What is a Student of Life?

  Welcome to Student of Life Podcast, a podcast for people seeking personal and professional fulfillment, guided by your host Joe Hafner. In this episode, Joe gives an overview of what this podcast series will be covering in the coming weeks and why he’s so excited about it. He wants to help you come up with questions to ponder in your quiet time, figure out what you’re great at doing and create a space where you know you’re listening to a kindred spirit. Your mind is a ‘use it or lose it’ organ. The goal of this podcast is to always give you reason to be using it, because the learning doesn’t have to end when you finish your education. Remember, fulfillment is not a destination, it’s a way of life. You never really gain full fulfillment, it’s something to always seek. Fulfillment is achieved when the purpose you were created for is fully aligned with your personal core values.

A Student of Life

A student of life is someone who is seeking personal and professional fulfillment. He or she is a seeker of knowledge, a deep thinker and maybe a bit of a philosopher. Do you have a quiet place where you go and ponder things? Do you come up with tons of ideas and questions? Is your brain always engaged, spinning, thinking? Do you listen to podcasts, read a lot of books, or watch Discovery Channel, History Channel and NatGeo? Are you the type of person who is always learning things and finding out what’s going on in the world? If so, this is the podcast for you.

Finding your purpose

Do you know your purpose, what God created you for? Seeking fulfillment starts by looking at a few things to figure out what your purpose in life is. There are two ways to figure this out: what you are truly great at, and what brings you joy. Author and founder of Strategic Coach, Inc., Dan Sullivan describes what you’re great at as your unique ability. Everyone has 3 or 4 things they’re truly great at doing. Whatever they are for you, could provide signs about your purpose. Similarly, when you identify the things that bring you joy, it can help you discover your purpose. Think about something you just love to do, that when you’re doing it, you completely lose track of time. How much of your time do you actually spend working in the area that brings you joy, that you’re great at? If you’re not spending 85% or more of your time there, you need to figure out how to increase it because that’s when you will start to have fulfillment. When you’re focused and spending all your time in that area, that’s when you can rise up to your full potential.

Core Values and Core Beliefs

Renee Descartes, the French philosopher, spent his entire life trying to figure out what he knew for sure. You may have heard of the term ‘cogito ergo sum’ or ‘I think therefore I am’. All he knew for sure was that he existed because he was a thinking being. Core values are not quite that extreme but it’s similar to Descartes’ process in that you look at what you believe and ask yourself, ‘What are the things I believe, that no matter what anybody does, they can’t change my mind?’ You might believe in God, that He is sovereign over the world and your life. You might believe you should have integrity, or honesty, and need to operate that way. If you haven’t thought about that before, start thinking about what your core values and beliefs are. It’s worth the effort to figure these things out. Most people don’t take the time to do it and they just kind of drift along in life without really knowing where they’re going. Your core values are like an anchor that helps you set your path. You can filter life through them to figure out what you believe, where you’re going, and what opportunities you are going to take. There are some people who claim to believe something, but their behavior doesn’t match up with it. If you have a core value or a core belief, you can change your behavior to match what you believe. And if you are struggling with that, then it’s time to think about what’s standing in the way.

Limiting factors in your life

Most limitations are self-imposed. Most everything that comes in your path that could stop you from achieving your fulfillment can be overcome with the proper amount of time, focus, desire and determination. If you have those four things, you can overcome just about anything. If you’re still reading this, you’re probably willing to make the time to think these things through, and you probably have the desire too. Maybe you need determination or need to learn how to focus. That’s a problem many people have, especially in our sound-bite world. Lack of focus might be limiting you. What about determination and discipline? Are you putting passion and knowledge together to achieve mastery of something? Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Outliers, talks about the 10,000 hour rule. This rule states that you need 10,000 hours of practice in your area of expertise to really master something, be world class and set you apart from other experts. It’s about learning to grind and doing the little things to make you successful when no one is looking. In Rory Vaden’s book Take The Stairs he says ‘successful people do the things they don’t want to do, even when they don’t feel like doing them.’ Ultimately, that’s the difference between someone who is dissatisfied with their life because nothing ever happens for them, and someone who is a super high achiever, who has everything that they want in life. They take the stairs instead of the escalator. They have time, focus, desire and determination.

The timeless, unchanging things in life

Many podcasts and thought leaders spend much time talking about how fast our world is changing, about what you should be doing to prepare for those changes, which is definitely important and something that we need to contemplate. However, in this podcast, Joe will spend more time thinking and talking about the stuff that’s unchanging, the timeless things in business and life that prepare us for a fast-changing world. By far, the most important, unchanging truth is that everything in life is about people: family, friends, team-members, customers, vendors, the person in the check-out line, or on the street. One of the things that led Joe to do this podcast is his experiences doing just that on a weekly Facebook video program called Short Attention Span Wisdom. He ends every show by saying, “I believe we can learn something from everyone we meet, all we have to do is ask.” If you pour yourself into people and building them up, you’ll build yourself up at the same time.

Some of the things you will learn in future episodes:

• Core values and how they shape your vision for your life or your business.
• How filtering things through your core values (decisions, thoughts, people you hire, etc) will help you create a great culture for your family, life and business
• How focused intensity helps you change your habits and achieve goals
• The importance of protecting your energy and confidence.
• How to put passion and knowledge together to achieve mastery of something

Tune in for future episodes of Student of Life where Joe will challenge you to think outside the box about things you don’t normally consider to help you on your journey to personal and professional fulfillment.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Joe’s Short Attention Span Wisdom Facebook Show: https://www.facebook.com/SASWisdom Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: https://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495589410&sr=8-1&keywords=outliers Rory Vaden’s book Take The Stairs: https://www.amazon.com/Take-Stairs-Steps-Achieving-Success/dp/0399537767/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495589458&sr=8-1&keywords=take+the+stairs Dan Sullivan’s books and podcasts: Strategic Coach: https://www.strategiccoach.com/ 10x Talk with Joe Polish: http://10xtalk.com/ The Joy of Procrastination with Dean Jackson: https://www.joyofprocrastination.com/ Exponential Wisdom with Peter Diamandis: http://www.abundance360summit.com/podcast/