The "I'm Ready Now!" Podcast
Ideas to help you when you're ready for change.
The "I'm Ready Now!" Podcast
EP 30: Are You Dragging Unnecessary Weight Through Life?
Have you ever felt stuck despite your best efforts to move forward? There might be unseen "barnacles" creating resistance in your life journey.
In this thought-provoking episode, I explore the powerful nautical metaphor of "stripping the boat" - a practice where mariners clean accumulated barnacles, algae and debris from their boat hulls to reduce drag and improve performance. This same principle applies brilliantly to our personal growth journeys.
The challenge we face is that our limiting beliefs and outdated assumptions often go undetected precisely because we've carried them so long they feel normal. I share my personal struggle with an erroneous religious mindset that diminished my sense of agency for years, creating a false tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. This reflection opens a fascinating exploration of how our perceptions can either empower or constrain us.
For those feeling they've missed opportunities due to these hidden drags on their potential, I offer a simple but powerful five-step approach: read, learn, apply, execute, learn again, and repeat. This iterative growth process recognizes that implementing even one or two principles from what we learn can create significant momentum.
Ready to strip away what's weighing you down and sail forward with renewed purpose? This episode will help you identify those barnacles and restore your momentum. Remember, as Will Rogers wisely noted, "Don't let yesterday take up too much of today."
Welcome to the I'm Ready Now podcast ideas to help you when you're ready for change. I'm your host, isaac Sanchez, here. I share my musings on whatever it is I am reading at the moment, as well as any other ideas that I believe will help you break free from a standstill in your thinking in order to get you dreaming again. Thank you for joining me today. Well, I'm ready now. How about you? Excellent, so let's get started. Welcome back everyone. It's really great to be with you. I hope this past week and the weekend was good for you. Mine has been relaxed. My wife and I, lydia, got some errands completed today and got a little bit more to do tomorrow. I got a five-mile walk-in today, a little bit over a five-mile walk. I'm going to share a little bit more of that on the what's Up In your World section, but it's been good. So just glad to be in the weekend with some extra time to get some stuff done, including recording this podcast, and I'm just excited to be sharing again. So thanks for listening. I really do appreciate that and I'm glad we're here again. Let's get to this housekeeping. We have those chapter markers in the podcast. Go ahead and look at those if you want, want to skip around to different places, or if you're relistening to something, you want to jump right to a particular place. Please check those out. I'm happy to make sure that those are always there. Also, if you want to reach out to me, there is that tap to text button and you can leave me some feedback. Listen, either on stuff that we're talking about, what we're currently addressing, or if there's something you want to hear about later on that you'd like me to consider, or if you want to leave some feedback for the podcast. I would love that. So, besides that tap to text, you also can just email me at IsaacSanchez at Maccom, and I'll look out for that as well. Well, what's up in your world For me? Walking in time, literally. Listen, I love my walks. I've loved them for a while now.
Speaker 1:Just a bit of history. It must have been about maybe 10 years ago that I stopped believing the lie that I was too tired to get any kind of movement in some kind of workout, something in my world after a hard day, and so I just I'd get home and my previous behavior was just, you know, sit myself in front of the TV, do some bad eating and just kind of do nothing and there was just no movement going on. That was meaningful at all, and after just sitting around doing that, I'd get back in bed, go to sleep, rinse and repeat, wake up the next morning and go back to work, and just to come back and believe that I was too tired to do anything after that as well. But at one point I made the decision to start walking. I wish I could remember exactly what it was. For whatever reason, in my mind there's a correlation between the idea of the 10,000 steps and I thought you know what. I should just start making that a goal and try to hit that. So I know that's a part of it. Anyways, I started walking and I love my walks. I just did. I've loved them ever since, and anywhere where I'm at on a move, I will try to find hey, where can I go to walk? I love parks because I'm outside of the problem of traffic or whatnot, but that's just. It's become who I am and I just love my walks. Like I said, I was on a five mile walk today and just enjoyed every bit of it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so here's the thing about walking in time, though when I walk I use a metronome a lot of the times. Now a metronome is that little device that keeps time. There are apps for it now, but I just, you know, as a musician growing up I had great teachers that said, you've got to learn to be comfortable with this metronome here. So I do that, I walk with a metronome. So let me just give you some background on this, how this happened. This only happened maybe about two or three years ago.
Speaker 1:So my son, who I'm so proud of, he is with the Army National Guard and I remember a couple years ago when I was at Chino, he asked me Dad, would you mind walking with me and just kind of trying to keep me in time as I'm going? So I want to have consistent time. And he had to prepare for a march of I can't remember how many miles, but a certain amount of miles, and he wanted to prep himself for that and he'd have his ruck on and it had like either 55 or 65 pounds in it. I remember I laughed one time. I never questioned it what was in there and one time when he was unpacking it, man books I'd been looking for were in there. There was a dumbbell in there and a couple of other things. You know he threw anything in there that would get him his 65 pounds, and so, anyways, he'd walk and we'd talk and I'd love it.
Speaker 1:The problem is, as we'd be talking, I'd just start to slow down and he'd get upset. It's like, dad, you can't slow down, like your whole purpose is to keep me steady. And then I had this epiphany on my phone. I thought you know what? I'm going to set up a metronome for this. And so I set up my metronome to be clicking at a certain amount of beats per minute, and he loved the idea. We both love the idea because now we can talk, and whether it's at the very beginning of our walk or after, you know, I remember we had to have been walking for about maybe three to four or five miles on these evening ruck marks. He was ruck marching. I was just, you know, there with my phone in my hand, but we loved the idea, and so there had to have been about four to five miles that we'd be walking, and so the key in particular was don't lose time when you're talking, but also on the way back after, on that fifth mile, wrapping it up. Fourth, fifth mile, are we walking at the same pace and so it worked perfectly. And it's something that we did for those remaining walks that we did together before he went off. And he said, I remember, after he came back from that training I just can't remember how long he was gone, maybe a couple of weeks he just said, dad, that worked perfectly. He felt totally comfortable with those ruck marches that they were doing out there, so it was wonderful.
Speaker 1:So when I'm out there walking on my own of course I'm not one that listens to hype music If I'm working out or doing something, I'll listen to a podcast, an audio book, or I will just listen to what's in my head and kind of think through things or, you know, quote some affirmations or just talk to myself, work down the day. But I don't do this hype music. It just doesn't work for me. And so that works because I can have the metronome on. Now, if there was music that I was playing, of course you can find a playlist that has kind of beats per minute, a tempo that would work for you. So that's just what I do. I'll listen to a book or a podcast or nothing. And if I am listening to a book or a podcast, just lightly in the background I have the metronome going on and so it's just back there enough for me to hear it, but not enough to bother me with what I'm listening to. Now, that may not work for a lot of you. In case you think, hey, that might work. I hope it would work for you. But I'm used to metronome because as a musician I've just grown up with it. But I know some may say there's no way I can have that thing clicking in my head when I'm walking. Isaac, I get it, I understand, I can see how that could be a thing, but it works for me and after that time with my son I've used it.
Speaker 1:So again, I was out today on a five plus a little more than five and a half mile walk at the park down the hill here and I set it up at the park down the hill here and I set it up Mine was at 126 beats per minute, but I know I've gone up to, I think, 134. And so you know, whenever you know I have it on my phone right here when I'm out there walking, I've gone up to about 134 beats per minute and that's what I'm just kind of just moving, moving, moving, moving. And it's just interesting because when you go up and you know up an incline or down an incline, you got to just kind of readjust for what your body's doing, trying to get up the hill or kind of just moving a little bit faster going down the grade there. So but I actually I'm looking at it now I got up to 128. I was at 126, 124 I started, and then just I just moved it up, not because it was like a big move to move it up to where I ended up 128, but I ended up, started at 124, went to 126 beats per minute and then ended up at 128 on on the you know fourth and fifth mile back. So here's, here's what that sounds like and this may annoy the heck out of you, but this is it Okay. So when I'm walking, every one of those hits left foot, then the right foot, left right, left right, and just swinging my arms and moving right along and keeping a consistent pace, and so I love it, it works for me.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to make sure I get a certain amount of calories. It works out about a hundred calories per mile. Is that what it is? A hundred calories? Yes, about a hundred calories per mile. So if I did five miles, about 500 calories, you know give and take depends on the inc calories per mile. So if I did five miles about 500 calories, you know give and take Depends on the inclines or whatnot.
Speaker 1:So anyways, there's your tip of the day on your walks, try metronome, see if that works for you. Of course, some of you probably if you're into this a lot know that, just like I said earlier, find a playlist somewhere, and someone's probably made a playlist with all the songs being pretty much the same beats per minute, and so you just can be very consistent with that. Or get a metronome. It works when you're listening to something or just to what's in your head, but you want to be consistent, all right. So that's what was up in my world today, and it's fun, it's good and I felt great, as always, after my walks. So do something to keep moving folks.
Speaker 1:If the metronome helps knock yourself out, well, let's walk right over here to our learning for today. If you recall, last week's setup was a bit of a tease where I said well, it's time to strip. I got my readers on and fix that pretty quickly. It's time to strip the boat. Fix that pretty quickly. It's time to strip the boat. So no need for that rating Now. I'm not a boater, a mariner or a captain of any ship at all, so I had to learn a little bit about what that means to strip the boat. I'll share that with you next as we learn together how stripping the boat gets us to sail through life with a bit more control and ease and direction. So let's see what Dan Miller has for us today, all right, well, let's get into stripping the boat Now, before we do, just as a quick reminder, free call, I am working on just quickly giving us the setting that Dan does, what we should be learning, his advice or the information he wants to share with us. And then I'm spending more time on the other end of it, where we start to apply and wrap up and apply what it is that we've learned. End of it where we start to apply and wrap up and apply what it is that we've learned. Okay, so let's find out quickly what Dan has for us, and then we'll talk more about how to apply that in the wrap up section.
Speaker 1:So stripping the boat so this is a yearly task that mariners, fishermen, do. When they strip the hull, you know, debris accumulates down there and it can create resistance. So they often have to, you know, maintain their boats to keep them seaworthy, and so stripping the hull is one of the things that they do just cleaning the hull so they can remove barnacles, algae, old paint. Maybe it's a repair that needs to happen, some leaks. So here's just a brief explanation. I looked this up, so there's no way that I'm an expert, so I'm going to look to what others have said about it. And so if they need to do this, they get the boat out of the water. You can take it out of the water and either put it on a trailer or dry dock it, and then you just start scraping with the putty knife or anything that the fishermen might have to remove the barnacles, the seaweed, or it could just be flaking paint from the hull and then afterwards a good pressure washer can blast off the remaining debris. Next step is if you want that really smooth finish I guess it says here you prepare for repainting or you can prepare for repainting you can just sand the hull and you know. However, you know how to do that by hand or with a sander and then just clean it up, wipe it down with a solvent or water to remove the dust and the residue and you're ready to go back in. So that's what that is to strip the boat and repairing or clean up the hull because of everything that it's dragging along with it over time.
Speaker 1:Well, after that kind of visual, dan kind of starts to apply it to ourselves, like saying that we can face the same challenge. And this is hard to detect at times where we have these things that are dragging along with us, slowing us down. These can be inaccurate beliefs, unhealthy assumptions. Now again, these are hard to detect because you've just lived with them for so long. It's normal we can succumb to criticisms or feeling just defeated when we're not kind of reaching either goals or the levels of you know in life that we feel that we should be reaching in our performance in different areas of life. Dan, to quote him here, he says we may even become numb to our original values, dreams and passions. We're just so off course. And so he concludes there for us.
Speaker 1:Let me quote him again here. He says Maybe it's time for you to strip the boat, put yourself on dry dock and commit to removing all the debris that has accumulated on the whole of your life, take a fresh look at where you are and where you are going. That's the key thing. I mean, you have to be looking for this stuff and go on a search and be specific. Hey, I want to look at these areas of my life. What is slowing me down? Why am I not performing the way I can be performing and the way I know I can perform? And so he encourages us to just use these times to reflect. We don't always have these moments to reflect and really hone in on something. So use it. Rest works, meditation works, and just once you kind of focus on that and kind of clear some stuff up, it's on the other side where we find that renewed strength to carry on.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, let's move on to the wrap up and the application, and I want to use a little bit of my own story and some other information here to help out. As usual, grab your note-taking items, journal writing, advice, whatever it is, and let's go ahead and get busy on here. So here are the two questions that Dan gives us this time around. One is there an opportunity you think you may have missed due, to quote the barnacles on your hole? What have you missed because of that drag that's on the hole of your life. The second question how could you capture that opportunity? So what is it that you can still do with the time that you have? We're not going to throw everything away because we've missed a few things here. How can you still capture that opportunity? Is what he's asking. Let me deal with question one for myself here. That might give you a little bit of insight for yourself. Where again he asks is there an opportunity you think you may have missed due to barnacles on your hall?
Speaker 1:Minds are resounding yes. Now I want to say something here. This could be erroneous. Well, the yes is because of erroneous religious mindset. An erroneous religious mindset is what I've written for myself here. Now, what I mean by this is I grew up in a religious home, a Christian home, and I want to write out in the opposite just say these are my perceptions of why I'm saying yes. So the erroneous religious mindset I'm talking about is this kind of false humility or the thought that God is in control and if God wills it, et cetera. In other words, it's not in my control, it's just God's out there moving the levers and I just got to sit here and take the bumps keep my seatbelt on. So those are perceptions I'm putting before you that had me answer yes, I think I've missed out on some things because of that type of thinking that I grew up with these perceptions.
Speaker 1:So they kept me from different assumptions about how I would steer my own ship and they negated the idea of agency, how much agency I have, how much agency I have. So it was very spiritual to grow up. You know, trust God, believe in God, he's in control and if he wills it'll happen. If not, oh well, just kind of hang out and see what happens. And so a lot of negated agency there, like what can I do, or is that too presumptuous? There? Like what can I do, or is that too presumptuous for me to think that I can have any handle on this? And so it just that amplified a smaller mindset for me.
Speaker 1:Now, what's ironic? That's why I'm talking to you about the perceptions. I want to be very clear because I'm a Christian. Now I'm a strong believer in God. A lot of my beliefs have changed in terms of how I approach God, who he is and what he expects of me. But so here's the irony about this that there is a strong bent toward agency in Christian teaching, in Scripture, of course, and you know this tension between the divine sovereignty and human agency. You know it's a complex one. At one point does it seem like the creation is acting? You know a bit much for the creator.
Speaker 1:There is a story in Scripture and I'm just right now it came to my mind, but as I was looking at my notes here and I'm going to kind of just go on this, real quick apologize if I get some of this wrong, but the concept is there to where God calls a prophet man Isaiah, jeremiah, I don't remember and tells him listen, I want you to see something. And he moves him towards a gentleman that is working with clay pottery and he sees the prophet sees this, the man's working on it and having to just change it up a little bit and destroy something and put it back together again and to shape it into what he wants it to be, into what he wants it to be. And sometimes he has to break a piece and discard that and try again and use something, try to shape it better. Maybe the contents of the clay is too wet, too dry, all of that stuff. Again, my daughter took a ceramics class in OSHA, so I'm using some of what she's told me too.
Speaker 1:But as the prophet's looking at this, one of the points that God makes to him in the story is wouldn't it be crazy for that clay to tell the creator what? Do you call him? A clay maker in this case? You know, I'll probably laugh at myself for reals a little bit later on, afterwards when I realize I can't remember what you'd call that artisan in specific, but the clay maker I'm going to call him right now that the clay would look up and chastise him. Hey, you're not doing this right. I'm supposed to be a cup, I'm supposed to be this, that or the other, a bowl, a planter, and so that's crazy. That's crazy that that would happen. And so you know again, there's that notion. You could take this a couple different ways, but there is that part that was emphasized that said how dare you, as the creation, be talking to the creator and telling him what should or should not be? So it's a very powerful part of the ledger, that one side that says, yeah, you just kind of keep praying and just kind of get up and do your thing, but and just hope for hope for the best, and that's it okay, get through life and hope for the best. That's that side of it okay, that divine sovereignty part. But there are absolutely clear pieces in Scripture passages that make it clear the agency part.
Speaker 1:Let me give you about three of them. One is called the parable of the talents. It's known as that. This one is found in Matthew 25, 14 to 30. I'm not going to read it, that's a reference. You can go read it and I encourage you to read it. And the synopsis here is you have a master who is going to go off on a journey, so he entrusts his servants with varying amounts of talents. These are units of money back then, and the servants, the couple who actively invest and increase it, they're rewarded when he comes back, when he comes back, and the one who goes and just buries it out of fear is absolutely condemned, just torched by the master. And so it's clear.
Speaker 1:The highlight here is the importance of responsible stewardship, using, you know, active use of what you've been given gifts, money fill in the blank for what the talents are the gifts you've been given, the health you've been given, whatever and whatever opportunities that God provides, given those things that you have before you. The talents we'll call them, and it's a strong suggestion that we are expected to take initiative and be diligent with our work. Don't be passive and wait for God to intervene. No, get busy and actually do the work that you know to do with the resources that you have, with the resources that you have. So God gives the gifts, no doubt, but the expectation is that we would use them and grow them.
Speaker 1:Second, one kind of known, as you know, faith without works is dead. This one you'd find in James 2, 14 through 26. So the emphasis here is that true faith is not just an intellectual you know, assent, a belief, but it's got to be accompanied by actions that demonstrate what's behind that faith. There has to be some action, that kind of we're able to see and then realize ah okay, so there is a faith. Look at the way that person's living their life out in action because of what they believe is the idea here. So James throws back to some history by using examples of Abraham. Bible says that his faith was made complete because of his actions. The Bible says that his faith was made complete because of his actions. It's a very powerful story of him offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Another very powerful story is where he uses the example of Rahab, a harlot prostitute who was justified because of some deeds that she did to rescue, to help hide, some of the men of God so they can get out of a town safely. And so, again, this type of teaching directly challenges this idea of a passive faith.
Speaker 1:Genuine belief requires some action, some participation in living out what your convictions are, based on your faith. There's agency that's required to perform those works. And then the last one I want to share with you again, james, is be doers of the Word and not hearers only. Very powerful. And so here in this verse and surrounding passages, there's this call for an active application of what the teachings in the Bible share with us about our daily life. Now, in contrast to those who's just you're going to just sit around and listen, contrast them to those who actually then take what they've learned and heard and go out and put it into practice. And heard and go out and put it into practice. Again, all this is just a clear call to agency requiring that a believer make a conscious effort, a choice, and be deliberate with what you believe by working it out in the marketplace, in the lives of others. That's what it would mean to follow God. In this case, it's not enough just to hear His word, you need to kind of be active about it. So, all right, so that's that other side of the ledger. It says whoa, whoa, whoa, nellie. Here, yeah, there is this expectation that I go out and do something.
Speaker 1:And so too much of my own adult life was about clawing my way out of these perceptions, this small thinking, and moving myself to the other side of the ledger, the agency side, where God requires that I act upon my faith. I'm not casting dispersion at all, you know, because that's why I said earlier, these are perceptions I grew up with, but it is what it is. That's what stuck with me, that's what affected a lot of my thinking growing up. And, of course, there are many examples of incredibly successful people of faith ethical. You know, people that have much abundance, that totally through the agency that they believed in, you know, have gone on and continue to do wonderful work. That is wonderful. And they're in history too, Not biblical history only, but in you know the history of our world that came after that time.
Speaker 1:So you know the answer to question one is there an opportunity you think you may have missed due to barnacles on your hole? Yes, but instead of focusing on any one opportunity, let me just say this I think many people have moments of debilitating doubt where our limiting beliefs we've not dealt with yet, will pick up a club and take a swing at us with yet will pick up a club and take a swing at us and, boy, give us enough of a concussion that we momentarily just get dizzy, see some stars and doubt who we are or who we were meant to be. These moments, maybe they cause us to play safe. Now there's no need to regret that part of the human condition. That's quite normal. But hey, acknowledge this without judgment, then pick up, move forward. I think that's a responsibility that we need to take and not just sit in any kind of regret, but move forward.
Speaker 1:Okay, let me look at question two briefly, where Dan asks how could you still capture that opportunity? Dan asks how could you still capture that opportunity? Now, this is what I say Read, learn, apply, execute and learn and rinse and repeat. Okay, those are my what are they? Five steps Read one, number two, learn Three, apply and execute, and then learn again and then rinse and repeat. Let me elaborate on these. The read part.
Speaker 1:Dan Miller talked about just finding a few things in a book you can act upon. You don't have to remember everything. That was quite helpful to me. When you read a book, don't feel like you're going to remember everything. Take as much as you can. But I remember him saying if I can just take one or two principles and apply them to my life, to my business, that's enough, and you can always reread a book and get some more out of that. But read, learn. It's such an amazing thing to get into the head of someone else who's written for us to hear them out, to hear their ideas, hear what worked, what didn't work. Learn from them, learn from them. So read.
Speaker 1:Okay, don't worry that you won't remember everything, but the first key is to read and once you've read something and you take something out of it, apply that. Apply it and execute it. Whatever you learn, just go out and try it. I'm in a big thing with AI right now in terms of education, trying some things out, and I remember in the literature I'm reading right now, that was one of the things that these writers would say is like pick something and just go, try it. See what works for you what doesn't work for you, learn it and then come back and try again. So just apply and execute whatever you learn. Apply it and execute it from your reading and then just see how that pans out and then that's the next step. Learn from that what worked, what didn't work, okay, and you know, just because something worked for someone else may not work the same way for you. That's old advice and wisdom. But learn after applying something and executing and kind of figure it out afterwards what needs to happen once the dust has settled, and then rinse and repeat, go back, read some more, apply and execute some more. Learn from that some more. Apply and execute some more, learn from that some more, and go back and rinse and repeat and do it all over again.
Speaker 1:That's really, really important that we look at that and see that, yes, absolutely, there's still time to capture the opportunity that's before us. As long as you have breath, you need to just jump in the game and keep working on this. I know, I know. I know that cleaning the hall of your life, taking the time to pause and do that work, is going to pay dividends for you. So I wish you the very, very best. Take your time on that moment in life that you're given, or create the time to do it. It's that important and the results, I know, are going to be invigorating for you.
Speaker 1:Hey, you over here, let me fix your tie. You mean, mean my tithe? No, no, no, no, not your tithe, your tithe, let me fix your tithe. You know that word from a religious setting. I grew up with it. Many have. Maybe you've heard it in a different setting, but it definitely is found in a religious setting.
Speaker 1:Well, next week, dan Miller is going to help us with a unique perspective on the tide. So come on back and let's look at that together. Okay, let me send you away with a quote here. It is Don't let yesterday take up too much of today. That comes to us from Will Rogers. That's it. That's the quote. Think about it, act on it.
Speaker 1:Thanks again for your company today, friends. I really appreciate it. I hope you have a wonderful upcoming week and we will be together again next week. Thank you for listening. If you found this time together useful, please consider following this podcast and leaving an excellent rating. If you feel you can't do that yet, please reach out to me and let me know what I can do to get you to leave a top rating. If you are already excited about what you've heard, please consider sharing this podcast with a friend. I really would appreciate it. Also, I'd love your feedback, both on today's topic as well as what you'd like to hear me address in the future. I would really appreciate that input. Again, I'm your host, isaac Sanchez. I hope today's thought serves you the way it has served me. Remember your next move is just one inside away. Have an amazing rest of your day. I'll see you next time.