2597: What Are You Becoming?

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Host: You don't join the Marines, you become one. Saw that commercial the other night and uh, I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff for sure. I am a patriotic red blooded American who's got family who served and have such a deep appreciation for the military and armed services and just everything that goes along with that. For the men and women who do commit to that, to service, um, it's an incredible thing and that's a compelling, ah, pretty powerful commercial as well or advertising campaign, however you kind of want to think about that. And it definitely stopped uh, me in my tracks because I think that it highlights a distinction that uh, we don't really spend a lot of time thinking about. And that is the difference between doing something and becoming someone. Difference between doing something and becoming someone. Because most of our lives are, we can look at it from a more transactional lens. Buy this, subscribe to that, open an account, get a membership, download the app, sign up, grab your copy. So the uh, lives are just full of transactions. Everybody's competing for attention and wanting clicks or likes or subscriptions, whatever it might be. Um, but the things that really matter most in our lives are rarely transactional. They are a lot more transformational because if you think about it, nobody wants a gym membership, they want to be healthy. Nobody wants to open a IRA or a retirement account. They want financial security and stability. Nobody wants a marriage certificate, they want to become married, they want to become a husband or a wife. Not too many people just want a Bible on the shelf. They want to become a person of faith. So certainly nobody wants another self help book. They want to become a better version of themselves. And so the transaction is simply the vehicle and the transformation. That's the point of the whole thing. And somewhere along the way, I think many of us, myself included, and it's easy to do, can lose sight of that. We start measuring our lives by what we've acquired rather than who it is that we're actually becoming. And it's easy, you know, I've got, I've got to get my kids up and move in and out the door and get their shoes on and in the car and their seat belts buckled and I got to go and do this thing and the other thing. So it's very easy to become transactional, just kind of slip into that. And while sometimes just keeping your head above water is progress, we can confuse busyness and activity with progression. We can confuse the consumption of something with actual growth. And we can confuse possessing something with the meaning with meaning in general. But if you're able to open the aperture and zoom out, uh, and look at your life and be honest, I think a really good question is, it's not what do I have? It is that what am I becoming? Because whether you realize it or not, you are becoming someone. Every single day. Every single choice that we make is shaping us. Every habit that we exercise is shaping us. Every relationship is shaping us. Every time we make an allocation of time and of attention, of our energy, every time we make a decision with our money, it's shaping us. And we are becoming. We're constantly becoming. The only question is whether you are doing so, whether you're becoming something intentionally or simply accidentally. And that's where responsibility comes in. And it's not blame. It is responsibility. Because we have the ability to respond, we have the ability to do so many things, but we need to exercise the willingness to say that this is my life and these are my choices. These are the resources that I have. These are my priorities, and therefore these are my results.

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Host: because I have a certain amount of time, energy, attention and money, and I get to decide how to allocate those on a daily basis and you reshuffle the deck, it starts over the next day. So if you're looking backwards on yesterday, you can say, okay, these are the results that I got of all the decisions I made and the allocation choices that I made. These are the results that I got. And when you're able to do that, I think that that's really what it means to, to be a grown up, to be a mature human being. It's not age, not intelligence, it's not success. It is accepting responsibility for directing our lives so it's deciding what matters. It's saying no to things that don't matter. It's constantly making those trade offs and getting better at making those trade offs. It is preferencing the future over the present when you must. It's doing what must be done when you don't feel like doing it, especially when you're tired. That's tough, isn't it? So we certainly have this obsession with freedom, but I don't know that our obsession translates into actual behavior. We all know that we want it, but we must be virtuous about it. And being virtuous about it means we're making the right decisions, we're making the best decisions, we're making good decisions. So when, uh, we're obsessed with freedom, it's easy to overlook the fact that freedom without responsibility becomes chaos. The people that we admire most, they aren't usually the people who had the fewest constraints, the people who accepted responsibility and acted accordingly. Soldiers, parents, teachers, builders, leaders, your mentors. These are people who understood that their choices really mattered and that they shouldered that responsibility, which is heavy. And they carried that way willingly, willfully. They're people that did their part by doing their best. And I think that that's really the goal. Perfection is not the goal. Wealth is not necessarily the goal. Status isn't the goal. Recognition is not the goal. I think that the goal is simply to become the kind of person who knows what matters and then acts accordingly. The person who aligns their resources with their priorities. That's a person who could be trusted with freedom. It's a person who keeps their word. A person who does, does, actually does what must be done. A responsible actor. Because when you become that person, I think something very, very beautiful happens. Your finances improve, your health improves, your relationships improve. Your peace of mind goes, goes up. And it's not because stuff's easier. It's because you're becoming more capable every day. Think about it. As you make good decisions, you're proving to yourself that you're somebody who's capable of making good decisions, and that makes you more capable and confident to make you more aligned, more intentional, more responsible. You stop just getting pulled and carried along by the currents of life and you put your oar in the water and you start paddling in the direction that you want to go in. And perhaps that's one of the most meaningful things any of us can do. Not simply accumulate or consume, but to intentionally become. Because in the end, the most important thing you build, it's not a career or bank account. It's not your reputation. It's your character. Whether you know it or not, you are building that very thing every day. So the question is, who and what are you becoming? As always, do your part by doing your best.

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