Be the Navigator of Your Life

Hey team, all right, Workshop Wednesday. This week we are talking about how to be the navigator of your life. This week I happen to be out towards Las Vegas. It is spring break. I’m in Las Vegas with my boys and Karen. We’re doing some epic stuff. If you look behind me, you’ll see bright colors and stuff. We’re going to the Valley of Fire this week. I’m not sure if I’ve already done it yet, because it’s Wednesday, but obviously, I’ve taped this message a little bit early. We’re also going to Death Valley. We’re going to be checking out some sites and stuff.

Some of you think, oh well “Chad’s going to Vegas, he’s going to go you know…” I’m going with two small boys. It’s not like I’m hanging out and running around gambling. Most of you that know me, I’m not much of a gambler… well maybe I am, because I gamble all the time…I have 135 amazing people to work with. We got people working all night long 24/7. I’m gambling every day. I don’t need to go to Vegas to run the roulette wheel. I run a roulette wheel every night.

Some of you were laughing, those of you that are in leadership. You know my pain and you get it. But again, God is awesome and we’re having a wonderful time. I am sure of that. Because my boys, we’re going to be hitting Diesel Brothers on the way down through Utah. J.T. is excited about seeing some of the big builds they do. If you don’t know Diesel Brothers, you gotta go look it up. It’s pretty awesome. Thank you, Frank Vaughn. Caid’s dad turned me on to Diesel Brothers. Now I spend a lot of money buying things at Diesel Brothers and watching shows with my boys.

Anyway, a man named Robert Orben said “Time flies. It’s up to you to be the navigator.” You know that resonated with me because I think about the fact – how much time do I procrastinate?

What do I do with my life?

How many times have I made a decision that, hey I would like to do this?! And then, three years went by.

See, I’m 247 years old. My son J.T. is rolling his eyes right now saying, “Dad stop it.” I joke around about that all the time. But I’m an older guy now. I’m a few years older and every year I keep getting older. For you young people, yeah, it’s going to happen to you too. But ultimately, that concept of time flying. It seems to go faster.

I don’t know about you, but I remember when I was like 5-6 years old, and you know you get one of those little pasty things it was green and red, and it was these long loops. You tear one off to get to Christmas and walk to Christmas every year. It seemed like it took forever to go through 25 days. Now 25 days, although that was yesterday. We just hit another 25 days. It’s amazing how fast time flies. That’s the way it feels.

That expression is something that we all use at some point in our life, that time flies.

Everybody resonates with the same because we feel like time is just flying by. And it can do that if you’re not being intentional with what you’re doing. If you’re not being focused and intentional with what you’re doing, then it feels like time is getting away from you. You can say I want to do X and if you put the time in it doesn’t happen.

I’ll give you an example, just my boys. My boys, my family time. Karen and I sat down one day, and we said you know what, we want to be intentional about how we’re spending time with our boys and our family. When we made that decision to do that, and said that’s what we wanted to do. We didn’t actually follow through with the decision until about three or four years later. Boy, time flies.

It was like we said this, we want to be intentional about how we spend time with our boys. The next time that we started doing it, it was like four years later. That’s right, David was a little baby at the time, when Karen and I literally made those comments. Now, I’m on spring break. Last year I was on spring break. I took more time off last summer and I’ve been intentional, but I have to navigate that. I have to decide. Karen has to decide. We have been intentional in this last year to take more time and focus.

Now, I still get up really early in the morning and I work on stuff because there’s still a lot of work to do. But I’ve also learned to delegate to leaders.

Be intentional with your time.

Let me stop and take a small commercial.

Thank you, Greg, Sonja, Caid, Christina, Windee, Barbie. Let’s see, Codie, Jeff, Shaun, Carrie, Jim. Huge shoutouts to all the leaders. The patrol leads. Casey, Ryan. Man, you guys are fabulous because I have been able to do some of the things I’ve been able to do; while I want to navigate and circumvent, or I don’t know if that’s the right word, circumvent, that’s not the right word. But you get my point.

The important thing is, is that I have to navigate my own life but I also because I run a larger organization now than just a few men, few women. We have a much bigger situation… oh, I forgot a couple more people. Corey and Christian, dude you guys are awesome! We have a number of people in our leadership team, and they are probably a few I have already forgotten right that, we have Brian over there and I could go on, and on. Oh, and James, let’s not forget! James – software superstar.

But again, my point is you have to navigate and in order to do that sometimes you need other people in your life to take up and help build up some of the things so that you can take that time. We have a blessing in all of our leadership team and it’s growing and some of you, that are listening to this, you’re saying to yourself, I sure hope to be a leader someday.  

Be the Navigator of Your Life.

Start navigating your life. Be the navigator of your life. I hope to be something is not enough. You have to have the commitment, and the drive, the passion. You have to have the fortitude to step into it and do it every day.

That might mean getting up an hour earlier and spending a little bit of time reading something. It might mean enrolling in a class. It might mean a number of different things. But ultimately for you to navigate your life, you have to be at the wheel, and you have to be commanding your life. That means you have to get a calendar, and you have to orchestrate your life and do those things. Because time will just fill in the blanks with useless time. The time you’re spending at your PlayStation, your Xbox One, your Nintendo Switch. I talked to my boys about this all the time. The time you’re spending with useless stuff.

It’s the same thing with eating, right? You have to be intentional about how you eat. If you sit around and you just snack on useless calories, and what I mean by useless calories… chips and the things that just fill. They just fill. Just like time just kind of fills itself. They’re useless calories. They’re accomplishing nothing for your dietary needs.

All the other stuff is filling time. No need to be filling all that time. You have to be intentional about the time that you do have, because we all have the same amount of time in our week, in our day. You have 168 hours every week. Do the math and find out. How much of that is sleep time, how much of that is just sit around and fill up with uselessness? How much is targeted on doing something for you that’s going to better you? Navigate your life. I agree,

Be the navigator of your life.

Alright guys, Workshop Wednesday Be the Navigator of Your Life is over. I’m going to get back to my boys. We are going to have a lot of epic time, I’ll be bringing back pictures, cave drawings, and really cool stuff. Pictures of my boys climbing rocks, falling off the cliffs, and stuff like that.

You guys are going…. WHATTT…  they won’t be actually falling off the cliffs. But we will take a picture that looks like they’re falling off the cliff. Everybody will be like… AAGGHH… “Let’s call CPS.” Nah, don’t worry about that, seriously, we’re gonna be OK!

All right! God bless you, guys. Have a wonderful day and remember…. you can finish that statement… be valuable because nothing less will do.

 God bless you, guys.