In today’s episode, I contemplate the question: “What are you willing to give up to get what you want?” After going through a rather interesting thought exercise, I deiced that that’s not the first question you need to ask yourself.
Before you ask yourself what you’re willing to give up to get what you want, you first need to know what it is that you want in the first place and probably why you want it. How long are you willing to wait for it? Who can help you?
Full transcript below.
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Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
give, question, inspire, answer, short term, solo, short term basis, sloppy, deep dive, exercise, long, timeframe, recommend, longer term, started, exceptionally, wanting, felt, expectation, short
SPEAKERS
Mike Malatesta 00:31
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the How’d It Happen Podcast. I am so happy to have you here today as I am with every episode, and today I have a special solo episode for you that was inspired by I think it was a podcast I was listening to, and I heard someone say or ask this question, and it was, what are you willing to give up to get what you want? I have this little notepad in my car that I write things on. And I don’t look at it while I write because I’m trying to drive. And so a lot of times it ends up being exceptionally sloppy. Because my handwriting is naturally exceptionally sloppy, so I got home and I was like, what was that I wrote. It took me a while, but it came back to me and it was, you know, this question, what are you willing to give up to get what you want?
I started thinking about that. In my book I don’t really talk about things as if I gave them up so much, but they probably come across as things that I gave up. And as I was thinking about how I would answer that question. It occurred to me that that may not be the question that I should start with. In fact, it ended up being the fourth question, I felt like I should ask myself, instead of the first one.
So it was a very interesting thought exercise, and I’m going to take you through now. So again, starting with this sort of notion, like you know, someone would get up and go, What are you willing to give up to get what you want? I don’t think you should answer that question until you answer a couple of questions in front of that. And the first one is, What do you want? You know, what are you willing to give up to get what you want is a great question, I suppose, if you know what you actually want, but I find that there’s so many people, including myself, who are not sure about what they actually want. And until you become sure about what you actually want, and I don’t mean that you have to be sure about what you want in your life forever, but if you’re going to be willing to give up something to get what you want, you certainly have to know what it is you want. And for me, when I’ve gone through those challenges before, it’s always been good for me to figure out what I want and be able to describe it as specifically as I can. So you know, at a particular point, I want X; I don’t have to justify why I want it. I think something you want to stay away. There’s no need to justify why you want something. I mean, who knows why you want something, you just want it. But knowing what it is, and being able to describe it specifically is something I think you should answer before you think about giving up something for it.
The second thing is, Why do you want it? So as I just said, you know, maybe it doesn’t matter why you want it. But for some people, it may matter, you know why? You want it because you might think you want something, and then you start thinking about the why part of it. And you might start to wonder, do I really want that so, so why do you want it? I wouldn’t get too hung up on that if you just think you want it and you’re not really able to answer the why. That’s okay. Go ahead and do it. But if you are able to answer the why, I think it would help you with your clarity about the what and the next question.
The next question, which is, How long are you willing to work or wait for it? So that’s different than what are you willing? It’s how long? And in this sort of world we live in right now, at least for a lot of us, there’s a lot of pressure for short-term thinking. Companies are evaluated on short-term thinking. We’re evaluated on, you know how quickly we can respond to things. There’s this expectation that anything you want, you should be able to get it, you know, right now, through an app or through, you know, online or whatever, and the world really doesn’t work that way for a lot of things. So how long are you willing to work or wait and work to get it? I recommend that you think about that on a longer-road perspective, like, you know, at least a couple of years, you know, unless what you’re talking about wanting is something very small, but I’m talking about wanting on a bigger level, like wanting in my life or wanting in my business, or whatever. I would recommend a longer-term approach, then the longer the better, because you don’t really need the pressure of answering these questions in a timeframe or achieving these questions in a timeframe that’s very short. And time can be a bitch, you know, so if you tie yourself to a short term, it’s very easy to disappoint yourself, because it’s hard to make the progress that you need to make on a short-term basis.
And then the fourth question becomes, What are you willing to give up to get what you want? So that’s the question we started with. And I think number four is the right position for that question. Because there’s a lot of things to think about when it comes to giving up. And you may even think about it in terms of I don’t want to give up anything, but here are a few things that, you know, I find helpful to go through, and I’ve experienced going through this kind of exercise, the things that you can potentially have to give up. While time is certainly one of them, money, relationships, happiness, sleep, balance, whatever that means, love. And there could be a whole list of other things that mean something in life, they matter, right? You can’t just put everything aside in order to get what you want. So what are you willing to give up to get what you want? And how much of it, you know?
So the fifth one is Who? Who do you need help from in order to get where you want to get to? And do all the things that we just mentioned? Who do you need help from? I’ve always had a challenge with that, because I’ve always felt like I’m my own who. But fortunately, as I’ve gained more wisdom over time, I’ve discovered that being my own who is really counterproductive, that actually doesn’t help me get to where I want to get to, as fast as I can, like, getting help from someone who actually, you know, knows what I’m trying to do better than I do, and can help me get there much faster.
So, just a short little solo here. You know, if you if you get into this situation, and you hear somebody say something like what are you willing to give up to get what you want, I would encourage you to remember this and think well, is that really the question I need to be starting with? Or should I start with other questions first, and I recommend you start with What do you want? Why do you want it? How long are you willing to work or wait for to get it? Then what are you willing to give up to get what you want? And then finally, who can you get help from to get you get what you want, once you’re clear about you know, the number one, which is what you actually want. I think the rest of this starts to fall in line a little bit easier. Because you know, when you know what you want, you can do a really kind of quick and dirty deep dive on what you’re willing to give up in order to get it.
So I hope that’s helpful. I do. Thank you for joining me. And I hope that you take something from this that will activate and inspire the greatness in you. Until next time, make it a great day.
