Higher Leading with Jay Meyer
Jay has always been intrigued by the topic of leadership. He led a successful business for twenty-five years and has been coaching leaders of various types of organizations for over ten years. In Jay's professional travels as a leader and coaching leaders, he believes that effective leadership is best carried out when leading for a higher calling. In each podcast, Jay will interview a purpose-driven leader who will share nuggets of wisdom with the audience.
Higher Leading with Jay Meyer
FOCUS: Five Keys to Finishing the Year Strong
It's halftime in the year--and the perfect moment for a reset. In this "Chalk Talk" episode of the Higher Leading podcast, Jay Meyer dives deep into the power of FOCUS with a timely and transformative message built around his acrostic:
Find clarity in your purpose
Own your time and attention
Cut out what doesn't move you forward
Unleash your potential through action
Simplify to amplify
Recorded at his studio at Serenity Acres, Jay weaves together personal stories, biblical wisdom, and practical leadership tools to help you realign with your purpose and finish the year with conviction.
Whether you're feeling distracted, burned out, or need a little spark, this episode will equip you to move forward with clarity, courage, and momentum.
Grab your journal, take some notes, and let's reset together.
Welcome to the Higher Leading Podcast, recorded in the peaceful setting of Serenity Acres, located just outside the beautiful village of Covington, Ohio. This is episode number 48, and I'm your host, Jay Meyer. This is the leadership podcast that focuses on the key traits of those who lead their lives and others to the beat of a higher calling. Higher leaders are purpose-driven. Higher leaders have faith in a power greater than themselves and in turn lead with bold humility. Hire leaders are servant leaders, but most importantly, hire leaders make the world and those around them better. Today's podcast is a chalk talk where I take a deep dive into a topic the good Lord laid on my heart. And today, my focus will be focus. That's right. Something that's so critical to being the best versions of ourselves and yet something we all have trouble maintaining from time to time. Grab your journal and pen and get ready to take some life-changing notes. Focus is... It's just something that I've seen through the years working with businesses, business owners, business leaders, that it's so easy to lose. And so that's where we're going to, like I said, the focus today is focus. And really, it's the fuel that leads to effective forward motion. And notice I say effective. And oftentimes, things get in our way. Things get in the way of our focus, right? blurs our vision, and we aren't able to move forward. And I think back many, many years ago when I saw this chart that basically says when we lack focus and clarity around who we are, what we stand for, and where we're going, the feelings of ambiguity and loss of control set in. You ever had that feeling or those feelings? Like it's kind of ambiguous. You don't know where you're going. You kind of feel like you don't have control. And when you stay there long enough, you start getting frustrated. And stay frustrated long enough, stress sets in. And that's where I see a lot of people today with, they don't have focus. They just do the old doom scrolling on their iPhone or whatever to just take their mind off of the fact that they're frustrated, they're stressed because they really don't have focus in their life. And I think about just not too long ago, I felt this lack of focus and frustration that set in from playing golf. And I played a course that I had never played before, and it was just lined with trees that were stacked on top of each other. And this summer, I've actually been hitting better drives, but I knew that my tee shot was going to determine how good my score was going to be that day. And so when I got up on that first tee, instead of thinking about all the basic things I needed to do and focusing on them, which I knew what I needed to do in order to hit a golf ball straight, I focused on not hitting it in the trees. And I struggled like for the first 10, probably 10 holes. And finally, it just dawned on me, man, just get back to the basics. Focus on what you know or focus on what works. And which is basically you line up to the target. For me, I got to swing low and swing slow, keep my head still, and then swing to the target. It's not rocket science. It took me 11 frustrating holes to focus on what I needed to focus on to begin playing my game. And there's so many lessons to be learned from my golf story, but I'll point out the one huge point. If you aren't focused on your game, you will end up playing someone else's game. You follow me? If you aren't focused on your game, you don't know what your game is, you're going to be playing somebody else's game. So That's what this podcast is all about, helping you all lead your lives to the beat of a higher calling, to lead at a higher level. You may notice, for those of you that follow my Eagle Launch writings, my focus for July has been focus. That's what I wrote. I've written about every day in July, and basically, July is the halfway point to the year, and it's a good time to get refocused. A lot of people are starting to straggle, get behind on their goals, and and losing focus on what's important and where they're trying to get to. So I thought, you know what, we're just going to jumpstart everybody. And I created an acrostic that I'd been writing about for the past 31 days in July, an acrostic focus. And the first letter, the F, is to find clarity in your purpose. Find clarity in your purpose. You get your clarity by knowing what your purpose is. Second is, the O is own your time and attention. Own your time and attention. The third, the C, is cut. Cut out what doesn't move you forward. And that's not hard to assess. You're sitting there saying, should I do this? Should I not do it? Is it moving me forward? Does it have anything to do with my purpose? The fourth, the U, is unleash your potential through action. Unleash it by taking action. Your potential fulfilling your purpose by just taking the first step. And then last but not least, the S is simplify to amplify. So we're going to dive deep now into each one of these today. And I remember a quote by Robin Sharma where he says, clarity precedes success. And it's so important that we're laser focused, know where we're going, know what we need to do to get there, have timelines and everything in place to help us to guide us on our journey. And like I mentioned earlier, when you lack clarity and you lack focus, you get that ambiguity, loss of control feelings, you get frustrated. Frustration can lead to stress. So have you ever asked, have you sat down? Hopefully, if you've listened to all my podcasts, you're somebody who's taking the time to try to define your purpose. And if you haven't, just write down your top priorities and responsibilities and therein will lie your purpose. What are your top priorities in life? What are your key responsibilities? Somewhere in there is your purpose. My highest purpose is to inspire others to dream more, be more, and live in the light more. That gets me jacked up every day. It's why I continue to do what I'm doing. But I have a purpose that's closer to home, which our purpose evolves over time. And the purpose evolves based on how old our kids are, what they're doing with their lives. and all that. But recently, I'm trying to provide most of the care for our son, Jordan, which is a heavy load, and take that load off of my wife because neither of us are getting any younger. I've said this before. I'll say it again. One of the main reasons I work out and train is to stay in shape so I can care for Jordy. That purpose drives behavior. Your purpose will drive your behavior. I remember back in my professional career. It was a defining moment at healthcare pharmacy is when we identified our why, we identified our purpose. And it was all about lifting the lives of the frail elderly. And I remember we used to have every other month, I would meet with all the teammates. We'd have six one-hour meetings around the clock, 24 hours, because we were a 24-7 shop. And everybody in the pharmacy was required to attend the meetings. The first Half of the meeting, I'd give them updates on what was going on with the pharmacy, and we'd talk about our vision, mission, our values. Second half was leadership training. Well, this particular month, I decided we were focusing on our why and on our purpose, and there was a great video from the Ohio Healthcare Association that goes into great detail, goes into a nursing home, and shows the impact to everyone, all the caretakers, the vendors like pharmacies, the impact that we have on these people's lives when they're in the final stages of their life. And I showed that, and it's like, you can see light bulbs going off in the teammates' heads, and you can see tears rolling down some of their cheeks, the fact that, wow, we're providing life-sustaining and sometimes life-saving medications to frail elderly, and through this, we're elevating their quality of life. And then it's kind of like, okay, so the That's why we do it. But let's go deeper. Why do we do it? Why do we care about the quality of life? Well, one of our core values is we care about those we serve, our customers, our teammates, and the business community. But we care about everyone we serve. Okay, so what else? What's another why for our why? Because these are grandmas and grandpas, moms and dads. We should treat them like they're our own. We had signs hanging in a pharmacy just reminding everyone that this could be your grandma and grandpa in the nursing home that you're providing care for. And then ask why again. It's because we've been blessed with the opportunity to be there for someone who has no one. And that's something I found out early on in my nursing home career. For a lot of the people, a lot of the residents at nursing homes, the nursing home is their family. Nobody's left. Nobody comes and sees them. And it's like if our family the people from our pharmacy that come in there and interact with them, interact with the nurses, interact with the care staff, can lift their day, then we're positively impacting their lives. We're increasing the quality of their life. And of course, the medications they're on, keeping a lot of them alive. One of the things we did during employee orientation was take the new teammates to a nursing home so they could see how their work impacted those we served. And the reason I'm going into this is our teammates, when we finally defined our purpose and that started driving us, we no longer came to work to pack and ship pills. We came to work to positively impact the lives of those we served, those that the good Lord had entrusted us. And that's a big difference. People, they're willing to give you their blood, sweat, and tears to when they know that what they're doing is a higher calling, it's a higher purpose. So my whole point there is it's a big difference when you know what your purpose is and you aren't just going around stumbling through life, living somebody else's purpose, living somebody else's dream. I'll never forget, probably seven or eight years ago, I was meeting with a recovery group, group of men. There was probably... a dozen of them, and I took them through my life coaching booklet, my Stratfield Personal Playing Field booklet, met with them maybe on four occasions, two or three hours in an evening, and helped them create their purpose statement, their life vision statement, their mission statement, helped them identify their guiding principles, their priorities. And for some of them, obviously, it's just light bulbs going off. Like, oh my gosh, I guess I can be intentional about who I am and where I'm going. I can design my life instead of having somebody else design or having the drugs and the alcohol determine my outcomes. And I remember we went around the room when people had finally nailed their purpose statements down and we all shared our purpose statement with one another. And this one gentleman, he was probably in his early 30s, His purpose was to restore the relationship with his son. And he said, I know if I do that, that I can break the cycle, generational cycles that's going on in my family forever. I need to restore that relationship, do everything I can to get him to do the next right thing, unlike his dad, so that he can have a quality life. What a powerful purpose. And so this purpose doesn't have to be about changing the world, but if done correctly, you're going to change somebody's world. It could be yours. It could be those that you interact with. It could be someone in your family. We'll close out this whole finding clarity in your purpose with scripture from Proverbs 19, 21. Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevail. And I kind of picture the Lord has a purpose for us is to create disciples of all nations. And that's what we're called to do. And I look at that as the umbrella. But all our individual purposes, as long as we're lining up under that umbrella and our life purposes are aligned with what Jesus has called us to do, we're going to make the world a better place. So just don't be afraid to turn this over to God. It's like, if you're sitting right now, I don't know what my purpose is. Start praying. Commit to praying daily for 30 days. And God, help reveal my purpose to me. Help reveal my purpose to me. Now, get into this a little bit later, but sometimes your purpose is revealed through action. So sometimes you just can't sit and pray and think that God's going to lay your purpose in your lap. Oftentimes, it happens as we take action. So why don't you take some time this week, clarify your purpose. Ask yourself, what's my why right now? What's my big why right now? Second step. And this whole focus acrostic is the O for own your time and attention. There's a quote out there that says, you can't control the clock, but you can control your calendar. I look at that today. It's like, as I grow older, I'm very protective of my calendar. I want to make sure that taking advantage of every minute, every opportunity out there, because I'm in the last quarter of my life. And that's reality, folks. And it really makes me Be extra careful with making sure. Has this got anything to do with my purpose? Has this got anything to do with who I am, what I stand for? And I think a question you have to ask yourself, who owns your time? Who owns your time? Do you own your time? And if you want to find out, check your calendar. And if your calendar is just blank, I can tell you, the world and the outside forces, people around you, that they control your time. Let me repeat that. If it's empty, somebody else is controlling your time. But if your calendar is full, step by step, what you need to do. And you can also find, obviously, your purpose, what your purpose is by looking at your calendar and seeing it's no different to me recording this podcast. My whole purpose in life, inspire others to dream more, be more, live in the light more. It's why I put these podcasts out. It's why I write a blog every single day. And those are on my calendar. We live in a world of digital distraction. I probably bring this up every time I talk. And doom scrolling. And I talked about it earlier where we really don't know what, we don't have clarity around our purpose. And so we just get frustrated. So we just go get the dopamine release by just doom scrolling on our phone, going to our favorite website or whatever, getting the news to get us all wound up and worked up and all that type of stuff. Once again, if your calendar is blank, it's really easy to start doom scrolling or do what I call reactive living, where instead of being proactive and Taking action to help you better fulfill your purpose, you're just reacting to the next thing. Living life by design requires us to own our time. And I talk about that when I go through my Stratfield personal playing field and I do life coaching with people. It's all about living by design and not by default. I wrote about this, I think it was this month, the reticular activating system, the RAS, that's in our brain. And what happens is like what we're thinking about and what we're focusing on determines what we do or don't see. Let me put this a little bit plainer and simpler. For example, three or four years ago, my wife and I were trying, we were heading to Florida and taking Jordy to Florida in a car and a truck. It's not the easiest thing because we have to stop. We have to make him special food and all that. And I just noticed this little motor home go by and I said, Lori, that's what we need is one of those. Not a great big one. We had a Class A motorhome and it was just too big for us. So I found out it was a Class B motorhome and Lori started researching them on her iPad on the drive down to Florida. But suddenly, and I'm sure this has happened to you, suddenly it's like there were Class B motorhomes all over the interstate. Sort of like back in the day when I was in the market for buying a Mustang. It's like all of a sudden I'm seeing Mustangs everywhere. So it's kind of like where our focus is, that's what we're going to see. And that's the whole reticular activating system. So you just think about that. If you know what your purpose is and you get up and you're focused, you're going to see the opportunities to help you fulfill that purpose throughout the day. More recently, I decided a couple of months ago that I was going to update... all my content from my leadership classes and also with my coaching toolbox because I always want to be relevant. There's a lot of books out there written about leadership and 99% of them are similar, but every now and then you find one with a unique piece, a nugget of wisdom. It's like, oh, wow, I never looked at it that way. So I've challenged myself to the podcasts that I listen to, to be more specific in the podcast, to listen to podcasts that are offering different material. And it's just amazing now what I'm hearing. And some of these podcasts are the same podcasts I've always listened to, but my ears are perked up now because I'm trying to find new information, new content, relevant content. So just think about your reticular activating system and how that can work for you. Now, once again, to own our time, You have to take ownership of your time by planning out your week. And I've always taught, I learned that with Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, that you plan your weeks. And I just think, I just sat down a couple of days ago, it was a Sunday, planned out my whole week. And I have this, I have a journal. And in a journal, I have a calendar where I put what I'm going to do each day. And then I also have a sticky note. What is it? A five by eight or... four by six sticky note that I put in my journal. One column I have, it says, do. So these are the things I'm going to do this week. Next column is to do, which means if I get time, I'll get them done, but they'll carry over to the following week. And then the third column is my will do's, which I've got some time, two or three months, but they're always in front of me, knowing that if I bang through the do's, I can start working on the to-dos instead of hopping to the cell phone to doom scroll. Does that make sense? It's like I've always got that list in front of me. Every morning I do my devotion, that list is right there in front of me and I can review it. So that would be my question to you is how do you plan your week? And no, it's not going to go perfect. Heck no. But it's like I write down my workouts, what workout I'm going to do. I think I shared with you that I'm going to do a Triathlon, I haven't done one for three years. I'm going to do a triathlon in August. And I had to get back into shape and determine I had to swim 18 times. And now I think today I just swam my 12th time. So I'm getting there. It's like I have these goals. I put them on the calendar and I make them happen. Really good scripture from Ephesians, fifth chapter, verses 15 to 16. And this is Paul. He says, be very careful then how you live. Making the most of every opportunity. Making the most of every opportunity. If you know what your purpose is, you're more than likely going to be making the most of every opportunity. If you don't know what it is, how do you know if you're making the most? Now, what is the most? What are opportunities? So I challenge you all to audit your calendar and make your calendar a trusted ally for owning your time. Next, the C in the word focus. Cut out what doesn't move you forward. Oh, Lordy. We live in a distracted world. I mean, I have to stay on top of it myself. Don't think that I'm perfect when it comes to this. But what do we need to cut out? What is holding us back? Cut out whatever isn't moving you forward. And the quote here is, growth often means subtraction, not addition. I learned a long time ago, less is more. You got to slow down sometimes to speed up. Any of you heard that? It's almost like we have to prune our lives to what people, places, things, and activities that are distracting us and pulling us from our purpose. Who and what do you need to cut from your life? I mean, there might be some people that are holding you back. You have to ask yourself, how important is it that I continue to give this person time? But from a personal standpoint, how about excuses? And you're constantly making excuses of why you can't do something that something's tugging in your heart saying you need to do this, but you just keep making excuses. I'm not good enough. I'm not prepared enough. I don't have the tools. I don't have the gifts. That's so much bull crap. I mean, when I started this podcast, I didn't know anything about podcasting. Now I can put one together in about an hour and a half, record it, have it ready for production in about an hour and a half. And That's just because I started taking action. I studied it. I watched YouTube videos. But excuses are like the hind ends. We all got them. They all stink. I shared in a recent blog about my college basketball coach, one of the greatest statements he ever made to me when I was sitting there making all kinds of excuses about how my workload in college, my class load was so tough. And he said, Jay, excuses are like our hind ends. We all got them and they all stink. And that's the truth. you're either not doing because of excuses or you're doing because you're driven to achieve your purpose. Distractions. What distractions do you need to cut out? Do you find yourselves going down rabbit holes? And it has nothing to do with your purpose, has nothing to do with who you are, what you stand for, and where you're going. I mentioned it earlier, but toxic relationships. I can remember when First 10 years or so that I was in recovery, I helped a lot of people in recovery, but I finally had to put up boundaries because there were people who just were using me, taking up my time. They weren't listening to anything I said. And I would feel bad. It's like, gosh, what if they go out and use? Well, they're not going to use because I stopped helping them. But you have to identify, are there people that are taking away your time and preventing you from moving forward? I think about oh gosh, maybe eight or nine years ago, I was just getting emails and texts from this one guy. It was all political. It was probably back during the 2015, 16. And finally, I just, I sent this guy a text. I said, dude, I don't want to see this stuff. Because a lot of it just sounded like conspiracy crap, but it's like, I don't want to waste my time reading this crap. I'm fine. I'll know when things aren't fine. And Just the other day, we were talking and he said, man, so many times I want to send you this stuff. And I said, no, I'm glad you don't. I appreciate you listening to me. I think about the news. I used to watch the news a lot. I've cut back significantly because it doesn't move me forward. I know myself, I'll get ticked off. And what happens when you get angry? You get stuck. And of course, social media, you have to be very careful. I like watching short videos. That means I probably shouldn't watch the short videos. That's just a waste of time. Now, I love to laugh. I believe in laughter. I believe humor is good for the soul. And there's certain people that I'll see their video come up and I'll watch it, have a good laugh, and then move on. But you got to determine what do I need to cut out? What is not moving me forward? And I'll leave you with scripture from Proverbs 4.23. Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. And that's the thing. These people places things and activities that we do that's not good for our heart, okay? Anger's not good for our heart. Heartburn's not good for our heart. Stress, frustration, if it's causing all that, that's messing with our heart. And God's saying, above all else, guard that heart. For everything you do flows from it, protect it. from anything that's distracting you from achieving your purpose. And I'll ask you, you know, write down some notes. What do you need to guard your heart from right now? What's preventing you from moving forward towards your purpose? The next one is probably my favorite, especially when I was writing all through July, I focused on the word focus, but the U for unleash your potential through action. And I have found that to work for me many times. And I'm not a ready, shoot, aim type of person, but I am a shoot, step back, assess, take another step forward, have a better aim. And I'll tell you, where we live, we got like, I don't know, 12 acres of woods. And 25 years ago, I think, I decided I wanted to cut paths all through the woods. And 12 acres is a lot. When you start with no path. So I'm kind of analyzing it thinking, how am I going to do this? Do I need to go out and assess where I make my turns and what I need to go around? And I thought, you know what? My neighbor had a DR, which is like a bush hog, a hand driven bush hog. And I said, I'm just going to take that DR and start cutting. I started moving and cleared paths and I cleared more paths and And we got a wonderful network of paths. And it's all because I wasn't going to overanalyze it. I was just going to start cutting. When you're out there in the middle of it, you're becoming strategic. Should I go left? Should I go right? Should I go straight? But the bottom line is you really do unleash your potential through action. You unleash that ability to achieve your purpose through action. And there's a quote out there. It says, vision becomes clear with motion. And I truly believe that action, even imperfect action builds momentum. And think about your faith. I mean, true faith does not wait for perfect conditions, right? It's like I said earlier, you want to pray about your purpose or whatever, but don't expect God to just put it in your lap. You take action. It's like, oh, I like doing that. I really felt passionate about doing it. I really loved it. I feel like I can make a difference in the world. And it's like you took action and all of a sudden, oh, maybe that's where my purpose is. Maybe that's where my focus should be. Or just the opposite. You take action like, man, how can anybody do that? There's no way I would do that for the rest of my life. You're going to feel it, but oftentimes it comes through action. It comes through taking action to find your true purpose. I know a lot of people who suffer from paralysis from analysis. And I think that's just a sexy way of being lazy. You overanalyze and can't make a decision. I mean, my Lord, I've made a lot of wrong decisions in my life, but what I have learned from those decisions and what I've grown into today because of some of those, it's just amazing. We go through life, we try to do the next right thing, make the next right decision, but we certainly don't just sit and analyze and get paralyzed from it. I shared in one of my writings in July when we jumped into a fusion therapy session we saw an opportunity to start providing IVs for people in their homes from our pharmacy. And nobody in our pharmacy knew anything about this. So I had to learn that and became the person who would mix the IVs, who would deliver the IVs. And all in the beginning, because then we had a huge network after that once it got flowing. But I'll never forget, it was... I went to a local home health agency and I said, hey, we're going to get into this home infusion. Here's how we're going to do it. And this was after I'd studied it and went to classes and we had the tools and everything to make it happen. And I told them, we're ready. We'd love to have your business. And all of a sudden on a Friday afternoon, we get a call and they got three IV patients. Now think about it. We hadn't done one. We had three IV patients. I had to mix them all up. I had to get them to the patient's houses, had to show them how to use the pump. And I was on call. I was the only person who was on call back then for the IV side. And I had this big old cell phone. If any of you ever seen those like nine inch long cell phones, it would sit on my bed stand and I'd be troubleshooting in the middle of the night. But that a little bit of frustration in the beginning, intense work in the beginning, it all paid off because we became more like one of the premier, not providers of home infusion, But infusion therapy in the nursing homes, the way we provided it and that way we packaged it and how our processes and systems were in place. But that was all just from taking action, saying, you know what, we need to do it. I didn't overanalyze. I think when I did my Ironman triathlon back in 2018, I was watching the Ironman, Kona Ironman. They always have it every year, like it'll be on ESPN in December. And I was watching that and watching these people cross the finish line. I thought, that's something I've never done. I've done like six or seven halves. I think it's time for me to do a full. I had just turned 60 or I was getting ready to turn 60. It's like, I'm running out of time. And so I just laid out a game plan. I said, I'm going to do it. And that action just led to a clear path that eventually I crossed that finish line in Cambridge, Maryland. And- One of my biggest personal accomplishments to date, outside of all the things that have to do with my family. So just don't overanalyze. Unleash your potential through action. Unleash that potential to create this purpose-driven life by taking action, not just sitting around waiting for it to come to you. And of course, in James, second chapter, 17th verse, he writes, faith by itself, if it's not accompanied by action, is dead. And that's the whole thing. Faith without works is dead. And that's where I go back to. You can pray. I encourage you to pray for every one of these pieces of this focus across. Pray for God to give you help. But you're the one that has to take action. And I'll ask you, what's one bold step you can take this week that you're putting off? I encourage you to take it. Last but not least, simplify yourself. to amplify. And it kind of goes back to when I said, less is more, you got to slow down to speed up. But really, complexity is the enemy of execution. And I just think of that when I said earlier, when we lack clarity and focus, you can put in there when we lack simplicity and focus. When things are too complex, it gets in our ability to see and understand what we need to do. So we all have clutter in our life. that overwhelms us. I have like these clutter blinders. It's like I walk by, I need to take care of that, but I don't have time today, but it's on my clutter list. And I think about how many times I've done strategic planning with organizations and I'll tell them right from the beginning. It's often said the essence of strategic planning is deciding what not to do. I met with a nonprofit leader a couple of weeks ago and she's just thrown all these things out that she wants to do or that she's doing, but she doesn't have the resources to support it. Probably about 10 things. They're all great ideas. They're all world moving type ideas and actions, but you don't have the resources. Then you got to kind of go back to square one. And I, and I, so I finally, she goes, What do I do? And I said, you got it. You got it. I want you to step back and write down the one thing that you do really good and just lay everything else aside and start focusing on that. Start focusing on raising the funds to do that. And I could just tell that it was just, I was like, oh my gosh, that's going to be so boring. But I guarantee you, if she does it, she's going to remove all that clutter. She's going to simplify to amplify. Got another nonprofit leader I worked with a couple of years ago. She's one of the best. She's in the Dayton area. And she has this little movement where she's funny. She said, we had this week where everybody in the executive team was all about cleaning crap up. And she didn't use the word crap. But this is our clean crap up week. Everything we need to get out of our offices, out of our way, systems, processes. And I think it turned into a month. And then she followed it with get crap done month. Because we got all this stuff cleaned up, got it out of the way. Now we're going to get stuff done. So I just think about myself, like I'll go through and decrease the number of apps on my phone. It's like, how many of these apps am I really using? Trying to make folders for the pictures on my phone. I've got a ton of files. I mean, I've had two business careers before. The pharmacy was 30 years. I'm 15 years into this coaching and consulting career. I got lots and lots of files, files that I don't need. And when I see them, I have to put up my clutter blinders. It's like, geez, I need to get rid of those. But I know those are on my list, that will-do list that I talked about. The will-do list is kind of full of things I need to declutter in my life. And I tell you, Write down the top five things that you know you need to remove in order to simplify your life and bring clarity to your focus. Just write down. You know what they are. Or write down 10 and reduce it to your top five and make it an order of priority. If I can eliminate this one first, then it's going to be like the Pareto principle. 20% of the work is going to create 80% of the results. So your top two is probably going to create 80% removal of your clutter. But you list those five things, then make a game plan for how you're going to chip away at removing or decluttering those areas. And then just decide, I'm going to remove, clean, declutter, simplify one area each month for five months. And be sure to put your simplify time on your calendar. And you know what? For some of you, it may not be areas of your life you need to simplify. You may need to simplify what you're carrying in your brain. Do any of you like overthink? You know where it's like, There's this term we say overgripping the golf club. You never want to grip golf club too tight because bad things happen. It's like overthinking. It's like, what are these things that you're carrying in your head? Most of the time it's worry. If you pray, why worry? If you worry, why pray, right? And it's the enemy. The enemy puts that in there to clutter up our mind so we can't be focused. And a great little tool I was given in early recovery is the name it, claim it, and dump it tool. Okay, name what that is, whatever is going on in your head that's cluttering up your mind that you need to get rid of to simplify your thinking. Name it, write it down, then claim it. Okay, say, yeah, I'm thinking that because, goes back, if I'm not the problem, there is no solution. I'm holding on to that because of me. It's my decision to hold on to it. So I'm going to claim it, it's mine, and then dump it. and write it down and say, here you go, God, take this from me. And you dump it every day. You name it, claim it, dump it every day. And eventually it will be lifted from you. I got all kinds of examples. I've mentioned this before. I had a major resentment with someone was just cluttering my mind. And for 90 days, I prayed for that person to have same peace in their life that I was trying to have in my life. And lo and behold, one day that resentment was lifted from me. And I didn't want it to go. The good Lord took it from me because I prayed for him to take that from me. I named it. I claimed it. I dumped it. 90 straight days. It eventually went away. Lori and I have been watching The Chosen. I don't know how many of you out there have watched The Chosen. It's on Amazon Prime. Fantastic journey with Jesus. And we're right now, we're just getting through the Passover, the Last Supper. And I know things aren't going to be good. But I think about The one person that we should be looking to as an idol, someone as a mentor, someone as a guide as far as how to live life, of course, it's Jesus. And he lives so simply. He lives so simply. You think about what do you really need to fulfill your purpose? What do you really need to be your best self? And I'll leave you with this final scripture for Matthew 6, 33. Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you. So that's the key. Everything you're doing, seek him first. Like I said, that whole umbrella of making disciples of all nations, your purpose is under there somewhere, but seek him, seek his help, take action, own your time, declutter, simplify, and great things are going to happen. So to close this out, now ask this earlier, What's your purpose? Have you taken the time to write that down? What's stealing your time? Write those down. And you know, if you want to use a do, a to-do, and a will-do list, you can put under your to-do list, which means you're going to give yourself a couple of weeks to do, get rid of these activities. Stop doing these activities. What needs pruning? Just said differently. Where you need to prune from your life. Because what happens when we prune? Think about Jesus when he talks about pruning the branches, those that are following him. Makes it stronger. What? Makes it stronger. What's your next action? What action, what bold action do you need to take? After listening to this podcast, like, I daggone it, I need to do this. I need to start doing this. I've thought about doing it. Maybe it's to start a side business, or maybe it's to do something that you work differently, or maybe it's someone you need to make amends to. That's another cluttering action. Something that will clutter your life is if you're carrying on these amends that you need to have with other people that you're not doing. That will mess up your mental state also. I kind of got off track there, so I apologize for that. What can you simplify? What ways can you simplify your life? And I'll leave you with this final thought. Don't wait for the motivation. Take action and clarity is going to follow. Take action and you'll be inspired. to chase that purpose. Well, hopefully you got something out of this today. I tell people when I write my Eagle Launch blog, and by the way, like I said, all through July, I wrote about focus. And if you'd like to follow me or follow my blog, you can go to eaglelaunch.com and sign up for my daily message. It's just a daily inspiration piece. But a lot of times I write this stuff and talk this stuff for myself because I get distracted. And I want to get more focused. And I'm just so delighted that you would take the time to join me on this journey. And, you know, if you heard something today that could be of help to a friend, a family member, a colleague, please pass this on. If you have an opportunity to go out and rate it, I'd ask you to give it a five star on whatever platform that you listen to this from. But at the end of the day, This isn't about me trying to get five-star ratings and trying to get a million followers. It's all about me fulfilling my purpose. And you're the reason I do this. It's so I can inspire you to dream more, be more, and live in the light more. All with more focus. I'll be back. I hope you'll be back too.