Tag Archives: jesus

4 Tips to Spend More Time on Your Legacy Life Goals

February 17, 2018 ThatHelpfulDad 3 Comments

The older we get and the more wisdom we acquire, the more we realize that our legacy matters. How do you want to be remembered?

How you spend your time each day will go a long way towards determining your legacy.

If you’re looking for tips on how to live a Legacy Life, then this article can help you – we’ll talk about the challenges that interfere with our Legacy Life goals, I’ll give you 4 EASY tips you can take action on today that will allow you to spend more time on your Legacy Life Goals, and I’ll also recommend various books and links you can use to learn even more. Let’s get started!

Table of Contents

How you spend your time indicates your priorities
Living a Legacy Life – The Video
Time Waits for No One
4 Easy Tips for spending more time on your Legacy Life goals.
Most Important Tip of All
Helpful Books about Living a Legacy Life
Links to learn more

Editor’s Note: this post was updated February 2019. It is also part of a larger series of articles in our Wisdom for Life series. If you’re facing a life challenge and/or looking for tips to live your best life possible, be sure to take advantage of the rest of the wisdom library.

The concepts of building a “Legacy Life” to pass along your wisdom and/or creating “Now Moments” each day is something we’ve discussed on this site many times before and you’ll find numerous articles in the Wisdom library or the links below.

How You Spend Your Time Indicates Your Priorities

Today’s lesson is easy to understand but sometimes hard to put into action.

The questions are simple:

Are you satisfied with how you spend the majority of your time?
Does the time you spend each day accurately reflect the priorities you’ve set for yourself?
Are you spending time on your legacy life goals?

If the answer is ‘no’ it may be a good time to reevaluate things.

The first step towards living a life more focused on building your legacy is recognizing all the many things you do each and every day that are NOT serving any purpose towards your legacy goals.

If you keep a journal for a week and write down all the time you spend on non-Legacy goals vs Legacy goals, I’d wager you’ll be horrified to see how little time you spend on the life goals that are important to you. I’m not saying this has to be a dear diary journal or one focused on psychoanalysis – just keep it simple, as you go thru the day or at the end of the day, write down the big picture activities that you spent your time one and then review it at the end of the week. If the pictures isn’t good, then use the tips below to change things over time.

How to Live a Legacy Life
~The Video

Want to watch this life lesson in video format? Check out this vid from That Helpful Dad’s YouTube Channel….

Time Waits for No One

Remember one of our prior discussions – there is no guarantee of tomorrow. The only thing we know for certain is that we are alive right now, in this moment.

If you spend all of your time on trying to get rich, or watching cat videos on Facebook, or doing any number of things that are time-suck activities NOT aligned with your true hopes and dreams in life then you are robbing yourself (and anyone else invested in that goal) of precious time.

Don’t let the sands in the hour glass of your life slip away from you.

Remember, unlike an hour glass, you can’t flip your life over and get more time because (unfortunately for us) regardless of how we use our time, we can never get it back.

Jesus taught his followers similar wisdom in Matthew 6:21 and Luke 12:34 when he said…

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I think it’s fair to say that for many of us, our desired treasures in life would include things like family, legacy life goals, being happy, etc.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to become ensnared by the cares of the world. When that happens we often find ourselves giving away our time to tasks that don’t directly support our legacy goals.

Worse yet, we don’t discover this problem until its too late.

Yes we all need to have money to eat and probably the biggest time-suck that impedes the time we have to spend on our legacy goals relates to the things we do to pursue income to provide for our families. By no means am I suggesting that you quit your job and spend all of your time on your legacy goals (although if you could, you may find yourself the happiest of all and I’d be your biggest admirer!), but sadly that option may not be realistic for most people. But what I am saying is this…

If you want to spend more time on your Legacy Life Goals then you that you need to be consciously aware of how you spend your time — especially if your free time is limited.

ACTION TIME:

Each day there are multiple decision points at which you can CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE to take a break from your non-legacy tasks and spend a bit more time on your legacy goals. Identify just one decision point each day and you’ll identify 7 more legacy life opportunities each week!

4 Easy Tips to Spend More Time on Your Legacy Life Goals

This is the heart of the article. These are the EASY tips you can use today that will help you life a life more focused on your Legacy Life goals. Use 1 ore more of these tips each day and you’ll be amazed at how your progress on your goals skyrockets!

1- The Intra-Day Just Because

Got a minute to spare at work? Perhaps even an hour? Why not give a quick call to your spouse during a break to say ‘hello?’ Better yet could you meet for lunch?

The same goes if you have kids— could you go to your child’s school and spend lunchtime with them? Think of the happiness you could bring them with such a surprise.

Would any of these really impede your work-day? I’d wager not. But would they make you a winner at the game of life with your family? I’m betting so.

2- Don’t Just Be There, Be Present.

On the weekends, do you find yourself thinking about work while you’re with your family? If so, practice ‘being present’ (AKA totally focused) with whatever activity you are doing with your family.

If you are there-but-not-there then your family is going to know. When that happens it’s like making a mental error in baseball — you went through all the trouble of putting yourself in position to make a great play, but you end up flubbing it because you weren’t paying attention — as a result, you let your team down.

It sucks.

But you can avoid this and become an all-star if simply practice being present so that you can make the most of the precious (and limited) time you do have together.

Consider this — Jesus’ advice above could likely also be translated as ‘where your mind is, there your heart is also.’

Where is YOUR mind — on your legacy goals or somewhere else?

3- Manage Time-Suck with a Plan

Be mindful when things at work are running over-schedule. Pay attention when you know you are doing something that is wasting your time. It’s way too easy to burn an hour or two on things that don’t support your goals and before you know it any free time you had is gone.

I’m not saying you have to be a robot, but I would challenge you to ask yourself a couple questions.

Is the time-suck activity you’re doing now something that can be deferred till tomorrow?
Do you really need to watch that cat video for the 10th time? Do you need to spend another hour sharing it and re-watching it with everyone you know?
Do you really need to reset your fantasy lineup…again? Does it really make a difference?

Look, I’m guilty of all of these just like you. I’m not trying to be preachy here. I’m simply trying to bring awareness to the issue so we can help each other.

Time-suck is a constant battle — but it’s one we can win if we become aware of it and use simple planning tactics to manage it.

Perhaps the easiest of all is simply to build ‘time-suck’ into your daily plan and compartmentalize it into that time-slot. This could satisfy your need to goof off so that you can better focus on your legacy life goals during the majority of the precious free time you do have. Taking it a step further you might employ some of the 80/20 principles to make better use of your time. Check out this easy to use time management cheat sheet…

4- Climb The Mountain Every Day

If you have specific legacy goals related to accomplishments (writing a book, learning a new language, becoming a better cook, etc), try this tip:

Build in some time EACH day to work on your goal and it will often propel your forward faster over the long term vs. if you just worked on it ‘when you have a lot of time to focus on it.’

The problem with deferring your legacy goals ‘until you have time’ is that all too often you never make time. Before you know it that all-important dream is 5 or 10 years old with little advancement.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

If you work a little bit on your goal each day, you CAN climb that mountain. Each day take at least one simple step on your legacy life goal — if nothing else you’ll keep that goal top of mind. A super easy way to do this is to build time for your legacy life goal into your morning routine — it can make a world of difference and will energize you to do more!

Here’s the Morning Routine I use – it’s based on the philosophies of Tim Ferris and Tony Robbins…

Most Important Tip of All

If you take away nothing else from this article know this…

If you don’t take action to control of how you spend your time, the world will do it for you.

The result is that you’ll likely end up spending a lot of your life on things that are not that important in the grand scheme of things and you’ll miss out on living your best life possible. Don’t let that happen to you.

KNOW what you want out of life.
Keep your Legacy Life goals always on your mind.
Consciously make decisions that allow you to spend your time pursuing YOUR goals — not someone else’s.

If you do these things, you’ll not only spend more of your precious time on your Legacy Life goals, you’ll also be happier and more fulfilled – because you’ll live a life that you know is making a difference. And when you do that, you’ll be contributing your verse to the great play of life!

Books You can use to Leave a Legacy

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[amazon box = “1404113339”]

Continue Reading…

Life Lessons

Are You Willing to Make a Fool of Yourself…And Become a Master?

February 15, 2018 ThatHelpfulDad Leave a comment

“The time came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anais Nin

I think it’s fair to say that most people who want to achieve a goal understand that it takes hard work and effort, but in order to break free from the mold and achieve mastery level it takes something more: it takes a willingness to expose your work to the world — even if it means you risk making a fool of yourself.

The question is — are you willing to pay the price it takes to achieve such greatness?

I deliberately selected this pic because (personally) I can think of nothing more scary than dancing in public in front of a bunch of strangers. (Without a bit of liquid courage — I’d rather go in front of a firing squad!). And yet, it’s often these ‘moment of truths’ that make all the difference in life.

Flowers cannot bloom unless they are exposed to the sunlight.

Our work can never be discovered if we only keep it to ourselves. As creators we know this, and yet still we delay. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year. We KNOW that sooner or later we have to put ourselves and our work on display — whether that be dancing, writing, music, or whatever is our passion. If we don’t share it with the world we are wasting God’s precious gifts to us. And we tell ourselves “Someday I will. When the time is right. When the work is perfected. Definitely, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it and not care what others think. Yes, I’m gonna do it…someday.”

But that someday never comes. We keep delaying — it’s safer that way. Yet still the urge grows inside. Until, finally, at last — we decide it’s time to let the flower bloom. It’s time to show ourselves to the world — even if people think our flower isn’t all that beautiful, it no longer matters. All that matters is we are free. We are pursuing our destiny.

And it feels incredible.

The question is — what’s stopping YOU?

Here are four questions I often ask myself in order to make progress. Pondering them helps me change my mindset and the new perspective I gain makes me think about my creativity (and my life) differently. Perhaps they will help you too.

HONESTY — are you willing to be honest with yourself, even when it hurts? It’s easy to be aware of your strengths and work to build them further, but it takes courage to acknowledge your weaknesses — especially when they are painful — but unless you are willing to view yourself from all angles, you’ll be trapped by an illusion that limits your growth. This doesn’t mean you should spend all your time developing your weaknesses and not work on your strengths — on the contrary I’m a believer that you should have an 80/20 (or even 90/10) focus on ‘living your strengths.’ But you still need to be aware of your weaknesses — make sure there are not any limiting factors that could hamper your growth.

In our flower example, if there’s a weed growing up right next to you, it would probably be a good idea to nip the weed in the bud (better yet pull that sucker out from the roots!) before it has a chance to strangle you!

2. EMBARRASSMENT — Are you willing to endure embarrassment in order to grow? Nobel prize winner George Bernard Shaw once said…

“I learned to speak as I learned to skate or cycle: by doggedly making a fool of myself until I got used to it.”

If you want to achieve greatness, you have to be willing to suffer through some awkward moments in front of other people. Do you have the courage to face such public embarrassment while you continue to practice, make mistakes, and keep trying? Most people like the security of sitting on the sidelines and laughing at other’s mistakes — that’s why most people don’t achieve greatness. They are the weeds of life. The weeds think they are strong. The weeds think the flowers are weak. The weeds are wrong.

Courtesy of rmac8oppo/CCO Creative Commons

A beautiful flower seems fragile to the weeds, but what the weeds don’t understand is that the ‘fragility’ of the flower is an integral part of its beauty. The willingness to pursue your craft in front of the whole world, by definition, makes you more fragile, and yet it’s the only way to bloom. Let the world SEE your beauty — and gain strength in the process.

3. CHILDLIKE — can you become like a little child — unafraid of failure and instead focused on getting what you want? Babies make mistakes like they are going out of style, yet they learn and keep trying because that’s all they know how to do.

Jesus reminded his disciples of the importance of humbling themselves and ‘becoming like little children.’ Accept the fact that you still have more to learn, and see the world with the open mind of a child. That change in perspective can open your mind to recognize new paths you never even knew existed before — and these are the paths to your destiny.

4. FRUSTRATION — are you willing to deal with a little frustration in order to grow? Flowers have to break through the soil to find the light — imagine how difficult that must be? In the same way, when you must break free of the crowd. But it’s not easy. When you first start learning a new skill, you might enjoy some early successes that will inspire you to keep going, but eventually you’ll hit a wall and feel like you’re going backwards. This is because the more you learn about your skill, the higher you begin to raise your standards — and soon what was good in the beginning is no longer good enough. Additionally, the more you learn, the more you become aware of your errors — recognizing things you often overlooked in the beginning because you didn’t know any better.

You’ll feel frustration, anger, and even a loss of self-esteem as you struggle to open the petals of your flower. You may even feel like quitting. But don’t give in to this temptation! Instead understand that these ups and downs are all part of the growth process. No mountain climb is just a straight line directly up the path — there are always some peaks and valleys on the path to greatness. In the same way, no flower goes from bud to bloom overnight — but if you keep pushing through the soil, you WILL bloom.

Now that you know, it’s time to grow

I’ll leave you with this quote and then send you on your way…

“Awareness is like sunlight over a dark well.”
Dan Millman

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Money, Career, and Finances, Solomons Wisdom

Get Wisdom! Get Wealth! (The Solomon Series)

January 30, 2018 ThatHelpfulDad Leave a comment

Solomon’s 10th Commandment
Thou shalt use thy wisdom to acquire thy wealth, and thy wealth to acquire more wisdom.

(Editor’s note: This article is part of a series of life lessons that feature the wisdom of King Solomon — visit this page to see more)

The King is back and today’s lesson is one of the key pillars of his entire philosophy. I’d venture to say this little nugget was a big part of how Solomon became one of the richest men of his day and one of the wisest of all time.

Learn this wisdom yourself, apply it to your life, and you’ll surely put yourself on the path to living your best life now.

Wealth Comes from Wisdom

“By wisdom, a house is built, through understanding it is established, and through knowledge, its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.” (Proverbs 24: 3-4)

Take a moment to let that sink in. I’ve read this quote from Solomon more times than I can count. It’s one of my all-time favorite proverbs and I actively try to live this principle as part of my daily routine. I’m hopeful that by sharing it with you today, you can make it a part of your life and soar to new heights.

Let’s dig deeper into this wisdom to unlock its mysteries. There’s a lot more than meets the eye with this quote. Consider the following…

Wisdom: The foundation

Without sufficient wisdom, everything you are building will be naught but a house of cards, doomed to fall when the storms of life inevitably come.

Build upon a solid foundation and you’ll increase your odds of success. Build on the shifting sands, or worse yet skip the foundation building stage, and your house will surely fall. This concept was so important that Jesus also warned us about the importance of building a solid foundation his parable about The Wise and Foolish Builders.

No matter what you’re building make wisdom your foundation. With wisdom in place, your house/financial portfolio/career/life will have its capstone in place from which you can confidently move forward. Without that basic foundation, you’ll flail around and eventually fold.

Understanding: The walls and roof.

Laying down a solid foundation is great, but it takes more than that alone to build a house. We need to erect the walls and a roof too. As you continue forwards, it’s important to keep learning, by doing so you’ll gain a new understanding that you can use to not just survive but thrive.

The result: you’ll firmly establish yourself, even as others fall by the wayside.

Why do so many people have so little savings? Why do most businesses fail? Why do so many give up on their dreams? Because most of us don’t take the time to establish a foundation based on wisdom, nor do we continue to invest in our understanding to advance our skill stack.

With a weak foundation and lack of advanced understanding, we become also-rans in the never-ending rat race of mediocrity. Our money sprouts wings and flies away. Our business loses out to competition. Our dreams fade.

But it doesn’t have to be this way — Solomon knew about these dangers and implored his readers to do something about it.

“Get Wisdom! Get Understanding!”

He wrote in Proverbs 4:5, for the wise king knew that these were the building blocks of long-term success, the keys to creating a lasting legacy.

Knowledge: The Treasure inside

Build with wisdom. Advance with Understanding. Continue to invest in yourself and eventually you’ll reach a stage of mastery where you’ll acquire special knowledge that will reward you with true prosperity. You’ll enjoy those rare and beautiful treasures that King Solomon was speaking about.

Does it take effort to acquire such knowledge? Certainly. But that’s the price that must be paid if you want to build a lasting legacy – one based on the time-tested pillars of Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge.

You can’t build a house like this overnight, but if you put to use these tools and have the patience to allow them time to work their magic in your life, you will be handsomely rewarded. You portfolio with become recession-proof, your career will prosper, your businesses will soar.

From Wisdom: Wealth

From a strictly financial point of view, we can use this wisdom to build wealth. For most of us, it takes time to build our family’s wealth. Relying on winning the lottery or get rich quick schemes is a recipe that will lead to poverty for most people because even if they work, any money you make will soon be gone. Solomon warned us about this too…

“Of what use is money in the hands of a fool since he has no desire to get wisdom?” (Proverbs 17:16)

Don’t be that fool. Instead, take the time to acquire wisdom before you chase after wealth. You’ll be glad you did. Learn about the benefits of budgeting, money management, saving, basic investing – this will be your foundation of wisdom. As you acquire some wealth, use it to gain even more wisdom. Invest in your financial education. Spend some money on surrounding yourself with trusted advisors (accountants, lawyers, financial planners, etc). Outsource menial tasks so you can get the highest ROI for your time.

Practice what you’ve learned, keep striving to learn more, and be disciplined and prudent, and over time your eyes will open to hidden knowledge that will help you truly understand how to make the most of your money so that you can live a life of financial freedom.

I’m not suggesting that you have to be super rich to be fulfilled, only that you should strive to have enough wisdom such that you are the ruler of your money and not vice versa – regardless of how much you earn, any of us can achieve this if we acquire the knowledge necessary to live in this manner.

It’s been proven time and time again – it’s not how much you make, but how much you keep. With wisdom, you can keep more of whatever you make so that you can enjoy the treasures of life that are most meaningful to you.

What is your Wealth?

Solomon’s wisdom applies to more than just finances or building the proverbial house. We could substitute any number of other endeavors – building a career, learning a sport/musical instrument, and even the concept of building the best version of YOU there can be. Let’s talk about the you in You.

If you want to live the best life possible, you’ll need to become the best YOU possible.

How do you build the best you?

By using wisdom to build a solid foundation within your life. Once you’ve done that, you can continue to learn about yourself and your world and gain the understanding you need to establish your place in life (for example discovering your mission or deciding what you want your life’s legacy to be all about).

Having built a foundation of wisdom by knowing yourself, and then gaining the understanding necessary to truly know your life’s mission, you’ll be on your way to living a life fulfilled – and when you take action each day to fulfill your mission, you’ll end up acquiring the deepest knowledge of all about yourself, that in turn, will start filling you with knowledge you could never have fathomed in the beginning: that rare and beautiful treasure will be YOU.

With wisdom as your guide, you’ll gain a sense of personal fulfillment and a conscious confidence that you are living your life’s destiny. Best of all, by becoming the best you possible, you’ll put yourself in a position to change the world by helping others too.

And it all starts with wisdom!

Whatever you are building, be sure to use Wisdom as your foundation. If you need help finding wisdom, just open King Solomon’s Book of Proverbs to pretty much any page, And I’m confident it will give you understanding that will improve your life!

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Share this page with a friend so they can benefit too
Share your wisdom – drop me a line below so I can learn from you.
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Solomons Wisdom

The Wise and Foolish Builders

January 30, 2017 ThatHelpfulDad Leave a comment

Jesus said, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Gospel of Matthew 7:24-27