PDM 019: Are You Ready To Make The Election of a Lifetime In Your Personal Life?

Lucas P. Johnson: You know those moments where you wish things could be different? Those moments where if you made the right choice, things or relationships will be in a completely different state? It's an election of a lifetime. However, before we go any further roll the intro...

Narrator: Welcome to the home of Project Dream Mastery. Here at PDM, we are challenging the status quo of what it means to follow your dreams and how to unlock the power those dreams will bring to your life. The show experience will be unscripted, authentic and transparent. So now sit back, relax and get inspired with your hosts, Lucas Johnson and Patryk Labuzek.

Lucas P. Johnson: Welcome to the 19th episode of the Project Dream Mastery show where we help inspire you to follow your dreams, defy expectations, dream big and love deeply. My name is Lucas Johnson based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to be the first to receive new episode releases. And if you're interested, this episode is available with video. So check out our website at ProjectDreamMastery.com to watch. Now this week in the United States, we face an election of a lifetime, a political event vastly different than any other in U.S. history. This event sparked a thought, many thoughts. Hell, it even sparked so much more. It made people motivated to take action and do something. And action is incredibly powerful. It speaks so much louder than words. With everyone in the United States making their voice heard, it made me wonder what if we made this action a reality in our own lives?

Lucas P. Johnson: What some might call an election, we will refer to as an internal audit or self-assessment for this episode. So why do we choose so often to avoid facing our inner thoughts, beliefs, hatred, anger, fear, skepticism, love, demons, and much, much more? Why do we constantly put ourselves down, overthink things, allow negative people into our lives to influence? Why do we never take a minute to do an internal audit of where we currently stand? Every four years in the U.S., we have an election to select the President of the United States. See, every four years we do an audit of the previous four years to see how the president is performing or performed and then we vote. Why is it in our personal lives different? Why don't we do an internal audit or vote on the things that matter to us more often? Why don't we take a minute to audit our lives to see if we were happy and actively seeking our dreams? Before we go any further, this episode is not even remotely political.

Lucas P. Johnson: So please stay tuned. A self-assessment is a way to learn more about yourself, what you like, what you don't like and how you tend to react to certain situations. Learning about yourself is a first step in finding what truly makes you happy or even upset. Assessments are tools that help you explore your skills, interests, values and other traits. So today let's explore a few areas of how this affects your life and my life. A few of those topics we're going to take a look at is purpose, values, motivations, strengths and abilities, personality, emotional intelligence, fears, cravings, expectations and your circle. What do all these have in common? They all make up who you are. And as a part of doing this self-assessment, this internal audit, this election of yourself, you need to look at each one of these components. Each one of these components makes you you.

Lucas P. Johnson: And over the last many years of your existence, you probably haven't taken the time to really think about what you actually want, what makes you happy, what makes you upset, what makes these pieces come together? Have you taken a minute to really think about your purpose? Have you identified it? Have you found your why? Have you started with why, as Simon Sinek says? Defining your purpose is incredibly powerful. It allows you to begin transitioning on a path forward, taking steps, the necessary steps to make sure that's a reality. Our purpose does not have to be all that and a box of chips or a box of chocolates. Our purpose could be simple. It could be to help someone on this earth. It could be to bring medicine to people that need it. It could be so many things. I mean I don't even know where to get started on that. But your purpose, say you're driving to work right now, you're driving and you're thinking about what you need to do to get to your next point, Point A to Point B. You need to figure out what you want in your life. You need to understand your values.

Lucas P. Johnson: You need to think about how many times you've been caught off guard because you just don't know who you are. You don't know what your purpose is. You don't know what you value. Or maybe you do and you just haven't taken the time to really jot it down on a piece of paper. And as all you know, I love sticky notes. I love a notepad. Hell, I mean you'll even see our notebook coming out here soon enough. And it's just powerful just to take notes and see the things on a piece of paper because now you give them weight. You give them value. So how has that different in your life?

Lucas P. Johnson: Your purpose can be defined and it's constantly evolving. We're human. We're all human. At least I hope so. First and foremost, we need to make sure we identify what makes us human. Doing that internal audit of ourselves to figure out just what matters, what we think about. How many times have you sat there and wondered if you were truly happy doing what you're doing? Is it your work? Is it your life? Is your family. What makes you happy? What truly makes you happy? Will this help you unlock your purpose? Say, for example, your family makes you the happiest in this entire world, but your job does not and actually is causing a lot of the grief, a lot of the unhappiness in your life. What do you do? You need to have that job because it's helping you put food on your table. You need that job because it has health benefits. You need that job because every two weeks you get that paycheck.

Lucas P. Johnson: You need your family because they make you happy. They're your life. They're your blood. They're the people that love and support you. In a previous episode, we talked about do you work to live or do you live to work? You need to define that for yourself right now in this moment or maybe take some time this weekend to really think about it. No expectations. Just you, yourself, figure it out. What do you value? Do you value that 10 o'clock beer with your friends at the bar? Do you value that hour baseball game with your son or daughter? Do you value that story time with your grandfather and grandmother? But you choose things that may not be relevant, those things that may just be an experience that you're going to regret in the morning over those people, those places, those other things that truly have an impact on you. For me, it's always been faith, family, friends. And there's always the in-between right there. And you have your tribe. But when do you truly take a moment to define those, define those people, define how it all comes together? You know, talking about the value system.

Lucas P. Johnson: I value my family. I value the puppy I just got. There's so many things in our lives that we don't take time to analyze and think about whether they're actually bringing joy or happiness. And one thing I actually learned from my nieces and nephews is if you can look at something and it doesn't bring you happiness, doesn't bring you joy, do you need it? Take a look at that from your own life. Does that person bring you joy? Do they bring you happiness or do they bring you constant grief? Do they constantly make you upset or do they provoke hatred?

Lucas P. Johnson: Do you truly value them? Maybe it's time to let them go. Maybe it's time to redefine that circle. What motivates you? Is it your family or your job? Is it a sporting event? Is that bonus or that pay raise? Is it that vacation you want to take in a year? Or hell, maybe you want it take a next week. What motivates you to go from Point A to Point B? Have you taken a moment to analyze that, to do an internal audit? Is it still the same thing? Is it still that vacation? Is it still that road trip? Is it still hanging out with that specific person? Lately, I've been doing a little bit of an internal audit on myself, a self-assessment. And one of the key areas that I've been lacking motivation in is relationships/dating. Now you may be asking why or you may not even care. But the truth be told is I lack the motivation because I don't want it in my life right now.

Lucas P. Johnson: That is what I have accepted and I've figured out is I don't want it right now. Not willing, and it's not saying I'm not willing to become friends with that person or go on dates and get to know someone. And maybe in that moment, it'll be the right person, thing, place, whatever. I don't know. Maybe it'll be the right moment, you know, and I'll really care about the person and it'll spark something. But you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take. So that's out there. That's been said countless times and it's held up. If you don't take the shot, it's never going to work out. Find your motivations and see if they still hold true.

Lucas P. Johnson: Moving on. Strengths and abilities. Do you leverage what God has given you? Do you leverage the strengths, the abilities that you have? Maybe it's you're super strong. Maybe you can deadlift a thousand pounds. That's impressive. But do you leverage that strength or that ability? Use it to your advantage? Or do you sit there and put it on the back burner and use it to your advantage when it's most needed? Or do you like the gloat? Do you like to show it off? Your strengths and abilities, it's always important to define those. Take that minute, take that time to do an election of a lifetime on yourself. When you figure out what your strengths are, what abilities you have that others don't, you can leverage those to build a much better you, a much better future.

Lucas P. Johnson: I was reading a quote or actually I was just reading a, I want to say it was some random image again, that I saw on Facebook, something about JK Rowling's at 23 year old was broke. If that's holds true, if you're 23 years old broke, yeah, that's familiar. But look at her now. Harry Potter. I mean just incredible, absolutely incredible. You can be broke. You can have those moments where you're contemplating what the hell is going on in your life. That's completely okay. But take that moment to do a self-assessment. Take that moment to understand who you are. In the previous episode, we talked about is it's okay to be weird. Weird is the new normal. Go out and just do you. You know, if your strength is communication and you're just a weirdo outside of that, okay, cool. That's who we are. That's who we are. I thrive. I vibe. I'm all about that with you.

Lucas P. Johnson: Personality. I think we all have our own unique self here. For me, I love to smile and if you could see me right now, you could see there's a big smile on my face because I just enjoy being happy. Before I went into this period of my life where I'm just always happy and I found a reason to be happy in all of these moments, I wasn't always happy. I mean I was but I wasn't the same kind of happy. Sometimes it's kind of like a fake feeling. You know? Where you're contemplating where you want to be, what you want to do, who you want in your life, all of these factors. I mean it's just like, I feel like it's human nature. We question things. Something like 2,000 questions a day we ask ourselves. It may be more than that. I don't have the study in front of me, but feel free to fact check that because I probably know that's not exactly accurate. But point being said, we have all these questions we ask ourselves on a daily basis.

Lucas P. Johnson: We don't always follow up on them, but they're valid questions. You have to think about those things, those important things. Write them down on your notepad. Maybe they'll just answer the question that you've been asking for years and just never wrote down. Maybe that one question you write down on that notepad about your strengths and abilities, what are they, you'll find the answer. How about your personality? Running down what truly makes me happy? What am I doing in my life that brings out the utmost joy? Is it going and creating fine art or going to restaurants with friends and family to traveling the world? We all build our personality from those memories and from those experiences.

Lucas P. Johnson: I think it's so great when you take that moment to do an internal audit of the things and the places and the people make you think outside the box, that have helped you become who you are. It's not just your family or whoever raised you that gives you those characteristics or makes you think a certain way or have a certain perspective because we all have a unique perspective. It doesn't matter who raised you. I mean you can share a lot of those qualities. You can share a lot of those characteristics and perspectives. I mean looking at it in a political lens, I mean we learn a lot from our family. But when you take that moment to educate yourself, you start to make your own decisions. So perspective, everyone's got one. Everyone's got their own opinions and everyone's entitled to just that, their own perspective, their own opinion.

Lucas P. Johnson: There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with being you. Nothing wrong with being normal. We're all human. Don't let anyone belittle you because they're human as well. And I'm sure that they don't have a perfect slate or clean slate. I'm sure they've made a lot of mistakes just like you have and just like I have. But we've all done a lot of great things that have shaped us, have made our personality, that have made us who we are. And that is one of the greatest things to acknowledge in your life. You are who you are because you've done a lot of great things, a lot of bad things, made a lot of great choices, a lot of bad choices. But be proud of how far you've come. Be proud of all the experiences that you've had over the years and the experiences yet to come.

Lucas P. Johnson: It doesn't matter what age you are listening to this. 18, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80. You still have time. Still time to do a self-assessment, to do an internal audit and to make an election, an inner election, what matters. Not a political election. But one that truly impacts your life, the one you're in charge of. I elect to be happy. I elect to eat healthy. I elect to make serious changes and take serious action in my life. It's your elect. It's what you elect. It's what you want. It's who you see, where you want to be. There's nothing more to it. So take those moments to understand you, understand where you want to be, what you want to do and what you want to accomplish. Your emotional intelligence, it goes hand in hand with personality.

Lucas P. Johnson: It's not all about your IQ. You have to be able to understand and relate with people. Relationships are key. And the one thing I've learned in my career is that work is always going to be there. There's always going to be another thing to do. Doesn't matter if you have a job or you don't have a job. There's always going to be something or someone that needs you or need someone to fill a spot because work is always going to be there. There's always going to be more work. But the way to keep that work coming, the way to keep that work going is to build relationships, long lasting relationships because you care and show your empathy and show emotion. You can't just have these day-to-day interactions with someone and say, hey John, how are you doing?

Lucas P. Johnson: And then you just don't follow up. That's it. That's not how you converse. That's not how you build a relationship. You follow up and say, hey John, how's everything going? How's the family doing? Did you enjoy that barbecue last weekend? Oh, you're going on a family vacation? Great. You have to have a little bit of an emotional intelligence to know when to interact, to know when to pause, to know when to take a step back, to know how to build and continue to build that relationship. And your EQ can continue to evolve just as your IQ can. We continue to educate ourselves. There's information out there. It's an information age. It's continuously going to be an information age. It's out there everywhere. Hell, I mean I was doing this whole thing with a puppy, trying to figure out how do I raise a puppy.

Lucas P. Johnson: And I went on Google. I did a little bit of YouTube university and I came out. I said, well, this masterclass on how to train your puppy or how to train a dog, it looks pretty tempting. So I was like, all right, let's get into this kick. And man, it is amazing. Take the time to really find out what makes you you. Build your relationships and continue on that journey. Fears. During a self-assessment, you're going to have to analyze this component. And why is that? Because your fears influence your expectations, your dreams, your personality, your emotions, your strengths, your abilities, your values, your purpose.

Lucas P. Johnson: If you fear water but you have a dream of becoming a scuba diver, how do you accomplish that? You fear it. How do you overcome that fear? Do you tell yourself, for example, I'm not scared, I'm excited? Something I learned from Simon Sinek. Instead of training your brain, say you're going up for public speaking and you're going to have an engagement with a large gathering of people, do you tell your brain that you're scared, that you're frightened to be up in front of those people? Or do you tell your brain that you're excited? From what I understand, it's a similar reaction in your body. It's a similar response. Fear and excitement give off a very similar response. Start teaching yourself that you don't need to fear things. You're excited. You can achieve this. I'm excited. I can accomplish this. I'm excited about this podcast. I'm excited to do this. I'm excited to run this marathon.

Lucas P. Johnson: I don't fear that I'm going to fail. I'm excited that I'm going to run this marathon. It's that simple-ish, -ish. You just need to take a firm check on that and understand where you want to be and figure out how you can overcome that fear. Because you can scuba dive, you can skydive. You can do all of these adrenaline rushing events and things. It's all possible. You can get up on stage and speak in front of 20,000 people. It's just all about doing the self-assessment and taking the necessary steps forward and creating an action plan to make it a reality.

Lucas P. Johnson: Oh, here's a good one. Cravings, cravings. So when you start on a diet, for example, your body is craving all this food. Your brain is saying, hey, that looks so good. You need to eat that. You want that. That sugar is going to be so good . You're gonna be so relieved once you have that. And then when you have it, you want more and you want more and you want more. What do you crave? Do you crave that sugar? You know, this diet, do you crave losing weight? Why? Those natural questions. Why? Why do you have these cravings?

Lucas P. Johnson: I started a weight loss program. And if you've listened to any of the previous episodes, you'll get the full story on this. But since I started, I've lost roughly 90 pounds, 85, 90 pounds. I'm on my path, on my way to 170 is my goal which will be a hundred pound weight loss within a little over a year and a half. And I craved for the longest time while I was going through this transition sugar. I didn't realize the amount of sugar I was consuming and what its effect was on my brain, my body, just my whole entire biome, my being and how it affected me. But whenever I did a decompress, I did a detox, I did a little bit of personal rehab to get rid of that craving first time in my life, I was able to say the best I've ever felt. Yes, I still have sugar.

Lucas P. Johnson: I still eat apples and fruits and I still have occasional candy and peanut butter. I mean all these things have sugar in them. But I started to realize what the craving actually meant. I started to do, I did that self-assessment to realize that those moments where I'm tempted, that tempting doesn't always mean what you think it means. That moment I really want that cupcake or that moment where I really want to go out on a date with that person or I have this certain feeling about that person or, just thinking out loud here, is not exactly what the response needs to be. I realized that when I eat that cupcake, it was actually, if I didn't eat that cupcake and I replaced it with water, my body and I felt so much better that the craving went away. Do that assessment and understand where you stand and move forward with the best possible outcome in mind.

Lucas P. Johnson: With that said, I want you to analyze your expectations and your circle when you're going through the self-assessment. And there will be a lot more detail here in the show notes about how to actually conduct a self-assessment. Paddy and I, we've done this in our own lives countless times, and we especially do it whenever we go on a journey. When we went to New Zealand back in 2018, we decompressed. We did like a social media detox, the whole nine yards. And we took our cameras, we took our phones, but we didn't use those for I mean their necessary intents and purposes. We took the camera and we took our phones and we went on just a photography, videography adventure, capturing life, capturing moments, capturing memories. It's incredible. I think it's one of the best things to do whenever you're figuring out where you want to go next. Just get up and go on a journey. Take your camera, take a notebook and just go do some thinking. Hell, we got a van and we just slept in the van. It was pretty awesome. A camper van. It was like a van though. What you would think of like an RV.

Lucas P. Johnson: Go figure out what your expectations are on yourself. Redefine those moving forward. Figure out what people in your life are holding you back from greatness. Take the time to reevaluate your circle. Let those people go that aren't making a positive impact. Is it a one way conversation, one-sided? Are you the one reaching out all the time? Or are there multiple interactions where the other person's coming to you? That's when you know that person is important. That's when you know the person cares about you. I have a lot of one-sided relationships in my life where I send something or they send something and one of us doesn't respond for a while. One of us doesn't care. And the reason why some of us get to that point, it's because we've got a lot of stuff going on in our own lives and that person just doesn't always make it work for us. They don't bring happiness or joy.

Lucas P. Johnson: Going back to all of those things, you got to understand your purpose, your values, your motivations, strengths, and abilities, personality, emotional intelligence, fears, cravings expectations. Once you define all of those, you can redefine your tribe. So I think that's a great point to stop at. And I just want you to really take a moment to do a self-assessment. This is one of the greatest elections of your life. And an election is not, I know what an election means, but you need to conduct one of your inner self. You need to conduct an inner election. You need to do a self-assessment, internal audit. Just go do it. Figure out what's holding you back. Redefine and keep trucking forward.

Lucas P. Johnson: So that said, here's your homework for this week. I want you to conduct a personal self-assessment or internal audit of yourself to learn about what really makes you tick and reevaluate the things and relationships that make up your life. With that said, we just launched our Patreon membership community where you can become one of our elite supporters and gain exclusive access to early releases, live streams and Q&A. We have a few different tiers available with some pretty sweet perks. So make sure to check them out and consider supporting the show. Go to ProjectDreamMastery.com and click the red button that says become a Patreon to learn more. If you have not already, please make sure to review the show, subscribe, like and share so we can reach more amazing listeners just like you. All of our shows are available in both audio, video and written form. So make sure to check out our website to access the full experience. Again, thank you so much for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode to come. Talk to you soon.