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Time is money. At least, that is what everyone says. The problem with saying it that way is that people really don’t understand how much more valuable your time is than money. We exchange our time for many things in life; for laughs, for companionship, for money, for growth, and for frivolous things. So, just how valuable is your time?

Most people don’t understand or really know what their time is worth. In our lives, most of us have jobs where we exchange our time and effort for money that we use to pay bills and buy stuff. A business will hire you and define what your actions or tasks should be while you are on the clock. They determine what they are willing to pay for a person’s time to do said tasks or make such efforts. You decide whether your time is valued correctly by the business or if you think your time is more valuable if spent elsewhere.

Rohit draws a great comparison of time and value when discussing mowing the lawn. If you feel your time is worth $30 an hour, but there is a neighborhood kid who will mow your lawn for $10, you will come out ahead by $20 by letting this kid mow the lawn for you. However, if you are not spending that time in a productive manner that leads you to make that $30, you have wasted your time and your money. Only you can determine if your time is more valuable or not. Your decisions tell everyone else-and more importantly you yourself-what you think your time is worth.

Another thing to consider is “Are you filling time, or fulfilling your time?” Many of us will do things that just fill time. You know. Its those times when you don’t know what to do, so you sit down and turn on Netflix, Hulu, or cable, and just flip through to find something to watch because you “have nothing better to do.” That is the ‘average’ person’s view. A successful person will take those moments and look for things that enrich their lives or grow their earning potential. Instead of binging on a new show, grab a book, or look for ways to develop a new skill. I cut cable and streaming services because I found I was just filling time and wasting money. Instead, I started watching YouTube training videos on how to edit videos and build a growing stream channel audience. Find a way to get value out of your time because you will never get it back. We are only here for a limited time. How will you spend your time?

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One single fact is true of most people today. We do not know how to recognize our own magic. It goes against our programing to step up and celebrate ourselves. At a very early age we are taught to not be prideful and to lift up others. In many cases we are taught to be shy when others compliment us or our achievements.

Why should we recognize our own greatness? It is important to our own mental and emotional growth. Now, we are not saying that everything you do needs to be celebrated as if you are the greatest person and should be worshipped. Instead, we are saying that we are success oriented. Successes make us feel good about ourselves and what we have done. Celebrating those successes lets ourselves know that we are making progress. It reminds us of where we started, all the trials we went through, and the feeling we felt having reached each milestone along the way.

We have this misconception that celebrating our success is prideful. While in certain situations that might be true, there are times when it is necessary and completely appropriate. The celebration of reaching milestones is important in all our goals. It is proof of our efforts and dedication to our continued success. However, when you stand over an opponent and gloat, rubbing their failure in their face, that is no longer a celebration.

In order to celebrate success, we have to have goals. In order to celebrate goals, we need to have milestones. Milestones are a useful tracking tool that help us stay positive and adjust course as needed. We often set goals with no roadmap. The goal is the end destination for one trip. However, the best part of the road trip is not the end destination. It is in the road trip. The same goes for our goals. We are only able to track our progress in life and in each of our goals if we track our milestones along the way. The milestones give definition to the trip towards success.

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When 4 men sit in a hot room to talk about happiness, you really don’t know what to expect. While we sate in this hot recording studio, we explored why certain things or activities bring us happiness and who the real stakeholders in your happiness are. This is important to understand where our happiness comes from and whether it is healthy or not for us.

Stakeholders are just the people that are either reliant or integral to causing our happiness. In healthy relationships, you will always here from the individuals that what is important is the other member’s happiness. A husband cares about the happiness of his wife. The wife cares about the happiness of the husband. This is a great way to maintain a healthy relationship with your significant other. However, it may just be detrimental to your own happiness.

When people are so devoted to the other person in their relationship, they might lose sight of things that make themselves happy in favor of things that make the other person happy. I see this a lot in my parents. My Mom is one of the most loving people in the world to me and she goes out of her way to make us happy. However, she does everything in her power to make us happy, but anytime her happiness comes up she can’t express herself. She will go to movies with my family that she wouldn’t necessarily like, but when we ask her if there is something she would like to see, she will deflect and say, “well, what do you want to see?” This happens in many relationships and it can end up causing resentment from one or the other.

There are also times that we know what makes us happy and we want to share that experience with someone we love. We believe that what makes us happy will also make them happy and we set an expectation. Our expectations can lead to disappointment when the other party isn’t as enthralled as we are. Kyle talks about liking ski, but his other doesn’t. If he put his happiness investment in how the other party feels, he loses some of the experience he could be having while he is there.

We should actively seek to make sure our friends and family are happy. However, if we fail to make sure we are also happy, we build up resentment and negativity. Conversely, if all we do is focus on our own happiness, we cause negativity and resentment to build in our relationships. Balance is important for healthy emotional growth.

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Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. Some people are good at one thing and not so good at another. You may be great at public speaking, but terrible at writing. You could be able to fix any technical problem in the IT world, but maybe you are not so great at working with other people. Which is more important; understanding a person’s strengths or their weaknesses?

Kevin and Kyle explore from differing perspectives. In this discussion, Kevin supports the idea that understanding a person’s weaknesses is more important. It gives you an understanding of what a person can’t do, and what they can work on to become stronger. In hiring, you want to know what a person can’t do. You don’t want a person who can’t read writing training journals. However, if this person is great at communicating ideas with a team, you might put them in an environment where their ideas and thoughts will build a stronger, more productive team. Some people are just not comfortable with doing certain tasks. A lack of confidence can be a weakness. With that knowledge, you can then take action to build up the confidence so that the weakness turns into a strength.

Kyle comes from the point that knowing a person’s strengths is more important. It is good to know where to start with a person to get the best productivity out of them from the start. It’s like building a home on a site where the house has already been torn down. If the foundation is already strong, you can continue to build the house on that foundation.

As a group, we understand that it is important to know both. Having a balanced understanding of what a person can and can’t do will inevitably lead you to stronger team dynamics. You will be able to shift people around to where they are most skillful and make plans to strengthen areas where they need the most help.

In our personal lives it is just as important. When you know your current limits, it makes it easier to make your plans to either strengthen your weak points or play off your strengths in any given situation. Knowing yourself is key to growing yourself.

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Technology is a testament to how mankind has grown. Since the dawn of time we have been inventing things to make our lives easier; the wheel, the steam engine, telephones, computers, etc. We have technology that has made our lives so much better today than anytime in our entire history. However, is there a point when technology is a detriment to our lives and our growth?

For the most part, we do have easy access to information. We can look up information on anything we want right in the palm of our hands. Our cell phones are mobile computers that give us what we need; Navigation, reference material, news, recipes, and entertainment. There is a real problem with this easy access though. Everyone knows that it is easily accessible and fewer people know how to actually research information for themselves. If you ask a student in high school today to do a simple math problem without the use of their phone or a calculator, they would probably get a look that of a deer looking head on at a semi truck’s headlights. Ask a driver to go anywhere unfamiliar and take away their access to GPS units and they would be lost.

The problem with an abundance of technology is that we end up relying on it so much that we are invalid when it is taken away.

Family-time has also struggled. The TV or radio was something that the family used to gather around in the evenings. They would watch shows together, and in my case, would talk about our days during commercials. I always wanted a tv of my own in my bedroom and my parents always balked at the idea until I got into High School. Once I got my own TV I was able to watch shows in my room whenever I wanted as long as I had a TV cable or a VCR (Yeah…I’m old). Now everyone can stream on multiple devices anything they want to see. People go into other rooms or put on headphones and watch what they want. The social factor is now taken out of the picture.

From manual labor jobs, to Information Technology jobs our jobs have been made easier with technology. A draw back to this is the fact that as technology improves, our productivity increases and the fewer workers a business may need. We lose some jobs to technology. McDonalds is a prime example of this with their digital ordering system. People can now walk up to a digital display to build their order, or they can use an app on their phone. Now McDonalds needs fewer cashiers.

It is important to understand that technology is important to the improvement of our lives, but if we rely too heavily on it, we will end up hurting for it in the future.