286 | Are You Letting Life Pass You By?

Chris LoCurto: Welcome to the Chris Locurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show folks, our quote for today is,

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough. We must apply. Being willing is not enough, we must do,” and that was Leonardo Davinci.

What We’re Missing

I think for today’s episode that is very relevant. We’re talking about things that you’re missing in life, the things that you want to accomplish, the things that can bring you joy, the things that can change the way you see the world, see people, see God, see life. All of those things that you’re missing out on. It is so easy for us to just let life pass us by and to not take action, to not DO. What about those things that you want to accomplish that you’re not getting to? What about those things that you know for some of you out there, are big dreams that really in the grand scheme of things, if you had great perspective about it, might not take that much to get to. But unfortunately because of the overwhelming things we are currently focused on: work, people pleasing, taking care of others.

It’s stuff that we are stuck in, right? It could be being parents and spending every waking moment on your kids. That’s not the best idea. But those things that are currently holding the position of most important in your life right now, may be keeping you from other things. So today we’re going to be talking about some of those things that are holding you back. I’m going to be talking about how to discover some of that stuff. We’re also going to have a little thing for you to do at the end to find out how you can change this in your life, so be sure to stick around until the end on this. Guys, this episode is all about how not to stay stuck, which is what we help so many people to do in next level life. That’s why this episode is brought to you by next level life.

If you ever find yourself in life, asking is this it? Or find yourself feeling unfulfilled, stuck in the same old stuff, but never moving forward and it’s not just affecting you. It affects your relationships as well. It’s just frustrating, isn’t it? What if you could wake up every morning with a clear purpose? What would it look like to have healthier relationships with less conflict? Where would you be in five years if you had clarity, purpose, and peace? Probably a big difference where you stand today. I know it’s possible because I’ve been where you are asking myself, is this what the rest of my life is going to be like? There is a better way and it starts with next level life. You can go to chrislocurto.com/discover to take the next step. Next level life is a two day personal discovery experience. It’s a one on one personalized event where we guide you through a process to help you get unstuck in life, improve relationships, and discover what’s holding you back from freedom and peace along with those things that you’re missing in life.

So if you’re struggling with discontentment, regret, or not feeling good enough, if you’re filled with anxiety or your relationships are lacking, don’t keep going through the motions every day. Learn how to move past the things robbing you of peace. Go to chrislocurto.com/discover and take the next step for a better future. Now, today we’re talking about things again that we learned so greatly and next level life. I want to talk about how to take action so life doesn’t pass you. By now, life is passing you by. You may not realize it. You may not realize that there are things that you’re not getting to do in the peripheral that is something that you desire, or something that you love or something that you’re passionate about. Because we have this overwhelming belief that if we’re not spending every single moment focused on work or focused on people or focused on protecting ourselves, then something’s wrong.

The Homework We Assign

And again, this is something we see every week with our clients at the end of a long day. The first day of next level life our folks that are here for the event get to come down, sit down at our kitchen, at the bar in our kitchen and get this amazing Bison Ribeye. Yes, it is phenomenal. All those folks that are listening that have been through a next level life, or strap plan here at the office, they love it. They love coming back and getting another one because it’s just fantastic. We do this pasta with this Gorgonzola cream sauce and pancetta inside of it. And for those that like to enjoy a glass of wine, we have wine for them as well. And then we walk through this process. So they’ve had this very difficult day because day one is a very tough day, right? And so we get to the end of that day and we know it’s been tough.

So we like the top off a tough day with an amazing Ribeye, pasta and wine, just that’s what happens in our office folks, and it happens all the time and we love it. But what we do during that time, is we kind of discuss the day, we let them kind of just, you know, relax for a while, but eventually we get around to giving them their homework because on day one they have a little bit of homework to go home and do. You go back to the hotel and do, and one of the things we give them, we ask them to focus on is a bucket list. Now I believe everybody knows what that is, but it’s very possible that you don’t.

Your “Bucket” List

A bucket list is the things that you want to do before you kick the bucket and we are very clear about this. This is not the stuff that other people want you to do. This is not the stuff that your parents have been telling you for 20 years that you need to do. This is the stuff that you want to accomplish before you die. Now, for some people it’s travel. For me, I’ve accomplished a ton in my life. There’s not a lot of stuff that I want to accomplish nowadays. I’ve done a lot. So my stuff, my bucket list looks a lot like travel. It looks a lot like amazing experiences when it comes to things like work and running businesses and owning properties and all that kind of stuff. I’ve done that stuff. I have accomplished that and I love it and I’m going to keep doing stuff, but it’s not stuff that I need to do before I die. The stuff that I want to do before I die is experiences.

What’s on My List:

Helping people to experience God in a different way. Being able to travel to places that I’ve never been to before. A few of us are going on a fantastic Bible study trip to Israel in a couple months. And that’s a bucket list thing for me. I’ve always wanted to go and do that type of thing. At the same time, something I’d love to do is do like one of those river cruises down like the Rhone Valley or go to burgundy and just spend time at some of these amazing wineries and stuff like that. Those are the kinds of things that I would love to accomplish. There’s some other things too. I grew up racing and skiing. I want to ski in some of the places that I saw as a kid. Like I would love to go to Austria, you know, I would love to go to Kitzbühel if possible and I would love to race there.

That would be really cool. That would be fun. I raced formula cars, for those of you that don’t know that that’s something that I do as a hobby. I’d love to get in a formula one on one of these big tracks and you know, one of these famous formula one tracks and go around. If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, no biggie, but there are definitely certain things that I want to accomplish before I go. Israel is one of those things that I wanted to accomplish, learn other languages, stuff that I would love to accomplish before I go. Learn how to make incredible French sauces.

Yeah. It seems silly, right? It seems like, well, that’s not that big of a deal. Well, it is to me, and why it’s a big deal to me is because it’s something that brings me joy. Creating great food brings me joy. Taking people on trips that they would never experience brings me joy. Going and seeing things like where our ancestors, our ancestors of faith, this Bible study trip to Israel. I’m looking forward to being baptized in the Jordan River where my lord and Savior was baptized. Right? That’s amazing. That’s something that’s super exciting for me, but what happens to us in life is that we get so caught up with the day to day with the junk, with the experiences with our issues, with what we call our surface level responses.

Why We’re Stuck, And Not Getting To Our Goals

After a day of guiding people through their root system, through their core impacts, through other processes, through learning, their surface level responses, through learning their lies. One of the things we tend to see is that life is passing them by. They have more things that they want to accomplish, but it’s not going to happen. They’re stuck in people pleasing. They’re stuck in trying to make others happy. They’re stuck believing the lies that they’ve been told in life. They’re stuck believing they’re not good enough. This drives me nuts. They’re stuck in a place because they believe that they are not good enough or worthy enough to go and have a great trip like that, that they’re not worthy enough to learn a new language. I can’t tell you how much it drives me crazy that people feel like they’re not worthy enough to come through next level life. There will be people that actually do get in.

That’s like, it took me three years to come here, Chris, I believe this was something that was good enough for everybody else, but I wasn’t good enough for it. They don’t understand how the limiting beliefs…that the lies, that the things that they tell themselves are holding them back from freedom, holding them back from peace, holding them back from having a better life, holding them back from having healthy boundaries, holding them back from having healthy relationships and healthy friendships, healthy marriages and healthy parenting. All this junk is keeping them from experiencing a greater version of life. All of this stuff is holding them back from being their authentic self, which is another thing that we discover in next level life. Worrying about the present, worrying about the future, procrastinating, perfectionism, seeking approval, addictions or other self sabotaging behaviors are holding them back from a better life, from something that they want to experience. They’re focused on the wrong things.

They’re not making time for the right things. Now, here’s the caveat. It’s easy to look at someone else’s life and see they’re focused on the wrong things, but so much harder in our own lives, right? We’re often blind to it and we lack that type of perspective. We don’t see the things that are holding us back. We don’t recognize the lies that we’re telling ourselves. We don’t recognize the surface level responses that we are, we are doing and how much it’s affecting. We think, oh, well, you know, I’ve really got to build up this business or I’ve really got to accomplish more in what I do. I’ve really got to do _____… the backyard is really the most important thing for me to be focusing on. And listen, it may be for you, but understand after being stuck in that same thought process after 20, 30 years of not accomplishing dreams and goals.

And I’m not saying that you got to get everything done while while you’re young. That is not what I’m saying at all. I’m have accomplished plenty of stuff while I was younger. I’m accomplishing tons of stuff as I’m older. What I’m saying is that if you’re stuck in that place where you would like to be able to accomplish more things in life, where you would like to do things before you kick the bucket, where there are joys and passions that you would like to experience, but the reason you’re not experiencing them is because of the lies that you tell yourself. Because of the lies that other people have told you and convinced you of. If you’re stuck in life because you don’t understand how to deal with the junk of your past, then guess what you’re doing right now?

Or if you’re stuck in life and you just don’t know why, then guess what you’re doing. You’re avoiding going after those passions. You’re avoiding going after those joys, those experiences in life. If you’re on cruise control or if you’re too busy with distractions and demands, then you’re avoiding those things literally right now.

How Life Passes Us By…

So here’s what we do. We have them sit down. They go back to their hotel. One of the things we have them do is write up a bucket list. Write down the top things that you want to accomplish before you kick the bucket, and then we have them prioritize the top 10 and then we tell them when you get home, put it on the calendar. So we have them sit down and write out this bucket list. Now I’ll tell you in a little bit what we actually have them do with it, but our goal is to help people to not look back 20 years from now and say, I wish I would have made more time for ____ because guess what guys?

Twenty years from now, if you’ve not solved all the things I’ve been discussing, if you’ve not learned how to get past all of those things, what’s going to change? What makes you think 20 years from now you’re all of a sudden going to accomplish all this stuff? What’s going to change your situation? So many people sit in next level life and go, why did I not know this 20 years ago? Why did I not know this 10 years ago? Crud we have some folks that are like, why didn’t I know this 40 years ago? What’s going to change if you don’t change it, if you don’t take action? If you don’t take action, you will be repeating the same sentence a year from now. You might be thinking right now, “Well, I’ll get to that in five years from now. You know, I’ll get to that, at this point in life,” if you don’t take action, you’re going to be repeating the same sentence five years from now.

Well I’ll do that five years from now. I’ll get to that. Who Do we see allowing life to pass them by? Well, here’s just a few people, business owners, hey, business owner, how many things have you allowed to pass you by because you’ve been so focused on your identity in your business or so focused on having to create a phenomenal success in your business? Or once you created a success, it wasn’t enough and you had to keep creating more and more and more so business owners, we’ll see business owners that you know, we’ll get them 50, 60 years old that are going, “Yep, I have missed a lot of life. I’ve missed time with my kids. I missed time with my spouse. I missed vacation opportunity, I missed all kinds of stuff.” Well, why? Because I was so head down in my business.

I know I’ve been there. There’s a good chunk of my life where I was head down in business and just focused on create, create, create. People we see missing life is stayed home Parents, you know, it’s so important to focus on raising those kids. And let me tell you, I think that’s one of the most important jobs in life, period for both moms and Dads, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t work in your own life as well during that process. Folks, life will keep passing you by. This is why the bucket list is part of the homework for every single client, and we’re going to talk about what we do with that when we come back right after this. Folks, if you’ve been listening to me for any length of time, then you know the number one issue when it comes to business, when it comes to family, when it comes to friendships, is having a lack of high quality communication to make sure that you are absolutely winning in every aspect of your life.

It all starts with having great communication. The best way to get that communication is to understand your personality style and to understand the personality style of the folks that you’re spending the most time with, whether it be at work, whether it be at home. The best way to do that is to go to chrislocurto.com/store and get your personality profile and personality profiles for your team to day. Get it for your family members today. As you go through that profile, you will begin to see the greatest ways to communicate. Go to chrislocurto.com/store today, and we’re back and we’re talking about ways to not let life pass you by and the things that you’re missing out on.

So here’s what we do. Here’s what I’m going to tell you, what we do with folks and next level life at the end of the day…they’ve had this very powerful, very strong life changing day.
Tons of great information. And what we see, what we tend to see in almost every single event is again, that there are parts of life that have really been passing them by. So I want you to do the same thing that we have them do.

Here’s How To Get Traction On Your Goals

I want you to sit down, take time, take at least 15 minutes, but don’t be surprised if this takes you a half hour, 45 minutes, maybe even an hour to just process through the things that you love in life or the things that you want to experience in life. So take, take time to sit down and write down a list of all the things, all the things. I don’t care what it is. If it’s you want to go play golf at Pebble beach and you know, or you want to play golf at your local golf course that you have not been able to do that with.

I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. Write down those things. If you want to take an art class, if you want to learn a new language, if you want to travel to Italy, if you want to, I don’t care what it is. If you want to buy a different car down the road, if you want to, whatever that thing is that you want to accomplish before you kick the bucket, write that list down. Then prioritize the top 10 on that list. Take the top 10 things that you want to accomplish and prioritize those. Move those to the top of the list. Then get them on the calendar. This is the critical part. You have to put time behind them.

You have to put a plan together of when you’re going to do this. So if you want to travel to Italy and it’s gonna take you. I don’t know. Hey Chris, that’s a great plan, but I won’t be able to do that for three years. I’d have to save up all the money, all this stuff. Okay, well then put it on the calendar for three years from now and work out a plan. Work out a budget. What’s it gonna take to get to Italy? How much money is it going to cost, how much you gonna have to save every month, how much you’re going to have to spend on, I don’t know, travel gear or clothes or whatever that you’re going to do that while you’re there that you need to save up for, right? Make a plan, put it on the calendar. This is where it becomes action. This is where it becomes doing. Put it on the stinking calendar. Put together a budget of how much it’s going to take to get there.

Put all of that stuff in place. If it’s going and playing golf at Pebble Beach, that probably isn’t going to take you as long to accomplish as it would be having a vacation in Italy. Right? So how long would it take to get that done? Put that on the calendar. What are the steps that it’s gonna take to actually get you there and playing golf at Pebble Beach? If you want to just do an art class, when can you do that? Put It on the calendar. Get it done. Now, if you have a spouse, here’s my suggestion there. We always tell people again in next level life, have your spouse eventually sit down and do their bucket list as well and prioritize their top 10. Then we have you guys sit down together and you create a third bucket list. Yes. There’s going to be three lists.

The Family Bucket List

Okay? You sit down and you create a family bucket list. You go through your list and you go, do you want to do this thing? Yes. Okay, move it to the family bucket list. How about this thing over here? No. Okay. I’m going to keep that on my own list. How about this thing here? You go through both of your lists and move to the family list of things that you guys want to do together and keep on your own list the things that only you want to do and it doesn’t mean that if you want to do something and your spouse doesn’t want to do it, that you don’t do that right? It would actually be healthy for us to go experience things that if our spouse doesn’t want us to. If you want to go fly fishing in Montana and your spouse is like just don’t care about that whatsoever…that is not exciting to me. Then, great! Schedule a time for you to go do that thing, but then turn around and say, okay, spouse of mine, what are you going to do that I don’t want to be a part of? So if I’m going to go take this time, when are you going to go take time?

You know, if you’re, you know, your spouse is like, hey, I want to go put together a friends trip to Napa Valley. You know, just me and other girls. Or if you’re a guy, me and other guys, and we just want to go and do this trip together. Great. Put It on the schedule. Make it happen. If it’s a thing that you don’t want to do as a family, right? So I’m assuming that husband and wife, you may want to go to Napa valley together, but if you don’t, that’s perfectly fine, right?

It’s okay for you to do things as an individual. It’s actually healthy for you to go spend time with friends. If they’re healthy friends that is, don’t go do stuff like this with unhealthy friends. Sit down together with both of your bucket lists and create the family bucket list. Then take the top prioritized stuff on all three lists and figure out when can you do these things. You’re not going to get everything done immediately. You’re not going to get everything done in the next 12 months. That’s okay. You’ve got it prioritized. Lay it out on the calendar according to what you can get done and you want to get done. Put the time behind it, put it on the calendar, put a plan together, put a budget together. How much is it going to cost to pull these things off? Some of the things that you have prioritized may not cost you anything.

You’ll just be surprised, so when one thing gets checked off, rearrange and prioritize or add new ones right as we start to get things knocked off of our bucket list, take a look and add of the other ones to the bucket list in the future so that you’re accomplishing the things in life instead of allowing life to just pass you. By now, I’m somebody who is absolutely sure of his eternity. I know where I’m going and I know I’ve got a much greater inheritance there than anything I can experience here, but I’m also somebody who truly believes that God also set up this life for us to experience it in great ways. I’m not saying that His focus is on trying to make you happy. That’s not anywhere in the Bible, but he has allowed us to experience a lot of great stuff, so take advantage of that while you can so that you don’t get to the end of your life and say, “Gosh, I really wish I would have done ____ or five years from now, say, man, we never went and did this thing over here.”

So don’t let life keep passing you by. There you have it. Folks, do this this week. Sit Down, do your bucket list, prioritize it, get it on the calendar. If you have a spouse, had them do theirs. Sit Down and do the family one. Get it on the calendar and start experiencing some of those great things that you want to accomplish in life.

As always, take this information, change your leadership, Change Your Business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.