How To Put You First

0:04This is the Ed Milet Show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. I love our episodes where it's just you and I because I get a chance to answer your questions. And one of the questions that I keep getting on a very regular basis is about priorities. And I think it's a really valid question. In other words, who do I make the number one priority in my life? What do I make the number one priority in my life? And so I'm going to say something pretty controversial to you to begin today. And then I think more we talk throughout the next 15 or 20 minutes, I think you find that this is a correction and an adjustment so many of us, including myself, need to make.

0:36Like the number one priority in your life, I'm exclusive of God and your faith, but in terms of other people or focuses of yours, the number one priority in your life needs to become you. Yeah, you. And I know initially that sounds selfish like me. And for so many of us, that's a foreign concept to make ourselves a priority. Isn't that crazy, by the way, that it's a foreign concept for so many of us to make ourselves the number one priority in our life. Most important person in your life as a human being is you because you can't begin to serve other people. You can't pour from an empty cup. And so many of you, I mean all people, but particularly the ladies, you're constantly serving other people and caring for their needs first.

1:16And you always put yourself last. And I know a lot of you men are saying, hey, brother, I do the exact same thing. I care for my family. I care for the people that I work with, my friends. And at the end of the line is always me. And what ends up happening is our cup is empty and we have nothing to give those very people that we think we need to be serving and contributing before ourselves. That's why when you're flying on an airplane, they always tell you, put your own oxygen mask on first before you put it on even your child. And I always thought when I was flying, that's crazy. I'm going to put it on myself and what, but I can't begin to help other people.

1:47If I'm not breathing myself, if I don't have energy and life force myself, if I don't have the cup full in my own life, I can't continue to pour into people. And that's why so many of us feel depleted and tired and fatigued, lost in our lives. Maybe we even feel like our focus isn't where it needs to be. Maybe we lack a happiness in our life. And it's because we're constantly focusing outside of ourselves and we have no reserves, no energy, no time to create and think and innovate and renew and be born again in our lives. And again, I'm not talking about exclusive of God. I look at the relationship that you have with whatever your faith is.

2:23You and God are one, right? You're one. part of that renewing of you, that energizing of you, that refreshing of you should be focusing on that relationship with your higher power. So I'm not talking about that. You know what I mean. Put your own mask on, fill your own cup. And in our lives, we don't do this. And what ends up happening is we belong nowhere. And I want you to remember a few things. The people in your life that you want to help most need the best version of you. They need a version of you that's growing. I often say that if I'm the same person next year at the same time that I am now, I'm of no value to you because you already had that version of me.

3:00I want to be replacing myself every year, every day. Naturally, inside our body, our lung tissue, our bones, everything is renewing itself on a regular basis. It's part of nature. But is your mind renewing? Is your spirit renewing? Is your energy renewing? Probably not because so many of you put the needs of everybody else first. Your intentions are great. but you're doing it the wrong way. They're not even getting the best of you. They're not getting the most happy, powerful, blissful, growing, the vibrational frequency you're capable of carrying, the most faithful version of you. They're not getting that.

3:34They're not getting the strong you. Oftentimes in life, we don't know what we don't know. We don't even know what we're missing. You may say, no, I'm a pretty good version, even as I give to everybody. You don't know what you're capable of by not putting yourself first. It's not selfish. It's the most unselfish thing you could do would begin to prioritize your own spirit, your own energy, your own focus, your own reading, your own growth, your own renewing. Because probably for a lot of you right now, you're somewhere where you don't feel like you belong, right? You're in a job maybe where you don't feel like you belong.

4:08Maybe you're in a relationship where you don't feel like you belong. Maybe you have a group of friends that you've outgrown them, or it's just not what it once was you don't belong like you used to. Listen to me on this. The longer you believe that you don't belong where you are, eventually you begin to believe I don't belong anywhere. The longer you stay where you know you don't belong, you stay at a job where you know you don't belong there. You stay there too long, you begin to believe you don't belong anywhere. You stay in a relationship that you know, I don't belong in this relationship. Eventually, you'll believe you don't belong in any, and then you stay for that reason.

4:49And that's what I mean by putting ourselves first. You become almost like this elephant, the elephant that's tied to that stake in the ground. You watch these massive animals, multiple-ton animals, and what holds them in the ground is this little stake with a string to it. And over time, they're trained, they train, they program themselves that this little stake holds this multi-ton animal in the ground and they don't go anywhere. They just stay in the same little space. That stake is in their mind. They could move that thing in a second with a flinch. They could move, but they've patterned themselves.

5:24They've conditioned themselves to believe that they have to stay where they are, that they're anchored in that spot. And over time, eventually they stop even trying to move. They've been trained to do that. Well, ironically, in our lives, if we're not renewing ourselves, we're training ourselves to stay. And it's not real. It's make pretend. I'll give you another animal analogy. It's almost like we become like a spider who lives in the web of our own making. And we just stay in this place. And eventually, we can't serve anybody in this web. We can't make a difference for anybody, never mind ourselves.

6:01And listen to me. Time is running out on you. I don't care if you're 18 years old listening to this or you're 85 years old. Time is running out. This life goes by like a flicker. It's a flicker. It was just yesterday I was turning 21 years old. I remember turning 30 going, man, I remember giving my dad a cup on his 30th birthday saying, my dad is 30. And then I turned 30. And then I remember my kids being born. And I remember then their first day of school. Then they graduated high school. One of my kids get ready to graduate college. Then I was 40 like that. And then I'm 50. It was just a flicker.

6:35Heck, here's how crazy I am. I don't know if any of you do this, but I watch college football as a guy. I watch these guys play college football, and I know they're younger than me. But in my mind, this sounds delusional. They're only like three, four, five years younger than me. I know that sounds crazy when I say it. I'm 30 years older than everybody on that field. But in my mind, it's a four or five year separation. Is that crazy? It's nuts, but it's one of those stakes in the ground. And I have to tell you, I usually teach things that I've had to work on myself for years. I just depleted myself caring for everybody else.

7:10And I realized I looked around at one point and I was getting older and I don't feel like I was getting better, not to the extent that I could have. I had planted these proverbial stakes in the ground, not everywhere in my life. You know, when I say things, I think sometimes it's easy to discount. Well, that's not me. Is there an area you do it in your physical life, in your spiritual life, in your financial life? We can have these stakes. We can have these webs in different areas of our lives because we spend all our time. And you know what? Maybe we focus on everybody else in our lives because we can hide in doing that.

7:44We don't have to really take a look at ourselves. We don't have to really audit ourselves. We kind of hide in the lives of all the people we care for. But at some point, we're going to wake up and it's going to be us. They may still be in our lives, but my children are going on and having their own lives now. And even the people that you're in your intimate relationships with, their lives will change and evolve as well. And for you to love them the most and have the most rich memories, it has to be a new you, a renewed you. You know, it leads me to another point. Who are you? I know it sounds overly philosophical and we're not going there today.

8:20But if you begin to think about it, like, who do you really think you are? Really, in my opinion, what we are is we're a collection of stories and memories and emotions that are all reinforced with neurology. That's really what we are. You say I or me. When you think about it, it's a collection of stories of your life and memories of your life, emotions of your life. And it's kind of wired with the neurology in our brains. You know, it's interesting. An emotion in your life, a feeling in your life really needs a story to exist. It really does. I mean, and the stronger the emotion you attach, the easier you remember the story.

8:55You've had lots of things happen in your life you don't remember anymore. One of the reasons you don't remember it is it wasn't that emotional for you. The feeling wasn't that deep. But when we begin to have stories where there's a major emotion attached to it or a major feeling, then the story sticks. And then we begin to accumulate these stories. Lo and behold, we believe that's who we are. You are not your memories. You are not your stories. You are not your past. You're not even the collection or the accumulation of your achievements. Who you are is a soul, is a spirit that needs to be renewed, that needs to be re-energized, that needs to be in some sense born again, energized again, focused again.

9:34And we only do that by giving ourselves the level of self-care that's required, some quiet time, right? Some time in reflection, some time in self-awareness, some auditing of the things in our life that bring us bliss and joy, the things we want to achieve and focus and grow in our lives. So when we begin to evaluate, I've always said, and by the way, sometimes when you've had a past that's actually successful, you can hang on to those stories. We've all met that guy who says, yeah, I was a high school quarterback and they're 40 years old. They're talking about high school, right? And I always kind of laugh when you hear that person talk, but are you doing that in any area of your life?

10:11Maybe something two or three years ago, five years ago? Are you a story about somebody who hurt you? Are you a story about one of your failures or a breakup or a mistake? Do you use those stories as sort of a weapon against yourself? Do you ever use those stories as excuses to not grow and achieve now? Have you taken, see, it's not the events of our life that define us. It's the meaning we attach to those events. And the stronger the emotion, the more that meaning stays deeply within us. and we become a collection of what we believe life means or what we believe we mean. And the longer you begin to believe you don't belong here and you stay there, you begin to believe that you mean you belong nowhere.

10:57And you begin to tread water in your life. You have that stake in the ground. Listen to me. Settling sucks. Settling sucks. Stop settling. You do not get in your life what you hope for or what you dream for or what you'd like to have. You get in your life what you believe you're worth and what you're willing to fight for, what you're willing to change for. If you really love these people that you keep putting priority in your life, will you please fight for them and make yourself a priority? Will you please fight for them and lift that stake out of the ground? Get out of that web. Stop being this collection of these BS stories you tell yourself.

11:36You know exactly what I'm talking about. And by the way, the story gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And the more you repeat it, the more that neurology connects, the more it's deeply embedded in you. You've got to tell yourself a new story. And you don't have to change the story of the past. You've got to create a new compelling story for the future. What's your new story? What's the new story? What's the new you? What's the new version of you? Even if the old one's one you like. For most of us, it's not. But even if it was one you like, you want to stay in that story forever? What's the point of having another day?

12:05God did not give you another day because you need it. God gave you another day because somebody needs you. And it's a new version of you that they need. So I came here today to remind you that it's time for you to change, lift the stake out of the ground. You belong in your dreams. Let me say that to you again. You belong in your dreams. You belong in the new story, not the old story, whether it's a bad one or a good one. You don't belong there. It's a figment of your imagination, even if it really happened. You've repeated it and repeated it and repeated it and made the emotion bigger. And guess who suffers?

12:41The very people that you think you should be serving first, because they don't get to see this beautiful, productive new version of you. They stay with some version. By the way, you may be growing a little bit. You may be expanding a little bit. Things may be going pretty well, but could they go better? Could you be happier? Could you be a different version of you? Could it be bigger? And if I could give you one last piece of advice, make it bigger. Make it bigger. Make your life bigger. Dream big. Think big thoughts. You can always back it down and settle for the little ones. Dreaming is free.

13:18We don't charge you for it. Yet so many people don't even dream anymore. When you were a little boy or a little girl, you had all kinds of dreams. You're going to be an astronaut or an NFL quarterback or the president of the United States or a powerful businesswoman. And as life begins to happen, we begin to believe these stories that other people tell us about ourselves and the meanings we take from them and the emotions that become embedded in them. And they stick. And those are the stakes. And then we go, well, I'm just serving everybody else. I'll get around to me. And you never get around to you, do you?

13:51You never get around to you. So who should be the number one priority in your life? Between you and God? You. And only from there can you pour from a full cup. That's what I recommend you do today. Make these changes, and I think you'll be very grateful that you did it. And more importantly, these people that you love or that you want to lead, that you want to make a difference for, you'll be the biggest beneficiaries. God bless you. Max out your life. This is The Ed Milad Show.