SPI 728: What Will Matter?

SPI 728 What Will Matter?

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, when he makes coffee at home, it’s exclusively in an AeroPress, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Alright, so, I know you can’t see me on video right now, but I have in my hands a frame with a piece of paper in it and on this piece of paper are a bunch of words. And it is something that I have next to my desk because I read it about once a week and it reminds me of what’s important. And I wanted to share this with you today. I’m going to read it word for word. And I have to really thank Greg Langston.

He is somebody who actually printed this out for me, put it in a nice frame, and I have it next to my desk. He has a note on the back of this paper. It says, Pat, thanks for living a life that matters and inspiring me to do the same daily. Best, Greg Langston. So Greg, I know you listened to the show. Hope you get to hear this because I wanted to thank you for this gift, which you gave me gosh, years ago, and I still have in front of me now.

I don’t have a lot of these things in front of me that I would call what I like to say daily reminders or things like that, but this is one of them and again, I’m going to read it here for you word for word and I just want you to reflect on the words that I say and feel free to look up the person who this is from because Greg just printed this out for me, but this is actually by a man named Michael Josephson and maybe you can print one out yourself if you’d like to have the same kind of inspiration in front of you that I have in front of me.

So let me. Read this right now. Maybe we could even for the editor keep this in, by the way for the editor, editor who is editing this for the team. Thank you, by the way, as always. Let’s put some music that you feel would be relevant and and important behind this. Just some background music.

Alright, there you go. Thank you. What will matter? Ready or not? Someday it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours, or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass on to someone else. Your wealth, fame, and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.

It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear. So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won’t matter where you came from. Or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.

It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant. So, what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built. Not what you got, but what you gave. What will matter is not your success.

But your significance, what will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage, or sacrifice that enriched empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence, but your character. What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone.

What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered. By whom, and for what. Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident. It’s not a matter of circumstance, but of choice. Choose to live a life that matters.

Every time I read that, I haven’t read that out loud actually in a very long time. But, I see it at my desk, and I come across it just in a glance, and I might sit and pause between recordings or something to look at it, and it just, this is a great gentle reminder, or maybe not so gentle reminder, especially if it’s your first time listening to it.

And again, it’s by Michael Josephson, Michael Josephson, let me put this down real quick. Whoa, whoa, I didn’t want it to go down to the ground there, okay, we’re good. You know, I listened to that and I wonder, even while I was reading that just now, I’m like, hmm, maybe my son and my daughter are gonna listen to this episode one day.

Episode 728. Who knows? And this is what I think the beauty is about a lot of what we do here as entrepreneurs, is we have the direct ability to matter to somebody else. We have the ability to teach somebody something that changes their lives. And I’m so grateful for all of you who’ve let me know that what we do here at SPI has done that for you.

I, we, we, we get weekly reminders and we try as a team when we see these things inside of SPI Pro or the All Access Pass or when I get something private in a direct message to pass it forward to the team if it is allowed to do so. Because it just inspires us to help even more, it pushes us even further into how might we be able to help you or what might be on your mind so that we can help you through it.

And it’s amazing because the truth is we will end up not being here one day, but what we do today can have a long lasting effect. And that choice to live a matterful life is really what’s key there. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, it doesn’t mean we even have the solution or even the understanding of how to do that right now.

But it’s a choice of trying to figure out how. That you can get up, or get through it, whatever it might be, and do something that matters. I remember very vividly, sitting on my bed, in my mid twenties, having just gotten laid off, tears on the pillow because I didn’t know what else I was going to do. I’d gotten laid off.

Struggling to even think about my future because I had no idea what was going to happen. I felt very little self worth. I felt like I had failed. I felt like I was doomed. And for two months, I thought the same thoughts, just like that, every single day. Head in my pillow, typically watching Back to the Future to distract myself.

And the beauty of Back to the Future, even though it’s not a real story, obviously, it’s fiction, it’s the greatest story ever told, there is some truth behind what happens in the movie. The things that we do now change our future. And the decisions that we make, the choices that we make now, can affect our future for the better or for the worse.

The almanac that Marty McFly took and then lost. Biff got a hold of it. Did not work out. Did not. Did not work out. Marty’s decision to give his dad the strength and the courage to overcome a bully changed his life forever. His parents life, his, and Doc’s, and everybody else that was involved. And it took me two months to realize that I was on my own story and that I was writing it every single day.

And the chapters that I was writing were… The same chapter of depression, and sadness, and blame, and anger, and worry, and I didn’t like the story that was being told. If I had continued on that path, I would have lived a life that didn’t matter. It would have still mattered to my family, and my kids. But the legacy that I could live, and the ability to continue to have a voice even after I’m gone.

I mean, who knows? Somebody might be listening to this X number of years in the future, after I passed. I mean, the truth is, who knows what’s going to happen with, I don’t even want to get into longevity right now, or what happens when we take our consciousness and put it somewhere else and can that live on forever?

No. Doesn’t matter. I think a lot of people are trying to rely on that a little too much. But anyway. Don’t want to get into that debate. But I do want to get into a discussion. And finish up and wrap up here about you, because you’re on your story right now, you’re listening to this. Something got you to press play today, whether it was hundreds of episodes prior to this that led you to this moment, or this perhaps might be the first episode of the Smart Passive Income podcast that you’ve ever listened to, but something brought you here today.

And I want you to look around and notice your surroundings, the fact that you are here on this earth right now. And you have the ability to choose the direction you want to go. And you are not alone. I’ve gone through this path before, so many others have as well, and there are people out there who want to help.

I don’t know if you needed to hear all this today, but I have one final thing to say. You matter. You matter. And maybe it took somebody else across the podcast airwaves for you to finally hear that to realize that and to do something with it. So go do something with it. You’re awesome. Love you.

Appreciate you wishing you all the best. See you in the next one.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media, and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!