Your Calendar Is a Better Witness Than Your Mouth

Kellan Fluckiger: 00:00:16

When was the last time you sat with your feet on the desk counting dots in the acoustic ceiling tile?

Welcome to the show.

Tired of the hype about living a dream?

It's time for truth.

This is the place for tools, power and real talk so you can create the life you dream and deserve your ultimate life.

Subscribe, share, create.

You have infinite power.

Hey, welcome to your ultimate life, the podcast created for you to help you live a life of purpose, prosperity and joy.

Just loving your life.

Man, I am so excited today I could dance.

In fact, I'm dancing in my chair now.

You know, if you followed much that I've got back goodies going on, right?

The L5S1 disc is like gone on both sides, which means I get joyous pain every day.

Yum.

And when I stretch out in the morning, oh man, it is such a problem.

You know, I used to do martial arts a lot like the second degree black belt and a couple of styles and had a dojo certification and so forth.

And when I used to stretch for that, you know, you stretch like splits and this way and that way and all kinds of things and I got, you know, pretty limber and I used to think, oh, this stretching, boy, it's nothing compared to now.

I did my stretches this morning and oh, slow and careful so I don't tear things.

I also noticed that my, the sides of my body, left and right are different now.

I think that the nerves being pinched as bad as they are done a little research causes muscle atrophy.

And so on my left side, there's a muscle, a thigh muscle and a tendon that seems to be affected anyway, you don't care about that.

So when was the last time you said, oh, wow, thank goodness this Thursday afternoon is empty.

I have absolutely nothing competing for these four hours now.

You don't feel like that.

People's lives, your life, my life is full.

Even time we use in a crappy way is occupied.

It's occupied by, I don't know, TV or scrolling or errands or a lot of time it's over commitment.

And you know what else occupies a lot of that time?

Mental busyness.

Like thinking about stuff that's coming or that's been, that sucked.

I'm worried about that, you know, that kind of stuff.

Or it could be, I'm stoked about that or that was so great, but it's used up now.

There's nothing wrong with thinking or enjoying memories or anticipating something in the future, but most of the time it isn't that.

It's Worrying about stuff that's coming, or regretting, or wishing something was different about the past now, maybe not for you.

And if it's not that way, good, because then you've taken control of your life.

You cannot change the past.

You know that.

You've heard that a million times.

And so the past does not need to occupy the present at all.

Unless there's something you want to do right now to adjust, repair, fix, or do differently than it was from something in the past.

But that's still an action in the present.

Anticipating the future is wonderful.

Being excited about something that's coming, a talk or a vacay or meeting someone or whatever, that's glorious, beautiful.

And if we spend too much time, we miss this present moment.

I had a chance this last weekend.

I'm recording this on a Monday, Tuesday, whatever this is.

Last weekend I was in Seattle, Bellevue, actually, at the conference, a four day conference for the iands, International association of Near Death Studies.

And that's an eclectic academic.

And it's a huge mix.

Academic researchers and PhD studying, you know, consciousness and energy and near death and life and death and God and all that stuff.

Plus a whole mix of people that have experienced something.

I mean, there's a whole boatload of three letter acronyms.

S, T, E, Spiritually Transformative Experience.

Have you had one of those?

I'll bet you have.

Did it make a difference?

Is your life completely different now than it was?

Because that happened, even if it was 10 years ago or when you were 6 or 15 or 22 or whatever.

If it isn't, then the ste doesn't mean anything.

I'm going to give you a definition that I heard somewhere.

I didn't create this phrase, but I love it.

The meaning of something is the difference it makes.

If it makes no difference, it has no meaning.

Wow.

Think about that.

You can argue, well, it means something.

No, it doesn't.

If it doesn't make a difference in the way you think, feel, act, behave, or show up in the world, it has no meaning for you.

So think about that.

Anyway, so that conference was fantastic.

I met all kinds of people.

There was a guy there doing podcasts and he wanted me to do that.

So I, in between stuff, went up to a room that he had all set up and it was very nice and answered questions and told stories about one of my experiences, a couple of them, actually.

And as I did that, you know what I noticed?

I noticed that I had them all over the place.

I had more experiences than I could possibly fit into the 45 minutes.

But the point wasn't to vomit a bunch of experiences on, on the show so that people that listen to his show could hear my story.

The point is to ensure and assure you or his listeners that you matter, that there is another realm, even though we all feel it.

People there talking about it and expressing experiences.

They've had some pretty weird, a couple of them a little scary, but most of them powerfully good.

So sometimes we spend time chatting, talking, recovering hobbies, family, work, distraction, thinking, worry, obligations.

None of those are wrong, per se.

Worry is useless all the time.

Obligations is a terrible word.

Oh, why would I say that?

We'll do a whole episode on that another time.

I want you to eliminate all your obligations.

In fact, you have to if you're going to live a life of purpose, of prosperity and joy.

What does that mean?

That you just blow everybody off?

No, you transmute or change the obligations into commitments.

Commitment is a thing of joy that we go do because we said we would and we want to.

Obligation is one of them frigging things we gotta do because somebody's dependent on us.

And the word obligation usually carries that negative energy of I'd rather be doing something else, but I gotta or have to.

This, that and the other.

All right, so here's, Here's a thing I've said, done a whole bunch of episodes in the past about dream it, build it, write it, which by the time you hear this, that challenge is over.

But you ought to go there for the next one next year.

Dream.

Excuse me.

Dream Build, Write it dot com.

I'm going to point to the URL here in a minute in the screen, but I've got to call it up on my, my thing because I can't see Dream build, write it dot com.

Go there, go there.

It's most powerful thing you can do if you, if you have a story to share.

So if someone says, if you say I'm going to do a thing like write a book or build something or build a new product or whatever it is, your first question needs to be, what are you trading?

Because, not because you're negative, but physics exists.

Like trading is the reality.

No matter what you decide to do that's new.

That's not what you're already doing.

You're going to trade some time away.

And every new creation consumes some resources at a minimum, some time, some attention, some energy maybe, often some money, some emotional bandwidth, some relationship accommodation, learning capacity, physical recovery.

Like you can't add 5 hours a week or 10 hours a week commitment to a genuinely full 168 hour week without trading something, something gets shortened or postponed or delegated or removed or redesigned or reduced in priority.

Now I want you to think about that.

This is why so many declarations never become results.

What happens is we change our wish list, but we haven't changed the architecture of life.

How many times have you said, I'm gonna whatever this weekend, paint a room or clean the garage or even go somewhere fun?

And if not, you know, if you don't plan it and move some stuff out of the way and tell people I can't do this Saturday because I'm going to X.

If you don't do that, doesn't happen.

You know that you've done it.

So have I.

If nothing in your life is changing the way you want it to, then nothing new is being prioritized.

Okay?

And I want you to think about this because it's the truth.

There's a million times, I don't know, a million boatload of times right now you can think of that you have said, I'm going to do this.

Maybe you went to a conference, maybe you read a book, maybe you had a ayahuasca experience and kissed the sky and touched the divine.

I don't know, I can't tell you the number.

But it's a big number of people that I've talked to that have had some kind of peak experience.

Psychedelics, coaching, reading a book, prayer, meditation.

And then say a week, a month or a year or 10 years later.

But I just didn't get it done.

But it just seems that I can't do this, I can't make it happen.

It's not magic.

And it isn't because there's anything wrong with their peak experience.

And it isn't because if you've said that, it isn't because you're lazy or stupid or anything like that, you're hard working, you're brilliant, you're the opposite of that.

You just haven't done any architecture to fit it in.

You didn't replace a priority today with a new one.

And here's the thing people miss.

So when I have people join the book challenge and they joined the book to bank process afterwards, which is a process to get the book written, published, get it up on Amazon, bestseller, and then also to create a product or service to get on the road to making their first $100,000 from that book, what I tell them, it's a seven month process.

After the challenge, what I tell them is look, you have got to dedicate on your calendar right now, in a new color, five hours a week, five minimum five hours a week to this process that is never moved and you know, emergencies, whatever, but never moved, never ignored, no excuses.

And if you do that, then I can help you make this happen.

And if you don't, I can't.

And the reason is for exactly the reason we're talking right now.

But here's the mistake a lot of people make.

They think five hours a week and then they think forever.

Well, if I quit doing this, that means I'll never xyz.

No, it doesn't.

What it means is, it means that for the next seven months, I'm replacing this with this.

Five hours, not forever.

We're sequencing something and you can do that with anything.

You're going to learn a new skill.

I'm going to dive in and learn how to create bots on chatty.

I'm going to take this course and it's going to take me 20 hours to get through it, to do the practices, to build some practice, you know, agents and that kind of thing.

You're going to replace something with it and then that 20 hour learning period is over.

Now you may decide then to go monetize it and use some more time, but that's a different, a different trade.

So if you're going to do something new, I don't care if it's personal development or write a book or go to the gym and get in shape or start a new business, you gotta trade some time explicitly in your calendar.

Now, another mistake I see a lot in the personal development world is this.

Well, personal development is just an attitude.

So it doesn't take any time.

So they think, people think.

Maybe you have thought, you don't need to allocate time in your calendar to do personal development.

Wrong.

Pdp Personal development push ups.

It takes time.

You've got to block time in your calendar for your personal development push ups.

Those push ups are the activities we gotta do to change the habits that we have.

And I don't know about you, but if you think changing a habit doesn't require any time, doesn't require any energy, doesn't require effort, and in this case, calendar space, then you're not changing a difficult habit.

So what happens is we change what we wish, our wish list, but the architecture's not changed.

So here's the thing to take away from this.

Your calendar is a better witness than your mouth, right?

Your calendar really is a better witness than, than your mouth than what you say you're going to do.

And this is the uncomfortable section of the show here.

People say my health matters.

Look at your calendar.

My marriage is my highest priority.

Look at your calendar.

I'm serious about this business.

Look at the calendar.

I'm writing my book.

Show me.

It is.

This isn't about shaming anyone.

But the calendar is the evidence.

It records what gets protected.

It records what gets bumped.

It records what repeatedly wins and what repeatedly loses and who's whose emergency gets first claim.

Now, here's the thing to think about.

One of the things I hear often, especially when I'm coaching a business owner is this.

Well, I put it in my calendar, but then when the time comes, I do something else.

I get distract.

Distracted, distracted scrolling or, you know, down the rabbit hole or logo design or website and anything but sending the email or sending the invite or recording the video or scheduling an appearance somewhere or, you know, finishing a proposal.

I'm supposed to give all that stuff.

That is a different issue.

Okay.

And that probably isn't going to be what we're talking about today, but I recognize that is a powerful problem, a powerful distraction, a powerful need to fix.

All right, so when you think about the calendar, the first layer is it has to make it in your calendar.

Now, something that I used to do is I put just blocks of calendar, business work or studio work, I'm pointing over there, the recording studios over there, studio work.

And if I didn't be more specific, which songs I was working on or what project, again, I would get in the studio and then do something and do maybe something else, something that was easier, something that struck me as more fun that moment, you know, that kind of thing.

So what we're talking about first is getting it in your calendar because that's the first hurdle, the second hurdle that I just identified, it's in my calendar, but I don't do what's in there.

So something else takes longer or I get that feeling of oh, and so I don't actually do it.

That's terrifying.

Guess what that is?

That's the personal development push ups you need to be allocating time for.

Because if your habit is somebody's emergency gets first claim or a distraction gets first claim, or you just suddenly get fascinated by a new thing in ChatGPT or Claude or whatever and you don't do the thing you know you're supposed to do for your business.

Which is often the thing that gets talked about when I'm business coaching.

Well, I don't really do.

That's where your personal development push ups are needed.

Because what that's saying is I've made the trade, I've made time in my calendar, I've negotiated with myself, I sequenced other things and I put it there and I don't do it.

Guess what that is?

That is a coaching issue.

That is a context issue.

That's a priority issue.

That's a self worth issue.

That's a confidence issue.

All of those are solvable.

None of them are mysteries and none of them are even that hard.

But they take their own attention.

And here's the fun thing, or funny or sad, depends on how you look at it.

Someone will say, I'm just going to do this better.

I'm going to stick to my schedule.

And then they don't again.

And guess what?

Then that, you know, brings up self worth issues and shame and guilt and oh, I never do it.

And I'm never gonna guess what that points to.

Personal development push ups in your calendar.

Your promises have at least an opportunity to take, you know, personal, real physical form.

Your calendar is your declared values after cross examination by life a priority in your mind.

Without schedule space, all that is is a wish.

It's a perspective, it's a preference.

Okay, now we're not going to mix up our sometimes inability to stick to the schedule we create.

Right now, right now we're just getting over the first hurdle of the trades nobody wants to name.

But when I said the personal development push ups need time and energy.

They do more than anything else.

The obvious trades are really easy.

Less Netflix, less scrolling, fewer low value activities, messing with websites or logos or whatever.

But, but big creation eventually reaches harder territory.

You may have to trade some sleep or convenience or spontaneity or, or some social invitations or habitual availability jumping at every, you know, ding on the phone, every notification.

You may have to trade perfection in another area.

That's been a problem for me.

I always want to finish everything.

I've got books, I'm writing.

I'll give you some examples.

I've got books I'm writing, I've got courses, I'm creating.

I've got coaching I do, I've got networking, I do.

I've got time in the recording studio.

I've been preparing a concert for later in September.

By the time you hear it, it'll be maybe already done or right near, but I'll do one in October, November, December.

But all of those things compete for time.

You may need to trade some money.

So then you're trading Harder habits, something that you don't feel like doing, or spontaneity.

I just want to go with the flow.

You can do that, but you won't be as productive.

You won't get your goals done.

Because going with the flows, always going to go for the easier thing.

You might need to trade some money.

You might need to trade some ego.

You might need to trade an identity that says I'm always there for everybody.

I got some phone calls and I really had to talk to so and so.

You might need to trade doing everything yourself, outsourcing, delegating.

Those are all real trades that are just habits.

They're just habits.

Every one of them is in a priority, in your head, in your heart.

And if you're going to do something new, especially something substantive like personal development, push ups or write a book or create a course or build a business or repair a relationship, or spend more time with your kids or your spouse, or spend more time working on your body, working out, whatever that is.

If you're going to do something substantial, it requires an investment of your most precious resource, which is time.

Sometimes we trade a work, responsibility or a commitment for some sleep.

We can't do it enough, so it wrecks our health.

We can't trade a client for our health.

Sometimes we trade some income for creative time.

Sometimes we trade a vanity project for something that really matters.

So what.

What I want you to do is to understand that these are explicit and make them explicit.

Now, I am not here to promulgate hustle culture.

Hustle and grind and busted and every moment and a thousand things a day.

That's not creative and it's not the most productive way to do things.

I'm not trying to cram more into the container.

I'm inviting you to architect the container more effectively in the results equation.

It's a book that I wrote.

The results equation.

I don't have it right handy or I'd show it to you.

The results equation.

From dream to done in five simple steps.

It's a process for personal change, for.

For business creation, for creating a keynote for making your first million dollars.

For moving out of your corporate gig and into your passion work that you want to do for your life, you know, to be satisfied.

The results equation applies to any project from dream to done in five simple steps.

Now, simple does not mean easy.

But they're clear.

They're invincible and they always work.

One of them is courageous planning.

The equation actually has five terms.

Term number four is courageous planning.

And it involves a process called the Step map.

And guess what?

It involves putting things very specifically after you've done the first three steps in your calendar.

Not to be a slave driver, not to take away fun or spontaneity, but so you or I can have a realistic estimate of when something will be completed.

Because without that, we're just wishing, we're just guessing results equation thinking means that you.

We estimate the time something is required or will require, and then we overlay it on our life.

So if I do a new project and I estimate based on the process in the results equation, and it's very specific, so don't pretend you understand it because you don't unless you've read the book.

But it works.

Now, once you do the work there and then you can really estimate how much time your new creation requires, then you get the opportunity to overlay it on real life because your calendar's already full.

Now here are two things to think about.

Sometimes people don't use a calendar and they think it limits their spontaneity.

Never.

True.

And we're not going to have an argument about that here right now.

But I have boatloads of evidence to show that life is more fun, more productive and more joyful in the end.

If you have some structure, not rigidity, but some structure.

The other thing is people put all kinds of crap in their calendar and it doesn't really mean anything because there's overlapping time and appointments and all that stuff.

And then when the time comes, they just do whichever one feels right.

Neither one of those will get your results the way you want them.

But if you use an accurate calendar, then when you take a new project and you overlay it, you can make the trades explicit and you see what you're giving up in order to, you know, get it done.

If, like I said, if your book project is going to be 120 hours and you want it done in 12 weeks, well, that's 10 hours a week.

Then you need to put, you know, five two hour blocks in there or some other, you know, thing to see if it will fit.

And when we do that, if we look at the resulting schedule and say, I'm not willing to make those trades or it's too busy, I'm not willing to live like that, okay, Then you can't complete that project in that time frame.

And that isn't bad or a sin, it just is.

So then there's always three things to do.

Shrink the project, extend the time, or get some help.

There's nothing else to do.

Shrink the project, extend the Time or get some help.

Okay.

Sometimes we have a big project in mind and if we shrink it to the minimum viable, you know, first project or product, that will help.

Sometimes extending the time is available and sometimes it's not.

If you've got a deadline, getting some help might cost money.

So you have to decide if you have budget, if you're willing to trade cash, meaning take it away from something else and put it in this, you know, invest it in this particular project.

And of course your cash is all occupied.

Even if you're saving a thousand dollars a month or some number, you can decide, I'm going to not save that for a period, five months, I'm going to take 500 of it and put it in this project to get the help I need to meet the deadline.

Those specific trades almost never get done in people's life.

They, they sort of halfway do it in their head.

So the results equation courageous planning explicitly will help you not pretend to find missing hours through hope.

It'll help you make the choices and activities sequenced, timelines changed or help added.

That's just allowing yourself to become honest.

Okay, so let's talk about auditing your creation trade.

Here's something really concrete.

Whatever it is you want to create, I want you to think right now.

What would you like to create in the next quarter, 90 days from now, by Christmas?

Okay, where will those hours live?

How much time a week is it?

And if you don't know, get the results equation, get the book and do the step map process because it will tell you out of that process will fall the number of hours you need.

Where do those hours live in the week?

What currently occupies those hours?

What will you stop?

Reduce, delegate sequence.

Not forever, but just for a period.

And then who is affected by that trade?

What conversation needs to happen?

You might need to go talk to your partner and say whether it's a tennis partner or your life partner for, for the next 12 weeks, I want to do this.

Are you willing to support me?

Most people will not do those explicit conversations.

If you cannot get the support or you can't sacrifice certain things, does that mean the goal or the timeline needs to change?

And it is not.

Again, this isn't rigidity, this is just, it is actually joyful because it takes away the pressure.

When we imagine that we're going to get something done no matter what and we don't do this, it just sits there nagging and we know we're never going to do it.

We're just hoping for some wild ass burst of Time and creation.

And you can decide, I'm not willing to make this or that trade.

Okay, that's fine.

That's truth.

Perhaps that particular creation is simply not important right now.

Perhaps this is not a time you're willing to do it in.

That is way more sovereign than.

Than pretending.

So here's what I want you to remember.

Don't tell me you don't have time.

Don't.

Don't say that it's not true.

You have not yet chosen the trade.

Or you have and said, I'm not willing to do that.

But then at least you have explicitly looked at the possibility and said, I'm not willing to make that trade.

Okay, that's not a problem.

Then you can release yourself from the tyranny of I need to do that.

I should do that.

I know.

I really feel.

Do the results equation, process, you know, invest the 20 bucks or whatever it is in the book and do the courageous planning process.

It will clarify things for you and make it spectacularly simple.

And then you'll have the info with which to make a trade.

Right.

Or to say, I'm not going to do this.

Here's the truth.

Your calendar isn't judging you.

It's simply telling you the truth.

Now I want to add one, two final things.

Number one, when I talk about calendar, it isn't the thing that you make ahead of time.

Or it is, but only partly.

The second part is, let's pretend your calendar actually showed exactly what you did with your time.

Scrolling, dithering, extra naps, messing around, television, Netflix, whatever, that's the calendar we need to work with.

And if you find that you use a calendar and, or you don't use it and you don't know where your time goes, that's very possible.

Then track your time.

We should talk because there's a powerful process to do that.

If you use a calendar and you know, at the end of the week, for example, a week, that your calendar doesn't reflect anything at all like what you did.

Take a week and go back and change everything just to see where all your time went.

And in fact do that for a couple of weeks, just see where your time went.

So you have an idea, well, I know where my time went.

And then you're in a position not to judge, but to say, I am happy with that allocation.

Or to say, wow, I didn't know that.

Look where my time went.

And track everything.

Sleep, personal prep, eating, getting ready, going places, going out, hanging with friends, television, as well as work and other activities that you, you know, say you want to do and that gives you a clear picture.

And again, your calendar isn't judging you, but it can be one of the most important productivity tools both to help you make the trades and to teach you the truth of what you really value.

People say to me, so important I say, show me your calendar, show me your bank account and I'll tell you what's important.

You have the capability to create anything you want.

You have the ability right now to live your ultimate life purpose, prosperity and joy without question.

The key is simply are you willing to track it and make some trades so that you are the sovereign architect?

Because if you do that, you absolutely, starting right now, can be joyful every day and live your ultimate life.

Right here, right now.

Your opportunity for massive growth is right in front of you.

Every episode gives you practical tips and practices that will change everything.

If you want to know more, go to kellenfluekegermedia.com if you want more free tools, go here YourUltimateLife CA Subscribe Share.

Your feet are on the ground.

Share Episode

Shownotes

Transcripts

Follow

Links

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube