020: Finding & Developing Your Passion Project | Fri-Date WIth The Wifey
Today’s Topic: Finding your passion (and turning it into a business)
Today Kim and I share how a decade of failures led us to our passion business, how you can find your passion, and how you can turn that into a business (if you want to).
When people decide to start a new venture, they often ask themselves, “What does the world need?” We definitely did this for years, chasing bed bug and hemorrhoid relief businesses because they had a lot of google searches – but we had no passion for it.
Instead, ask yourself, “What makes me come alive?” What makes you passionate? What makes you focus on impacting the world? THAT is actually what the world needs.
Finding Your Passion
We did two things to narrow in on our passion and business, and these simple exercises can help you too:
Make a list of things you love to do; things that you naturally do and that light you up.
Ask your honest friends – people who will give you true feedback – about what you are good at, or what gift you bring into their life.
Our friends told Rob that he was inquisitive, and he does love to ask questions, and that he inspires (and pushes) them to Play Hard when they get stuck in the world of Work Hard. We took that feedback and, ultimately, created the Work Hard Play Hard podcast!
Turning It Into a Business
Start by taking a self-assessment – Something like StrengthsFinder, a test that will identify your top five strengths.
When starting a business, trying to build up your weaknesses is a waste of time. Instead, leverage your strengths and hire people to compensate for your weaknesses.
After you know what your strengths are, start formulating that idea. If you want to be a vegan chef, start flooding social media with authentic content highlighting your strengths, and then see what resonates with people. Do they love your recipes? Your videos? Your photography?
At the intersection of your passion, your strength, and audience interest is the kernel of a business you love.
018: 3 Adult Mindset Tools We Implemented with Our Three-Year-Old | Fri-Date With The Wifey
Today’s Topic: Applying adult personal development strategies to your children
Today Kim and I are going to discuss creating meditation and gratitude practices for your children, teaching them to change their own state (Tony Robbins style), and how they can use power poses or affirmations to achieve more.
Meditation & Gratitude
In addition to cleaning up and a bedtime story, our evening ritual includes a gratitude exercise. Every night our daughter shares three things that she’s grateful for. It’s a small thing, but we can tell she’s getting it.
Our intro to meditation was similarly simple: we just started by sitting down with her, crossing our legs, and putting our hands on our knees. Then we slowly started adding additional pieces of a meditation practice, including the Headspace app (both Headspace and Calm have a children’s section that include very short meditations). You don’t need to try getting your kid to sit still for 30 minutes to lay the foundation of a good meditation practice!
Changing Your State
Our child was throwing a lot of tantrums, and we knew there had to be a better way to help than yelling at her or sending her to her room. One day, when she was upset, we tried something new: we asked her to take a handful of paper snowflakes, thrown them in the air, and make them snow.
She smiled, threw them in the air, and started laughing – it literally changed her state. And it’s important that you use the words “changing your state” when introducing this to your child because then, as an adult, you can add onto that.
Power Poses & Affirmations
We brought our daughter to her first swim lessons last year, and after being dunked under water on the first day, she lost it and said she wouldn’t come back.
We decided to go for a hail mary here, giving her an affirmation and power pose, and it worked!
But what affirmation can you possibly use for a child? We asked who her favorite Disney character was, or her favorite character who had to overcome something difficult even though they were scared. She said Poppy from Trolls.
We taught her to stand up, put her hands on her hips, and say, “I am Poppy. I can do anything.” (She said, “I am Poppy. I can do everything,” but close enough!)
We’ve never had a problem getting in the pool since – and we can see she’s using it on her own!
If you’re consistent and you can get your children to practice these techniques, it will be part of their life and they will reproduce these actions naturally themselves.
Resources:
Did you learn something from this episode? We’d love to hear about it. Click here to leave a 5-star Review, mention you listened to this Fri-Date, and we will call your name out live.
Want to wind down after a long day? Try the Organifi Gold Superfood Powder for 20% off using discount code “WORKHARDPLAYHARD” at organifishop.com
015: The 80/20 On My Nutrition & Training | Fri-Date With The Wifey
Today’s Topic: Finding balance in my nutrition & training
I’m almost 52-years-old, and my body has gone through a number of stages in my adult life (we’re not talking about puberty… today). I’ve been overweight and a fitness competitor at different points in my life, and today I’ve found a healthy balance.
In our 30s, we were living it large – we basically started cheat day on Thursday – and I found myself larger as a result. Then, when I saw the men (some older than me at the time) in a fitness competition, I deconstructed what they were doing and completely transformed my fitness routine and diet.
I was walking around with a gallon of water, eating cold chicken and broccoli, and hating life – but I had great freakin’ abs.
Ultimately, though, I was exhausted every day… and then we had a baby. Kim, who used to be prepping my meals every weekend, had a lot less time and a lot more to do. Without that preperation, I started gaining weight again.
This is when I decided I needed to strike a better balance – I just wanted to feel good.
Kim taught me a new nutritional concept: 2 shakes, 2 snacks, and 1-2 meals daily. I keep track of all that in the same PUSH Journal that I mentioned last week, and that system makes getting good nutrition much easier for me.
So what does that 80/20 balance look like?
We’re making full meal-replacement shakes, not protein or sugar bombs.
To fill in the gaps, I’ve introduced vitamins into my diet.
We added a 24-48 hour fast, nutritionally supported, once or twice a month (we’ll dig deeper into this on a future episode).
Instead of spending hours in the gym, I do HIIT workouts and classes – because there’s a big difference between training with intention and intensity.
I still drink a lot of water (but I don’t carry around the plastic jug anymore).
I’m 52, but I still feel better than I did when I was 30 – and that’s what happens when you properly fuel your body.
012: Crushing Limiting Beliefs Together | Fri-Date With The Wifey
Today’s Topic: Limiting beliefs
We all tell ourselves stories. Sometimes those stories drive us to do more than we’ve ever done before, but often they hold us back.
Those stories are limiting beliefs. Stories like, “I will never be successful when I grow up because I grew up in the projects of Queens and my dad was a truck driver.”
But when you interrupt the pattern of telling yourself that story, and you replace it with something else, you can achieve anything. Call BS on yourself: “The truth is, there are a number of people who came out of Queens, and whose dads were truck drivers, who have grown up to be some of the most successful people in the world.”
As you grow, and you shed some of your limiting beliefs, you will always bump up against new challenges and new limiting beliefs – so understand that this is a never-ending cycle.
We’re all going through this same journey, and it’s okay to enlist support; seek out personal development training, hire a coach, or find a like-minded community.
009: Avoiding Relationship Groundhog Day | Fri-Date With The Wifey
Today’s Topic: Avoiding Relationship Groundhog Day by Creating a Dream Line
Do you remember Groundhog Day, the hilarious Bill Murray movie about a man who wakes up to live the same day, every day?
Too many people are living life just like this – they wake up, brush their teeth, come home, feed the kid, read a story, go to bed, and then wake up and do it all over again.
It’s easy to fall into that trap, but it’s not a great place to be.
Kim and I fell into this trap at one point, too, but we were able to climb out of it using one of Tim Ferriss’ tools: The Dream Line. It’s all about finding what you want to have, be, and do over the next six months.
Tim Ferriss says, “Dreamlining focuses on activities that will fill the vacuum created when work is removed. Living like a millionaire requires doing interesting things and not just owning enviable things.”
Here’s a few tips on how to use this tool in your own life:
Come up with what you want to have and what those things realistically cost (e.g. an Aston Martin is about $1,700 / month). What is the Total Monthly Income you will need to have those things?
Play Stupid Idea Time, an important (and fun) part of the dreaming together process. When you create the stupid idea time parameters, it will give you the freedom to say something that may be viewed as “stupid,” which may be just what you need to get out of a rut. (Thanks, Madam Secretary, for the idea.)
If you’re anything like me, you’re fascinated by, and constantly consuming more information about, personal development… and if you’re anything like me, you implement way less than you learn. Kim, on the other hand, is a great implementer – and that’s who you want to learn from. Personal development within a relationship is really important, but it only works if you implement it – together! Our advice is to narrow your focus to no more than three things that you want to implement at any given time, master them, and then start over.
