PDM 015: Live to Work or Work to Live?

Lucas P. Johnson: So many times we get caught wondering of what we are doing is really making us happy. Is it fulfilling us or is it just a way to get by? We never really stop to think or comprehend if what we are doing to make an income is also what makes us us, or what makes up our entire life. Are you living to work or working to live? But 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 15th 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. And as you may be able to tell right now I am remote, not actually in Charlotte. I'm based out of Pittsburgh for this episode. 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.

Lucas P. Johnson: This week, I wanted to jump on and do an episode that hit close to home for not only myself, but for so many right now that are working through COVID. And Paddy wanted to join, but unfortunately he is in a different time zone, so we were unable to get that squared away for this week.

Lucas P. Johnson: Over the last seven months, I've been exposed to different opinions, new ways of thinking, and different perspectives, one of which was this concept of living to work or working to live. So many times we get caught trying to define the line between what is work and what is life. What is work, and what is life? See, define a line. This work-life balance is surely a topic of interest during COVID-19. So today, let's explore a few areas of how this affects your life and my life on the daily. Let's jump right in.

Lucas P. Johnson: A few areas that I thought of right off the bat were relationships, health, work ... see, isn't that weird because it's that work-life balance? Personal development, your dreams, expectations, love life, three of which we primarily focus on in this show. Relationships take a major hit when it comes to the work-life balance. And I like to practice what I preach, because what good is it to share insight that is just made up, it's not actually practiced in my own life?

Lucas P. Johnson: So I have a hard time as of late with the whole COVID situation going on, and working from home and also working remote. I mean, it's not something much different for me because I'm used to working remote. I'm used to building this business remote and Paddy being on the other side of the world ... not exactly. We were at one point, but he's only a six hour flight away over there in Ireland. But having that remote life and trying to balance the relationships, my own health, work, personal development, dreams, expectations, love life, is super complicated.

Lucas P. Johnson: How so? Well, before, for my full-time job, I travel. I would travel four or five days a week. I would be on an airplane Monday morning and I'd fly home on Thursday afternoon or Friday afternoon or Friday morning. So I was constantly used to changing up my environment. And before that, four years of college education and other education outside of that was critical to always be ready for evolving situation, constantly be ready for something to come up, something to change, something to be conquered or even accepted. The four ways of mitigating risk is avoid, transfer, mitigate, accept it. I'm just ballparking that off the top of my head right now, but there's different ways to cope. There's different ways to work through your problems.

Lucas P. Johnson: And relationships are not much different. I feel like they are the ones that take the hit when it comes to this current situation, and I'm sure there's statistics to back that. I'm confident that there's statistics to back that. People being home for seven months and not working in an office, or being unfortunately laid off, or even being ill from this current circumstances, my heart goes out to you, my prayers are with you. But this situation is not easy for anyone.

Lucas P. Johnson: Some people are experiencing burnout and ending up in the hospital for that. And there's ... someone I look up to in the YouTube industry or YouTube platform as the new word it's supposed to be called is a platform, because you never know when it might disappear or go away, similar to TikTok or similar to MySpace and so forth ... is Sunny Lenarduzzi. Lenarduzzi, yeah. She's super helpful when it comes to not only mastering your business and mastering things in your life, but looking at your current situations and relating back to her, because she's been through it. She's been down to nothing. She started at a point where she was unhappy. She was not happy. She was at her lowest point and she worked her way up.

Lucas P. Johnson: And Sunny, if you're listening, I'm a huge fan of your story, a supporter. I really think that what you have to is critical for a lot of folks in the world here. And I'm sure Paddy would agree. And Paddy and I have a lot of the same beliefs and that's one of the reasons why the show flows so nicely to start off with. I mean, we're still learning obviously, but going back to the relationship piece is you will experience burnout if you're not living the life that you love, living the life that you want to live. It's kind of similar to putting all your eggs in one basket. If you put all your eggs in one basket, what happens if you fail? If one of those eggs cracks, okay, fine. What if all those eggs, after a period of time, start to get little cracks in them? Little cracks, more cracks. A year goes by, more cracks.

Lucas P. Johnson: That's similar to you. If you put your entire life into work, you're experiencing these little cracks in your life, these gaps, these things that are missing. I really believe in LinkedIn as a platform to utilize for learning. And in the next episode with Cory Johnson joining us, my brother, but also a role model that I've learned a lot from, and we're constantly learning from each other, we talk about how you have to learn and keep learning to develop, even if you have the ability. It's critical to utilize these platforms such as LinkedIn to learn about what some of these super ultra wealthy individuals and people that are very successful, in however you define that, are doing.

Lucas P. Johnson: For me, looking at that from that lens is how can I learn from them? And one thing that I've taken away is you have, for example, a billionaire, and he's sitting in a box watching a Penguins game or watching a hockey game. I say Penguins cause I'm from Pittsburgh, so rock on there. But ultimately he sitting in a sporting arena, and he's in a private box and someone goes, "Why are you still using this old laptop? Why don't you get a new one? Or why do you still have an iPhone six whenever iPhone 11 or iPhone 12's out there?" This is just an example, it's not to scale. It's not completely accurate, but this is just an instance. "Why don't you have the latest, the greatest, the newest? You have the ability, you have the means to do so. Why don't you do that?"

Lucas P. Johnson: And his response was, "Who do I have to impress? Why am I going to impress someone that has less than me? I like what I have. I don't need to impress everyone. I'm doing well. It gets me from point A to point B. It gets the job done. If I'm being judged by those that have less than me, they need to pick up their game. I got nothing to prove."

Lucas P. Johnson: And that hit home for me because I like to apply that to my own relationships, my own work-life balances. If I'm not happy and someone had an expectation for me to do this particular job or this particular task or this particular sport because it's going to make them happy, there's balance. Applying that concept is why do I have to make someone else happy if I'm not happy? If it makes me happy and may make someone else unhappy, where does it matter? Do we need to reprioritize the things in our life? Do we need to reprioritize what makes us happy? No. If that iPhone six makes me happy, but someone else has an iPhone 11 and they're judging me based off of that, fine. Don't have to satisfy anyone. Don't have to please anyone.

Lucas P. Johnson: As long as you're happy ... you have to learn how to love yourself. You have to learn how to love yourself before you can even learn to love someone else. It's a critical component to our daily life because we forget that. We forget that if we don't love ourself, how do we go day to day and ultimately find happiness? Are we getting happiness from someone else? Because that happens to come from us. I mean, kids, yes. I guess so much happiness from my niece and nephews. I don't have any children, not yet, maybe in the future. But ultimately I get so much happiness seeing their success, seeing my brother's success, seeing my family's success. That makes me happy. And they get happiness of seeing me happy and seeing me doing things I love, like Project Dream Mastery and Coachington and all these other things I do, even my work.

Lucas P. Johnson: So going back to the topic of today, are you living to work or working to live? Are you bringing your unhappiness and disapproval into your relationship, your family, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your friends? People only have so much to give. And I actually learned that recently from a coworker. I've heard it so many times before, but it wasn't until it came from this particular coworker that I actually kind of took it to heart. And I've heard it many times over the years from other coworkers and other people, other peers that have affected me or have made an impact on my life. But people only have so much to give. And if you're listening, you only have so much to give too.

Lucas P. Johnson: Sunny Lenarduzzi, like I was saying, she experienced burnout and ended up in the hospital. She only had so much to give. You only have so many hours. Time is the one thing we all have in common. Every single day, we only have so many minutes, so many seconds. We'll never get the time back. We're all going to die. If you accept that now and you live your life on those terms, oh man. It's going to be a really great life. Travis Bell said, "People are dying at 40, being buried at 80." Did that hit home yet? That's a few episodes ago. Did that hit home yet? People are dying at 40 and being buried at 80. Living to work or working to live?

Lucas P. Johnson: I work to live, but I also live to work. Why? Because when I get to do this right here and I get to talk to you, my happiness is ... I was having a conversation with my dad. I always have conversations with my mom as well, but I came back during this COVID to spend some quality time with them and spend some time with someone else versus just being stuck in an apartment. And this is where the relationships come back to the work to live and live to work. But I was having a conversation with him, and it was about how happy I am doing what I am, how it brings joy to my life and it also adds an element of almost experiments, theories, learning, active learning, new relationships.

Lucas P. Johnson: It adds a component to my life that I was missing. It adds almost that factor of fear of the unknown, but joy of what's to come. He looked me in the eyes and said, "You look super happy and you are happy doing something other than just work." Recently, I've had this connection with work, this relationship with work that's not necessarily super healthy. And I think we can all kind of relate that our relationship with work is not always super healthy, just like our relationships with peers, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, not always healthy.

Lucas P. Johnson: When you have an unhealthy relationship with work, you bring that home, and you vent to those people, those others that make up your relationships, your tribe. And those people only have so much to give. They can give advice. They can give love. They can give courage. They give happiness and joy. But eventually curing all those problems that are coming from work, or the things that are making you unhappy at home, they really play a toll on that relationship.

Lucas P. Johnson: If you live to work, but you have happiness doing that and you're able to manage all those other areas of your life, good on you. Some people get so much joy out of the work that they do, like this. So much joy talking to you. So much joy having conversations. And when folks reach out to Paddy and I, we'll sit there and talk on a Sunday for four or five hours, or sometimes more or less about just what people were saying. And I talk about this in the next episode with Cory about how people will always have something to say, but you have to understand and relate with a new perspective in play. You have to make that relationship work for you or push that away.

Lucas P. Johnson: So there's a lot of things at play when it comes to your work-life balance. Especially with COVID going on right now, you probably have some stress going on and your health is your utmost important. And if you're living to work, probably a lot of stress in your life. There's no time to decompress. When you're working to live, you have the time. You know what's important. You figured out your values. And I'm not saying that if you live to work too, you haven't. Some folks really love the work. Sometimes I get lost in what I'm thinking about, and I do apologize, but there's just so many things that go into this component, this theory, this concept, this way of thinking about and processing this idea.

Lucas P. Johnson: If you're not happy with your current circumstances or current situation at work, have you identified why? Have you identified what's going on, and have you figured out what will make you happy? Are you stuck in a rut, are you unhappy? Are you depressed? Because this isn't the end. This is just the beginning. If Paddy were here right now, he'd say this. "Take charge of your life. Defy expectations. Dream big and love deeply." Paddy and I took the time to really think about what Project Dream Mastery was going to be and where we saw our future, where we saw others' futures. He would say, "Go chase your dreams, chase your happiness. Chase what makes you, you." Is it photography? Is it videography? Is it traveling? Is it being a digital nomad in God knows where? Is it being a pastor and pursuing a life of giving, working as a volunteer? How do you see your future? How do you see things changing for you to be and live a better life?

Lucas P. Johnson: Making your dreams a reality doesn't have to be the most difficult thing in the world. It doesn't, because if you set these micro goals and you challenge yourself to achieve them, I'm sure your future state will be so much better. Are you living to work or working to live? Think about that in detail. Think about then depth and take the time to write it down. Write down your thoughts in a journal. The expectations of today do not have to be the expectations of tomorrow. Define your future, define your life. Make 2020 the year ... the next three months, the year that you never had, or you had and you just didn't live to your fullest. 2020 is almost over if you look at it that way. Three months, that's one fourth of a year, a quarter. But if you look at it, it's just the beginning. Let the next 90 days be the beginning of so much more of you working to live, but living to work because you love what you're doing.

Lucas P. Johnson: Change your perspective and way of thinking to make yourself ultimately happy. Surround yourself with a tribe of people that are ultimately going to be there for you. Find the people in your life that ultimately will help drive you to your next goal and give you the motivation ... or even yourself, give yourself the motivation to pursue that next big thing, but ultimately make that next big thing be the one that's going to take you home to your happiness, that'd be starting a family, or whether that be finding a husband or wife or else what ... I mean, it's 2020. Do whatever is going to make you happy, starting that business, okay?

Lucas P. Johnson: I think it's probably a great point for the wrap-up, and it's a deep one for this week. And I try to bring them together as best as I can, but sometimes these concepts and these ideas are very thought-based, and you just have to take the time to think about it and analyze where you see your future.

Lucas P. Johnson: So your homework for this week is to go follow Project Dream Mastery on all of our socials. On Thanksgiving Day 2020, we will be giving away some pretty sweet merch to a few of our followers. Take the steps to journal out your life. Make tomorrow better than today. Don't live to work, work to live. Love your life. Enjoy. And with that, go make sure to check us out on our Patreon membership community, where you can become one of our lead supporters and gain exclusive access to early releases, livestreams, 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 Patron" to learn more.

Lucas P. Johnson: As we reach our monthly goal, we will have some pretty sweet giveaways. If you have not already, please make sure to review the show, subscribe, like, and share so we can reach more amazing listeners 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 with Cory Johnson. It's going to be epic. Talk to you real soon.