Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you Episode 179 today and we're continuing this back-to-back kind of weeks of me answering a whole bunch of these anonymous questions that came through. And again, I don't know if they came through from an individual or if maybe they've been from multiple people. I have no idea but I've really enjoyed this because they've really been able to help me dig into some different ideas without getting prepared for them, and usually I have these scripts If you're just joining for the first time. Usually I kind of plan in advance my episodes and have them dotted out of what I want to talk about, where I want to take you. But over the last couple of weeks I've had these questions come through and I think it's really great to be able to answer them and have them like a conversation, like we're doing this live. And the question that has come through this week is around the conversation, around long-term balance, and it's very relevant to my thinking and very relevant to further your lifestyle. And the question was this how do you do? And the question was this how do you balance the pursuit of your long-term goals with the need to appreciate and enjoy the present moment? Now I look at this and I'm thinking a whole bunch of different things, so we're going to be diving into this today. If you have a question yourself, or you really enjoy this podcast, or you just want to connect, or you just want to interact, jump down below, leave a comment here on the YouTube. If you are listening audio only via Spotify or maybe Apple Podcasts, then get connected, subscribe to the podcast, follow along, but do reach out and connect with myself and we can either have a conversation, or you can ask a question, or you could even share it with someone, because that would mean the absolute world to me. Let's roll the intro and let's get into it.

So this question I think there's a lot in it, right, and I'm going to start off slow. We'll build into it and as things pop up. I haven't prepared anything for this, but I think it's super relevant for just for further your lifestyle, right? So I've always been someone and it was drilled into me when I was going through high school is short-term pain for long-term gain, with the mentality of I'm doing something today that's going to get me a result longer down the line, because I'm going to be so consistent at it that it's going to pay big dividends. Or sometimes you do the work today so that things are going to be a little bit easier later Now. We've spoken about this on the podcast numerous times across the last 179 episodes 100%.

But I think when we start to think about how do we balance the pursuit of your long-term goals with the need to appreciate maybe short-term wins or things in the present moment, I think this is super important, because how I've done this is probably going to be different for everyone else and everyone you're tracking to this differently, but sometimes we don't know how to do this, and maybe, hopefully by me sharing my ways of how I think of this or how I answer this question, it might inspire you to think of a different way, of how you can start to really double down on the longer term thinking, while also enjoying the things as we progress on a daily basis. And I think this comes back to the core root of what is the one thing that you're doing today that is going to get you ahead further down the line. Because when we know what we want. When we have a set understanding of where we want to be, the direction we want to be going, then we're able to start to make decisions in the present that are going to get us to where we want to be going. Now. You can't do everything today that's going to get you to where you want to be in 10 years or five years or one year or whatever, but you can do something that's going to point you towards the trend of that direction, and there's multiple ways we can look at this.

I think my best parallel for this is running and life, because when we go for a run, especially if it's a long run, you have to find a way to keep yourself occupied in the moment to ensure that you're able to sustain the full length of the running right. So if I'm doing a marathon which is 42 kilometers, I know that for the first 21 to 25, I should be good because that's my sweet favorite spot to run like distance-wise After. That's when we got to get deep, that's when things get gnarly, and working through that is a challenge. Whether it's finding music, whether it's getting into a trance, maybe it's running with someone else, is it listening to a podcast? All these different things to help you just really sink into the moment, or maybe it is just appreciating your surroundings.

Now, that's not exactly the same of how do we actually go about managing longer-term goals, because life and running a marathon are not exactly the same. Life throws things at us so badly which have life-impacting, usually consequences. You run a marathon. If you slow down, you just don't get the time you want. Right In life, sometimes things are thrown at you and you have to slow down and you don't get the time you want. Right In life, sometimes things are thrown at you and you have to slow down and you have to take a bit of a direction change, or you have to take a detour and maybe things don't go the way we originally planned. So how do we balance this? So for me, as I said, it comes back to understanding what it is that you want. When you have your idea of what is going to be your purpose-fulfilling dream, what is your reasoning for what you're doing, when you understand what gives you a fulfilled life, what makes you happy, when you have all that understanding, you're able to then move towards that. You want to get closer and closer to that, but also knowing that we need to apply a level of delayed gratification because, again, you cannot have what you want in 10 years today, but you can work towards it.

A good example of all this is I'm building my business. Now what that looked like when I started. It took a while to really firm up. I just wanted to start and I just wanted to show people that I could make this happen. That was really the focus. But I've known since I started working, like when I worked the nine to five. I knew I wanted a business. I knew that I wanted to be able to work for myself and have people work for me. I just didn't know how that was going to look, how that was going to come to being. But it was in the back of my mind and I spoke about this over the last couple of weeks as well. All very similar concepts and they do cross over, but in doing so I was always pointing in that direction.

But I think the difference between thinking and doing is one gets you results and that's the doing part. So once you start getting on the action scale of actually making action and doing some work, that's going to get you towards to where you want to be. It's how do you then appreciate the present moments, with that big, long grind? If we're speaking specifically to the long-term goal, I think tracking it with data, tracking it with visuals, tracking it with progress, understanding how you are making a change and making it towards where you want to be, if you were losing weight, sometimes the best way to motivate yourself is jumping on the scales and seeing that things are changing, or looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing that things are changing. It motivates you. It keeps you excited in the present, in the moment, because it knows, okay, what I'm doing today, or what I've been doing for the last 20 days, is working. Therefore, I'm going to keep doing this to help me with my pursuit to my long-term goals. So that's that. But at the same time, we're doing this over a long term.

Right, you can't do everything today. I'm speaking to myself here. So many times. Carla is giving me honest of babe, it's 10 o'clock. You don't need to be doing that Like you're always on. I'm always on because no one else is going to do it for me and I want to make the most of it as possible. But there's no point doing that if it burns yourself out. So it really does come down to this balance of what is important, what has to be done. Can I allocate some time to do a little bit more? Or because you are enjoying it? That's why you are trying to build it out to your dream, because you do enjoy it, it's what you love, it's your passion.

But you need to find time for other things, For yourself. Switch off and do what you want to do your exercise, your health, your physical, mental, your loved ones, whether it's intimate partners, or whether it's friends and just colleagues or whatever, or peers, and all those different parts of your body. You need to fill those cups Because if you don't, they will be neglected and then that balance will disappear. You won't be able to focus in the present moment, which will essentially take you off the path to being successful in the long term. Now I can only speak of how things have been progressing for the last four years in my business. I worked nine to five prior to that, for eight, nine years and building up that journey to middle management.

Again, it's the same thing that applies the decisions we make, the things that we do. If you get burnt out, you're not working at your best, 100% ability. You want to put yourself in a position where you are showing up to do your A game. You don't want to be rocking up to do your 20%, right. I think 80% plus is what you want, but ideally, we want to be bringing out A game which is 100%. So what do you need to do today that's going to get you to where you want to be, one thing, but also, what do you need to do today that's going to enable you to retain and sustain and keep you structured, comfortable, confident and healthy to keep going in this direction. Because if you just focus on doing everything, that's where you want to be in 10 years, you're going to have to sacrifice other things. Now you might be fine to do that. That is 100% okay.

But I'm here to tell you about furthering your lifestyle. I'm not here to further your business. I'm not here to further your weight loss. I'm not here to further your running. I'm not here to further your YouTube. I'm here to talk lifestyle. You got to create the lifestyle that you want and what that looks like. So if you want those things, you want that balance, make them into your life. If you don't care about it, that's on you.

But be mindful that sometimes, if you're just having your workhorse just go, eventually it's going to collapse. Eventually it's not going to have the grunt it had when it first started. So you need to keep that into mind, right Looking after yourself, and once we know how to navigate that balance, sometimes it's like sleep If you did not sleep, you would not survive. So you need to find what is the right amount of sleep for you to enable you to continue to appreciate and enjoy things on a daily basis as you progress to your longer-term goal. Because if you're not enjoying your daily progress, if you're not enjoying your days in the present moment, you'll get burnt out, you get frustrated and you start to question the whys and you challenge yourself of is this even worth it? And a lot of the time it's usually not because of the actual long-term goal, it's just because you're not winning that day. You're going to have bad days. You're going to have really good days too, but the bad days are the ones that are going to make you rethink everything. The good days just help you feel like you're a boss, make you feel like you've got it all figured out, all right, but they don't come every day. When they do, ride them and enjoy them. But it's the days when you're not feeling it. That's where things get a bit of a challenge. And if you're not in a position where you feel good because you've neglected things or whatever, then the first thing you're going to blame is your grind towards your bigger goals and ambitions.

So that's my personal opinion on all this, and I also know that what I do, the stuff I'm doing today, even this podcast, I don't know where we'll be in 10 years. I have ideas, I have ambitions. I have dreams of what that looks like. Are we making steps towards it? Yes, am I making quicker steps that I could be doing to get us there? No, because I'm prioritizing so many different things. I've got my business, I've got my life. I've got my running. I've got my exercise. I've got the podcast. I've got the YouTube. Where I want to put that time, I need to be strategic and I'm responsible for that. That's on me.

I could stop doing my business and just go full focus on the podcast and see where it gets to, but that's not really the mission in the sense of the now. I actually think if I focus on doing the other things which help build my lifestyle, help show me others of how I did that. It only compliments the podcast because then I can come back and I have actual evidence and progress visuals and I've got something to back me up and say, look, this is what I did do to further my lifestyle and it's easier to share that back because I've got the experience behind my back. I can't tell you how to go operate a $1 million business if I haven't done a million dollars in my business myself. So there's those different understandings.

So that's how I'm going about it, how I'm balancing my pursuit for my longer-term goals with the need to appreciate the present moment. If you don't have the present moment and your current day is in focus, in order, if you're not happy, if you're not enjoying it, if you don't have things right, then you will struggle to pursue the longer-term goals. Get that even, get that right, look after yourself, understand what you're required to fill your cup and you'll be able to continue to balance and move towards your longer-term goals with a lot more ease. Really, do appreciate being here. This was a quick and light one, short and sweet, about 13 minutes, but I think that's important because sometimes we just need to hear what we need to hear and then take what we can take and run with it, and that's what I believe, hopefully, we've been able to achieve in this episode today. So really do appreciate being here.

If you wanted to continue the conversation, you can jump down over on the YouTube into the comment section. You can reach out to myself, cl Furlong, on Instagram you can see all the details in the description below as well and I would love to continue the conversation. But the biggest request I have to you is, if you enjoyed this episode or another episode, share it with someone else, please. That would mean the absolute world to me and it really does help the podcast grow, because my aim is to get this in front of as many people as possible. But I want that to be organic. I don't want to force it to someone. So if you feel like this resonates with you and it could resonate with someone you know, send it to them. That would mean the absolute world to me. Appreciate you being here. You have a wonderful day, cheers.