitting around letting somebody tell me some things, right? Than just showing up at a church once a week for you know, an hour, can't wait to get out and go to lunch. and expect that I've got a great relationship with God, that's not how that works. I have to spend my time going ballistic learning about Him. Now I will tell you, a glimpse into what our mornings look like seven days a week, seven days a week, our mornings look like getting up, making some coffee, and spending a lot of time in studying God. For us, a lot of time is spent on studying things through a Hebrew lens to understand what the Hebrew language is saying in Scripture, because a lot of translations actually don't translate things, the way that they should, a lot of our time and study is discovering the culture, discovering the the commandments that God put in place, the things that he did not change and the things that man changed. A lot of that time is spent on growing us and better understanding of him. And then a lot of time is spent in relationship with Him, in prayer with Him, and walking things out, and spending time talking with Him and asking for his guidance and direction, and so on and so forth. So on a previous episode, we talked about how you have a purpose, because you have a maker, God has a will and a purpose in mind for you.

Chris LoCurto  11:29

So until you know him, how can you possibly know the will and purposes that He has for you? So getting to know Him is the greatest privilege, it is the greatest pleasure that a created being can ever experience. And by the way, when I say creative being I mean you and I, we are not creators, we are created beings, and we belong to the Creator. So this is the single most important pursuit in life as far as I am concerned. And it will give you the greatest clarity in your life by doing so. So if you're going to have the greatest clarity in your life, you've got to be able to answer these questions. Who are you? And I mean, at the core, who are you? How do you make decisions? Now everybody thinks, "I just come up with it in my head." I'm talking about what is your decision making process, what is it based on? Is it based on God? Is it based on personal pleasure? Is it based on self-destructive behaviors? Is it based on opinions of others? Is it based on fear? How do you make your decisions? What is that decision making process? Another question you have to answer is where are you headed in life? What direction are you moving toward? And another question is what is actually holding you back from getting there? So that brings us to the third thing and that is: know where you're going. So in business, we say you got to have a well defined vision and mission for your business, right? Mission is the purpose for your business to exist. Vision is the destination you can have one mission, you can have 700 destinations, right, the vision should be changing. You should keep attaining that vision. But leaders don't miss this. You have to have a vision and a mission for your life, for your personal life. Right? We've talked a lot about setting up personal mission statements in the different areas of your life and using Zig Zigler's Wheel of Life as well. That's why Next Level Life exists. So that you can create, you can utilize the tools to help you discover a destination in several different areas of your life. You have to ask yourself the question; How are you ever going to be greatly successful in your physical being if you do not have goals or destination that you want to go with your physical being? Right? Now that seems easy. That's an easy one for us to put in place. Another decently easy one for us to put in place is the personal finances. Where are you heading with your personal finances? Whats your vision? What is your purpose for your personal finances? Right, you've heard me say it a bajillion times. If you've never been through Financial Peace University, get your butt in it, make it happen and it will change the way you look at money. Super powerful. But you got to have a plan. You have to know right? You have to know where you want to be. You have to know what you want to do with every dollar you have to, as Dave Ramsey says, name every dollar, right? If you will do that, if you will put a plan together, if you will put a vision together, then guess what? You can end up not being broke, you can end up with stuff, you can end up in-listen, don't make stuff important. But you can end up with no mortgage, no debt, and be able to purchase things instead of going into debt for them. You can end up with the house that you want, you can end up with, whatever, whatever the thing is that the plan in the purpose that you have, for us, again, with what's going on with the ridge, our purposes are to spend our personal money on a place that helps other people grow. That's important to us to be able to put something in place to help people to heal. So you have to take a look at every aspect of your life, your career, your finances, your social life. Yes, let me speak to all the business owners who tend there tends to be a pattern among business owners that they don't have a social life and they're not upset about that. Listen, at some point, you have to get outside of isolation. Isolation is a terrible place to be. "Oh, Chris, I'm not isolated. I'm, you know, with my company all day long, and then I'm with my family." Yes. What do you do to get outside of business?

Chris LoCurto  16:19

What do you do to even get outside of family from time to time-I'm not telling you to go leave your family and go spend all your time socially-but there needs to be a rejuvenation process. There needs to be a time where you spend some time even if it's just with one or two people, close friends that you get away from the same thing you're doing day in and day out, and enjoy community, enjoy time with other people. So, again, what is the vision for your family? Where is your family headed? Parents, it is your job to guide your family, it is your job to guide your children. What destination are you guiding them towards? So you have to know where you're going. So speaking to you business owners and leaders, part of being a successful leader or a business owner is being successful at the life side. As I said earlier, you can't lead people well, until you can lead you well. I've seen way too many leaders stumble and fall in life I've seen way too many marriages get destroyed because of the focus on chasing the dollar. I've seen way too many families just get crazy impacted. Because they weren't a priority over a business, right? So maybe their business was skyrocketing at the time. I don't know. But here's what we know: ultimately, they failed. Those that failed, the ones that were we're talking about right now, ultimately failed to consider how important their personal and their family lives were. So the book of Psalms and Proverbs are full of prayers on how to live, the "well ordered life". And I suggest that you dig into those and spend time in those. Psalm 37:23 says this, "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and he delighteth in his way." What is a good man? Somebody who is focused on the ways of God, not themselves. The person who is focused on the ways of God, his steps are ordered by God. How powerful is that? So this isn't just mental organization, I don't want you to just hear this stuff and say, "Well, you know, that's good stuff, that's good to good to think about. I'm just gonna file that away." It's also about being submitted to God in our lives. Understand, disobedience to him is the fastest way to disorder in disaster. If you don't believe me, just read His word. Right? What does God say? If you are obedient to me, I will bless you, if you're disobedient to me, I will curse you. So if we are going to have Him, order our steps, if we are going to have Him, guide and direct our path, if we are going to have Him set our destination, then we have to follow Him. It's just the same as any good parent. If your kids are being obedient, you bless them. You help them you grow them, if they're being disobedient, you help them to understand they're being disobedient with punishment, you do something about it. A good parent, helps somebody to recognize that they're making bad decisions, right? A good leader does the same thing. So in summary, to have great clarity on your business, you have to have great clarity on your leadership. Yo have great clarity on your leadership, you have to have great clarity on you personally. So here's what I want you to ask yourself today: What do you need to do and or change today, in order to gain great perspective, great clarity? What is the things that you need to do? What do you need to change? What do you need to stop doing? What do you need to add to your life? Where do you need to go to get the help to get to that great clarity? These are questions I want you to ask yourself today. If you can do those things, then you can plan on charting your course with great clarity. Well, folks, I hope this has helped you today. As always take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.

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