Episode 9: What’s it Going to Cost Me? Three Questions To Ask Before We Act!

Summary

Have you ever wanted to achieve something but weren’t sure if the prize at the end was worth the price of the process?  In Episode 9 of Warrior: The Art of War for Life, we will discuss three sets of questions to help us get clear on our “Big Deal.”  They are:

1. The Cost of NOT Achieving: What is it costing me right now to NOT achieve this, to NOT change this in my life?  What opportunities will be missed if I never accomplish it?  What will it cost the world if it never happens?

2. The Cost of Accomplishment: What is it going to cost me in terms of time, energy, and money to accomplish?  

3. How willing am I to pay this price, to invest in the process?  Why am I willing to pay it?  If not, why not?

With the astounding true story of ultra-marathon runner Dion Leonard and his dog Gobi and inspiring quotes from Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Ryan Scott Lily, Frank Lloyd Wright, Brian Tracy, Vince Lombardi, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, this episode will get you thinking on what you really want in your life, out of your life, and for your life and teaches that the power of belief and self-confidence are essential catalysts for change and success.  

For questions, feedback, or to work with me, please shoot me an email at artofwarforlife@gmail.com or send me a DM on Instagram @artofwarforlife, and please join the Art of War for Life Facebook page.

Soundtrack by Sentius

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/david-boyd3/support

Transcription

Podcast Intro

Welcome to Warrior: The Art of War for Life – A Podcast for Those Who Want to Win!   Leadership Lessons, Motivational Mindsets, Empowering Principles, Success Strategies, and Transformational Tactics from Sunzi, the Master of Victory

I am your guide on the side, David Boyd, award-winning educator, transformational speaker, and Certified Life Coach.

It’s time to start winning at life!

Episode Introduction

Hey!  Hey! Hey!  Welcome everyone!  Thanks for joining us!  I am so glad you are here listening! I want to take a moment to personally thank all of you who have provided feedback about the podcast!  For those of you haven’t yet, please do.  If you are listening to this episode, I want to hear from you!  I’d love to hear what challenges you are looking to overcome, what you are looking to create, and what your “Big Deals” are.  So please shoot me an email at artofwarforlife@gmail.com or send me a DM on Instagram @artofwarforlife, and please join the Art of War for Life Facebook page.  When you do, I will send you a free copy of the Sunzi Battle Planner I developed, a great resource to walk you through getting clear on your “Big Deal,” getting in touch with your why, Sunzi’s Five Strategic Success Factors, and how to level up our leadership with Sunzi’s Five Essential Attributes of Great Leaders.

Last week, we week I introduced a special segment called: Warrior Mindset Unplugged and we got to hear from international keynote speaker, impactful storyteller, change maker, and Marine Mom Abigail G. Manning!  That was so much fun!  Please let me know what you thought of it.  Next week, we’re going to discuss “Sunzi’s Five Full-Send Commitment Tactics for When You Hit the Wall” so stay tuned. This week, we are talking about “Sunzi’s Three-fold Questions for Calculating the Cost & Committing to Accomplish.”

Sunzi’s Three-fold Questions for Calculating the Cost and Committing to Accomplish

Chapter 2 of Sunzi’s Art of War opens with a discussion of the cost of waging war.  Sunzi is quite detailed here and though the specifics of what it costs to deploy troops and wage war are different, the principle is the same.  There is a price that must be paid.  Sunzi’s level of detail here is designed to get the ruler really thinking about the cost of military action and inaction.  Sunzi, here, is trying to dissuade the willy-nilly whimsical deployment of troops by hitting the ruler where it hurts most – their wallet.

There is a principle here for our own lives.  In Episode 1, I invited us to get clear on our “Big Deals,” our grand endeavors, our personal missions.  I want to circle back around to that now.

I want you to think of what that is.  What is that yearning deep down inside, that thing that we’ve always wanted to say “Yesss!” to in our lives?  What is it that we want to create?  What do we want in our lives, out of our lives, and for our lives?  Can you see it?  Can you see yourself actually accomplishing it?  What does victory look like for you personally?  What does it feel like?  How will you know when you’ve won?  When you’ve arrived?  In 10, 20, or 30 years from now what does life look like having accomplished your “Big Deal?”  How do you feel?  What do you know?  Who have you become?  What impact have you had on the lives of those around you?  Feel free to pause this and write down any thoughts and feelings you may have.  If you can’t write them down at this moment, say them out loud.

The Cost of Not Achieving

With that vision of what personal victory and success look and feel like in mind, I want to flip the script here.  What is it costing us in our lives to not achieve our “Big Deals” or to continue to just do what we’ve always done?  What is it costing us in lost opportunities?  Imagine for a moment, coming to the end of our lives and never achieving our “Big Deals?”  Borrowing a music metaphor, physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1984) said: “Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.”  What does life look like 10, 20, or even 50 years from now without bringing our “Big Deals” into existence?  Though it may feel uncomfortable, I really want us to dig into this.  If things don’t change, what do our lives look like?  Is that the life that we want for ourselves?  Who else will be impacted by the absence of our “Big Deals” and never even know what they are missing?

I had an experience a few years ago where I went through my entire life and all of my relationships and cleaned house.  I expressed gratitude to everyone I could contact who had helped me on my way and I made amends to everyone I was carrying guilt toward.  It was cleansing, cathartic, and healing.  In that process, I realized that because of my limiting labels, belittling beliefs, and scathing self-talk that I had deprived myself and others of countless opportunities for friendship, connection, and shared experience throughout my life.  As entrepreneur and personal and economic development speaker Ryan Scott Lilly has said: “The opportunity cost of an unlived dream is not only that dream, but also the dreams the dream was meant to inspire.”  In Episode 3: Sunzi’s Five Strategic Success Factors, one of which was leveraging the landscape, I mentioned that when we get clear on our “Big Deals,” our grand endeavors, and we decide to act in pursuit of those goals, we are setting out on a journey.  On our journeys through life, the cost of not taking the first step in a new direction includes every step that would have come after and as I mentioned, we have no idea the amazing opportunities, people, and experiences that are waiting for us up ahead on the path of life.

I recently had the good fortune of meeting ultra-marathon runner Dion Leonard and his dog Gobi.  I am working to get them on the show.  What an inspiring story!  Though a highly successful senior corporate leader with 20 years of experience, Dion Leonard’s lifestyle was killing him. Weighing 250 pounds, Dion’s uncontrollable eating habits, heavy smoking, and excessive drinking to hide from the demons of his abusive and turbulent childhood were leading him to an early grave.  Dion felt his life was missing a deeper purpose. On a drunken dare, he took up running and found the further he ran, the tougher the challenge, the more he learnt to harness the power to overcome any obstacle in front of him.  Dion’s iron will and innate ability to survive led him to transform his life and become one of the world’s top ultra-runners competing in some of the toughest and most extreme ultra challenges across the planet’s most inhospitable locations. 

Though singularly focused on winning, one act of kindness during a 155-mile ultra-race in the Chinese Gobi Desert would change Dion’s life forever.  In the middle of the Gobi Desert, a little stray dog appeared out of nowhere and started running with him!  Day after day and mile after mile, they formed an unbreakable bond that would become the ultimate challenge of overcoming adversity to achieving the unachievable. This life changing moment would become the internationally bestselling memoir “Finding Gobi!”  Imagine what would and would not have happened if Dion hadn’t laced up his running shoes on that first day at 250 lbs, overweight and hungover to huff and puff his way around the block all those years ago.

It has been said that rejection endures but for a moment, but regret lasts for a lifetime.  What will we regret if we don’t achieve our “Big Deals” in our lives?  I don’t want to linger here but I wanted us to experience the juxtaposition of the excitement, creativity, and passion of achieving our “Big Deals” with its absence in our lives.  We need to embrace our “Big Deals!”  We need to say “Yesss!” to our yearnings.  We are powerful beings with purpose on this planet!  We have great gifts to give the world – unique things that only we can create and that people out there desperately need and don’t even know it yet.  Things that will enrich, enliven, and improve people’s lives!  Solutions and insights that will bring joy, hope, and prosperity!  Those things are inside of us for a reason and since they are inside of us, then there is definitely a way for us to bring them into existence.  We don’t need to just die with our music still inside of us!  No matter how long it’s been, it is never too late!  We can start with a single note and leave our best out there on the courts, in the fields, or even in the seemingly barren deserts of life!

The Cost of Achieving

For everything that we want to create, build, or achieve in our lives there is a cost associated with it.  Bridges just don’t build themselves, championships aren’t just handed out, business contracts aren’t just allotted randomly, great relationships don’t just magically appear out of thin air, there is no such thing as “something from nothing.”

So I want to invite us all to really think about what it is going cost us to achieve our “Big Deals?”  How much time, money, and/or energy do we need to invest?  What good things in our lives will we need to sacrifice to obtain something better?  How do we move from good to great?

Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi (1913-1970) said: “The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” 

So aside from the obvious hard work and dedication is the determination to fully commit regardless of the outcome.  This brings us back to one of Sunzi’s five essential attributes of general leadership described in Episode 4 – that of disciplined determination – or the daring to keep climbing the cliffs of challenge and the overhanging obstacles regardless of how many times we’ve fallen.

Similarly, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) said: “I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”  Vision, then, is critical to success – the vision to see what we want to achieve, our “Big Deals,” to create that vision in our minds and hearts, emotionally, spiritually, mentally before it exists in the real world.  Creation is act of sheer will.

If we don’t pay the price of success, we can’t enjoy the benefits of success.

As Canadian-American motivational speaker and self-development author Brian Tracy has said: “There is an interesting point about the price of success: It must always be paid in full-and in advance. Everyone wants to be successful. Everyone wants to be healthy, happy, thin, and rich. But most people are not willing to pay the price.”

Shortly after high school, I had a friend who wanted to buy a big truck.  At that moment in his life, it was his “Big Deal.”  There was only one problem.  He didn’t have the money.  So, he started working odd jobs and extra hours to earn the money he needed.  It was a slow process and often he felt like he was just saving pennies. Then one day, he had a realization.  He was spending a lot of his extra money on cigarettes and he hated it.  In a moment of courage and clarity, he connected the dots between what we wanted most – a big truck – and what we wanted to cut out of his life – smoking.  He calculated how many cigarettes he smoked each day, how many packs that was, how much each pack cost him, and how much he was spending on smoking each month.  The number was staggering.  At the time, he was spending $500/month on what he called his “cancer sticks.”  That was more than the car payment and gas for his dream truck!  The vision of what he really wanted, the changes and sacrifices he was willing to make, and the obstacles that he was willing to reveal and resolve in his own personal life, began to work together and in a few short months, we were driving in his big truck! 

3. Are you willing to pay the price to win? Why? Why not?

There is a personal price that each of us must pay to make the changes that we want in our lives.  There is also a price we are already paying and will continue to pay just to stay where we are.  Each of us must decide which price we want to pay and if the prize is worth the price to us personally. If we don’t pre-pay the price to achieve our goals, our “Big Deals” and leave our music forever trapped inside of us, we might end up on a long-term payment plan of missed opportunities with a high interest rate of regret that is constantly compounding in our lives.  This is not a simple equation.

Having thought about what our lives will look like with and without achieving our “Big Deals” and what the cost of achieving it will likely be, what thoughts are coming up for you?  What feelings are you having?  What is the MESS that is revealing itself to you in this moment?  What are the Mental, Emotional, Spiritual, and Social limits that you see and feel inside?  Is there resistance?  Are we willing to pay the price?  If so, why?  Remember, our Why is our Way forward!  If not, why not?  This is where we get to “look in the MIRROR.”

Taking a good look in the MIRROR and determining how willing we are to pay the price is revealing.  Sometimes, we look at the price for things we want to achieve or accomplish and then decide that the prize is not worth the price, which is fine.  If it doesn’t compel us then we need not continue to expend our time and energy on it and can look for greener pastures more aligned with our passions and interests.  However, sometimes it is not the value of what we want to create but rather our own self-deception, which I talked about in Episode 6.  It is our own beliefs and feelings of self-worth that often get in the way and that make us unwilling to pay the price to earn the prize.

In Episode 2, I mentioned that often when we set out in pursuit of our “Big Deals” we may have the vision to accomplish our grand endeavors, but we may lack the beliefs to do so.  In order to achieve almost anything in our lives, we have to first believe that we can receive the benefits in that area.  We have to believe from the get-go that we can achieve our “Big Deals” before we will be able to receive the benefits of achieving it in our lives.  Because we can only receive those things in our lives that we already believe we deserve; we can only achieve those things in our lives that we already believe we are capable of.  So, it all comes back to beliefs. 

Specifically, what do we believe about ourselves in the area of our lives that we want to change or achieve something in?  What do we really believe that we deserve in our lives, out of our lives, and for our lives in this particular area?  For a long time, I believed that I was incompetent, incapable, and powerless in certain areas of my life, which left me feeling trapped and stuck, insecure and hopeless.  I believed that I deserved to be punished, that I was worthless, broken, and a failure – doomed for a less than existence in certain areas of my life while in other areas of my life, I believed in myself, felt deserving, and therefore was full of confidence because confidence is something that we create within when we choose to believe in ourselves.

Now, it is not uncommon to hold conflicting and contradictory beliefs about ourselves, which is why we see people who are incredibly confident and successful in some areas of their lives, while other areas are a total dumpster fire in a toxic landfill of limiting labels, belittling beliefs, and scathing self-talk.  That was totally me and in some ways it still is.

See it is absolutely essential to reveal and resolve the beliefs that distort our thinking, which taint our feelings, which undermine our actions, and which hinder, block, or prevent us from achieving our “Big Deals” and receiving those benefits in our lives.  As mentor, coach, and visionary expert Joel Brown puts it: “We only get what we believe that we deserve.  Raise the bar, raise your standards and you will receive a better outcome.” It is time to “Raise the Bar” on our beliefs about what we can achieve and what we deserve to receive.  This is not arrogance or entitlement – it is giving ourselves permission to do and be our best. 

So, think about what you want to achieve.  Get back in touch with that vision for a moment.  See your “Big Deal” as if it has already happened and you are living it right now.  Think about what kind of person you became to achieve that.  What does that version of me look like?  Who have I become in the journey?  What does that incarnation of me do?  How did I respond to the challenges I faced and overcome in achieving and receiving?  Since our feelings drive our actions, how does that iteration of me feel about myself, others, and what I’ve accomplished?  How does it feel to be this manifestation of me?  What are the thoughts I think about myself, others, and my “Big Deal?”  How do they encourage and empower me to achieve and receive?

If we aren’t getting the results that we want in our lives, we may need to go back to the beginning to our beliefs about ourselves.  Do you believe in yourself?  Why or why not?  It’s easy to say that we believe in ourselves but what do we really believe about ourselves?  Are you willing to believe something better about yourself?  What do you want to believe about yourself?  So why not just believe it? 

Belief is a choice.  It is a choice that each of us has the power to make at any moment in our lives.  If our beliefs are not serving us, we can change them.  We can eliminate any belief that disempowers us and embrace new beliefs about ourselves that empower us.  We don’t have to keep believing what we have believed, especially if it is not getting us what we want in our lives, out of our lives, or for our lives!  We have that power to choose! 

Choose to believe in the best of yourself and others; to live by choice, not by chance; to make changes, not challenges; to be motivated, not manipulated; to be useful, not used; to excel, not to make excuses; to encourage, not discourage.  Choose to see opportunities, not obstacles; possibilities, not problems.  Choose self-esteem, not self-pity; Choose self-worth, not self-condemnation.  Choose to believe in your inevitable success, not your ultimate failure.  Choose to listen to your inner voice of wisdom, not the clueless cacophony of culture, the sycophantic social media suck-ups, or the hilarious howling of haters who have already given up on their own dreams and now take pot-shots at everyone else’s.  Choose to be and believe in yourself.  For in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”  So believe in yourself even when no one else does. 

What do you choose to believe?  Who do you choose to believe in?

Podcast Outro

Thanks so much for listening everybody!  If you found this podcast impactful, please like and subscribe, and join us for new episodes every “Warrior Wednesday.“  For more information, tools, and resources to help you in your daily battles, for questions or to work with me, shoot me an email at: artofwarforlife@gmail.com.  Most importantly, always remember: “The power to win resides within!  There is ALWAYS a Way!”