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The Gift of Choice
Episode 36 • 21st December 2023 • Burning Brightly • Bonnie Wiscombe
00:00:00 00:14:11

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Do you know what the greatest gift you've ever been given is? It's the power to choose.

You can choose to be kind or cruel, to love or harm, to build or destroy, to consume or create and countless other choices we face every single day.

But because our agency is one of our greatest choices, it's also a huge responsibility to choose wisely.

In this episode we'll explore the power of this choice, better understand how we (sometimes unwittingly) relinquish this power and how to best use it in our businesses.

Want to start a business but feeling overwhelmed? Join my Finding Your Side Hustle Course and learn the step-by-step process for starting the business you've been dreaming of.

Ready for one-on-one guidance? Schedule a free coaching call with me so we can make progress on your dreams.

Transcripts

Speaker:

You're listening to episode 36 of

burning brightly, the gift of choice.

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In today's episode, we are going to be

talking about one of, if not, the greatest

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gift that we are given as human beings.

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And that is the gift of

being able to choose.

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Now, we've got to back up a little

bit and talk about some core tenants

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of Christianity, specifically my

faith and I'm sure most Christians

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out there is that we believe we

lived before this earth life.

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Right.

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We lived before we'll live again.

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After that living here on earth is

just a small portion of our existence.

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And the main thing to understand about

the life that came before this life.

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Was that there was a great conflict in it.

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God wanted us to get, have the

chance to get bodies, to learn how to

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choose right from wrong, how to make

mistakes and to see whether or not

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we would choose him in the long run.

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Now Satan, the enemy of

all of us didn't want this.

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He wanted it to remove our power,

to choose and to force us all

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to be good and return to God.

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Now on the surface level,

that might sound great.

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Some of us parents are like,

yeah, what's wrong with that?

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Let's just force our kids to be good.

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Then.

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We don't have to suffer.

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Nobody has to suffer.

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It's all going to be great.

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But of course that's not how it really

pans out in order for us to find

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the greatest joy there has to be.

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Uh, right in the wrong, there

has to be that dichotomy.

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Good and bad light and dark.

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We talked about this

in a previous episode.

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Now, obviously in this pre earth

battle God one, cause he always will.

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But unfortunately we lost some of our

brothers and sisters in the process.

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In fact, I'm just

reading in revelation 12.

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It talks about this in

some really colorful.

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Symbolic language.

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It talks about Satan being the dragon.

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And it talks about this war in heaven.

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Out of this dragon was cast out that

being Satan right along with his angel.

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So what do we learn from

the spiritual history?

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Well, I think the most important thing

we learn is that God values our power

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to choose more than anything else.

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He was willing to let a huge

portion of his own children

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follow the enemy of their souls.

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Rather than forcing them to stay with him.

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Like as a parent who just

let a kid leave home.

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That is mind blowing to me that

instead of saying no, the best choice

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for you is to stay here with me.

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He was willing to let them go

and make that mistake because the

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power to choose was so important.

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And we're talking about the

God of the universe here.

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He has the power over anything and

everything he can make or unmake

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anything he wants to, he absolutely

had the power to force them.

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But he didn't.

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Isn't that fascinating.

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He will never mess with our

agency or that power to choose.

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Why.

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Why is that so important?

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We're going to dive a little bit

into that and talk specifically about

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how it affects us in our businesses.

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So what does this power to choose?

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Mean for us in our day-to-day lives.

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Well, if agency.

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Is our greatest gift.

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Then I would argue it's also

our greatest responsibility.

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With great power comes.

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Great responsibility, right.

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Superman new it.

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We have to know it too.

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Or was it Spiderman?

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I think it was Spiderman anyway.

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Those of us who choose God's plan

are the ones that are here on earth.

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And it's important to realize

that Satan continues to fight.

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Mercilessly against us to

make us relinquish that power.

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Because as long as we have the

power to choose, we can choose God

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over him and we can choose joy.

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We can choose peace.

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We can choose love.

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We can choose all these good things

that God has taught us to choose.

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But we have to hold

onto that power because

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because we also have the power to

relinquish that power to choose.

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What does that look like?

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Well, it looks like a

victim hood mentality.

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Have you ever met somebody?

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Who's like, what was me?

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Everything bad happens to me.

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There's nothing I can do about it.

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That is a form of relinquishing

your power to choose.

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Damaging or harming abusing.

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Another person can actually

harm their power to choose.

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Right?

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If someone undergoes trauma at becomes

more difficult to make conscious

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life choices, because they're dealing

with this damaged nervous system.

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Addictions huge one.

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When you were addicted to something

your power to choose is lessened.

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If you don't believe me, eat a whole

bunch of sugar and then tell yourself

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you're going to go off sugar for a month.

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It's extremely difficult because your

addiction has programmed your body

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and brain to crave and desire this

thing, even though, you know, it's not

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good for you, same with any sort of.

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Addictive substance and

addictive behaviors, scrolling

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Instagram pornography.

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Oversleeping over Netflixing anything

you derive a lot of pleasure from can

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become an addictive behavior that then

makes it harder to step away from.

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So it can be very easy for us to kind of

let go of this responsibility of choosing.

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And just kind of flow along

with the tide of life.

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We never plant our feet in the river

and stand up and say, wait, stop.

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I want to choose differently.

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Than how my life is going or how

everybody has expected me to choose.

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Now think about middle

school for a minute.

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This is Middle school is an excellent

albeit tragic example of the peer pressure

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that we've all experienced in our youth.

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It was so easy to just go along with

making fun of the nerdy kid, because

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all the kids cool kids were doing it.

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Or giving the teacher a hard

time to substitute a hard time.

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It was so easy in a seventh grade to

cuss like a sailor because who'd even

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cuss like a sailor in the seventh grade.

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Later on, maybe we made different

choices, but it was so easy to just do

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what everyone else was doing because

we hadn't yet formed this full.

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Picture of ourselves and really

learn who we wanted to be and how

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we wanted to stand up in life.

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And we probably didn't have a lot of

courage yet, so we don't want to be the

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middle school versions of ourselves.

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We want to be willing to stand up

and say, this is the choice I want

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and go boldly in that direction.

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Because our true power.

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Comes from exercising.

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This agency.

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Especially when it's

hard and inconvenient.

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So I'm going to repeat

that little truth bomb.

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Your true power comes from exercising

your agency, especially when it's hard.

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I think we know that as adults,

the hard stuff tends to be

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the stuff that's good for us.

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The hard stuff tends to be the

things that are going to make

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us grow and make us learn.

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But it's so easy to just let go of that.

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And just say, I'm just going to

do what's easy because I'm tired.

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I'm old.

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My kids yelled at me this week,

whatever, whatever our excuses are.

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Right.

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So.

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What does this have to do with business?

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Why does this power to choose so

important in regards to our business?

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Well, it has everything to do

because as a business owner,

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your choices run the whole show.

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It's terrifying to think it's also very

empowering, but also very terrifying.

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There is no boss to ask.

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There is no CEO to check in with.

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There is usually no partner to, to.

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your ideas by your choices

run the entire thing.

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And that can be paralyzing.

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Especially when we realized that.

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is no right and wrong choices to

most of the things we do in business.

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When it comes to moral issues,

there's always a right and wrong.

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Fidelity chastity honesty and

integrity, kindness, charity.

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We know the right thing to do.

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It's to be faithful to our spouse

is to be kind to the person who's

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a little bit socially awkward.

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Right?

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We know those things.

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But outside of moral issues.

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I would say that a solid, I don't know,

80% of every other choice we make in life.

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There's not a right way.

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There's not a right way

for me to load my laundry.

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Well, I might say there is, and my kids

do it wrong, but that's beside the point.

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There's not a right way

to run your Facebook ads.

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There's not a right way.

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choose the niche you want to target.

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There's not a right way to run a webinar.

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There, there just isn't there's

a thousand different ways

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and we still have to choose.

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And it becomes incredibly difficult

when there is no right way, because.

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Well for crying out loud.

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I don't know what I want to choose.

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I just want to be successful.

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It's incredibly difficult to make

a choice when, you know, But there

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are multiple quote unquote, right?

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Ways to do it, right.

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still have to make that choice

now in the grand scheme of things.

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More choices really are quite simple.

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If you know what God's commandments

are, you know, you want to follow him,

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then it's fairly Chimp to choose to do.

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So I'm not going to say it's easy.

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Of course it's not easy.

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This life is hard.

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It's a test.

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But it is simple to make that choice

and then to work towards that.

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But choosing your business niche.

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Or choosing a yearly goal for yourself.

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Or choosing to put yourself out there

on social media and make a real,

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that makes you feel uncomfortable.

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That stuff is hard because most of the

time, that choice is not right or wrong.

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It all depends on where you want to go.

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Like the Cheshire cat says, right?

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the right direction.

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Well, depends on where you want to end up.

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So first we have to make a

few decisions about where we

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want our business to end up.

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Roughly, because we don't know how

it's going to pan out and then make

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choices in that general direction.

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This is why it's so important

to understand this concept

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within your business.

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If your future self showed up today

and said, Hey, guess what, honey?

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There is no right path.

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Actually.

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I don't think my future

self would call me honey.

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That's really condescending.

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She would say girlfriend.

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There is no right path for you.

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There is no correct market to corner.

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There is no perfect Instagram post.

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There is no ideal.

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Coaching package.

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But there is a choice that you

have to make for all of these,

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and you cannot stall forever.

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You have to choose, and

it can be paralyzing.

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We overthink all these decisions.

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What, what should I do?

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Let me ask this expert.

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Let me see what she's doing.

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Let me ask my husband.

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Let me ask my neighbor.

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Let me ask this entrepreneur.

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Let me just watch everybody.

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Let me just do more research.

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And that gets us nowhere, the watching and

the waiting and the waiting for somebody.

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Uh, to tell us the right way to do it.

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Is the slowest path to success.

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It will never pan out that way.

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We have to just make a choice.

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In business, it's really easy

to put these choices off.

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Sometimes we'll show up in our business.

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And when we don't have a boss,

we just kind of pretend to work.

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We do a lot of busy stuff, uploading

some podcasts or some social media posts.

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a lot of webinars and trainings.

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We'll read a lot of books.

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We'll chat with other entrepreneurs,

maybe join a mastermind, but if we're

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never making the hard decisions and

then taking action on those decisions.

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In five years, your business will

be exactly where it is today.

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Because you'll just have done

all this busy work that never

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actually made a choice to point

you in one direction or another.

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So, if this feels familiar to

you and you're like, yes, to

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help me, help me make a choice.

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There's three simple steps.

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Are you ready for them?

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Number one.

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Except that there is no right

way to build your business.

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There is no right way.

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Let me say it again.

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There is no right way

to build your business.

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If you don't believe me.

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Just hit.

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rewind on this podcast and keep

listening until you believe me.

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There's no right way.

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Number two.

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Choose the next step to the best of

your knowledge, the one you want to

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do, the one that sounds like fun.

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The one that is exciting.

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The, when you're looking forward to.

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And then number three,

take action on that step.

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So, except there's no right way.

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Choose your next step.

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And then take action.

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Your brain.

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I guarantee is going to

rebel at step number one.

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That's why I repeated it three times.

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It wants to know the best way,

even if there's no right one.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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You say.

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There is no right way fine,

but what's the best way.

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What's the way that this expert did it.

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What's the way that

that millionaire did it.

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What's the way that this person did it.

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I'll tell you what, if you interviewed

20 millionaire, successful entrepreneurs,

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about an ask them how they succeeded.

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You will learn 20 different ways to

build a successful seven figure business.

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Literally 20 different ways

because no one's path is the same.

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Now that doesn't mean

there aren't some really.

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strategies to learn.

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That's a lot of what we talk

about on this podcast, right?

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to find a cold lead, how to nurture

this lead, how to, how to close a sale.

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Yes, there's great strategies

and tools you can learn.

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But no one knows your business's

blueprint for success.

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Why.

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Because it hasn't been built yet.

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There is no blueprint for your business

because your business isn't successful

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yet, or maybe it is, but it's not quite

to the place where you want it to be.

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You won't have the

blueprints until it's done.

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I know that's maddening.

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It makes me want to tear my hair out.

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Sometimes I just want a plan

and I want to follow that plan.

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But guess what?

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The good news is you don't need them.

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It's all in your brain and it will

come to you throughout the experience

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that you put into your business.

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Right now, let's say, for example,

you don't have any blueprint

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for how to get your next client.

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Well, you're going to

try a bunch of things.

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You're going to try to get a

bunch of leads, a different way.

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You're going to try to nurture

them a bunch of different ways.

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You're gonna try to close some

sales, a bunch of different ways.

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And when you get your next client,

you'll go, oh, that was the path.

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And then guess what the client after that

will be easier because you'll already

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know how it worked to get one client.

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And then the third and the fourth and

the 10th client will be even easier

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because you're going to start to create

some pathways that seem to work for you.

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They work for your personality,

they work for your, the hours you're

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willing to put into your business.

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They

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And you'll experience more flow

in your business as you put.

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time and effort and, and

you see some successes.

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But sitting around and waiting

for that plan to manifest.

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We'll simply ensure that in five years,

you're exactly where you are today.

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And we do not want that for ourselves.

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So again, Number one, except

there is no right way.

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There's not even a best way.

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There's just your way.

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Learn as much as you can from

the experts and then just go.

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Number two, choose a way

to choose the next step.

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And number three, take

action on that step.

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I have a whole other podcast coming up.

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About.

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topic of there not being a best way

or a right way about how the experts

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can not tell you how to build your

business because they haven't built your

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business and your guys are gonna love it.

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But this is a great place to

start, except there's no right way.

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Choose a step anyway,

and then take action.

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You guys have a wonderful Christmas.

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weekend.

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love you so much.

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Thank you so much for listening.

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Please leave a review.

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If you haven't.

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I so appreciate every lesson, but I

see will talk to you again next week.

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Bye bye.

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