Owning Your Growth & Breaking Through Barriers

Tim Pecoraro: 00:00:21

Welcome to the Uphill Community Podcast. Your source of inspiration to gain clarity, elevate your standards and embrace your call to more. Together we choose uphill climb.

Pursuing the hard best over the easy good. And discovering the extraordinary life awaiting to be lived in community. So welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here for this episode.

And if you are listening on Apple Podcast, Spotify Podcast, Amazon, Audible, Odyssey, hey, would you just follow the show if you're. If you happen to be catching it ran, it's go ahead and follow the show.

I think it'll be worth you continuing to listening to this show in the future and hopefully you will be able to gain some insight and some valuable things that are going to improve your quality of life. Some things that will help you go to the next level in life.

Today is one of those crazy, busy, hectic days and I have so many things going on and there's so many good things and it's like, it's like, man, there are so many things going on and I'm sitting here going how am I going to get all these things done? But I'm excited about it. Thank you for the support all of you who've been following.

I want to just a shout out to my community, the people in the uphill community. Man, we are having such a good time of growth and learning together and improving together.

And if you're interested in learning about the uphill community, you can go to this is simple. The Uphill dot community. That's it. Theuphill community. There's a landing page there. You can learn more about it there.

If you follow me on social media or if you would like to, you can go to Instagram and that is just Im Pecoraro or on LinkedIn, Tim Pecoro, same thing.

And if you do go into LinkedIn, you can click on my bio link in there and in the bio you'll be able to find connection to the newsletter to other things that I have going on. So and I do have some cool stuff I'll be talking about I'm launching. So I do have a publications.

This podcast used to be called Blank Pages, Publications and Media. I have a publication now.

It's fully moved over there and that's what the publication's about and I'll tell you all about it and why I've separated some things out which I did a podcast about. But I'm gonna talk about the publishing company because I have my.

My first author will be on the publish the with that we will publish on Blank Pages, and it'll join my first book that I put out last year called fl. Flit Learns to Fly, a children's book.

So, anyways, today I'm just gonna pick back up on part two from the episode from last week, which is it's all around getting your horizon. And so if you didn't listen to it, I encourage you to go back. Just listen to the episode before this one and listen to the.

Because I'm gonna talk about the real work that you need to do in order to really work on this horizon. So a quick review of last week, and it was basically that a plan. You have to have a plan.

And the way in order to see yourself go to the next level, to reach your horizon, you got to have a plan with your horizon. In other words, what are you looking at? What's that destination?

And when we put our focus on a horizon, it's going to help us to navigate, because if you don't have a reference or a horizon, you can't navigate. So if a plane didn't have a horizon, a plane will drift off course. It's got to have a horizon. Well, our lives work in the same way.

So without a clear destination, we're going to drift. And so I shared the horizon principle, which consists of three things.

And those three things are going to keep you grounded and moving in the right direction. And so I like to ground myself with a word, some sort of word that helps me to stay focused, that gives me. It helps to define my focus.

And then core values. I like to be very clear on my core values. These are the principles that are going to guide me in my decision making as I'm focused on that word. Okay?

And then the people. Who are the people in your life, who are they? Those relationships that, believe it or not, are shaping your future.

And I have a lot of episodes that I talk about people in relationships, because the truth is, your relationships, they do shape your future. And the people in your life are either pushing you toward your destination and pushing you forward, or they're pulling you back.

So I encourage you in the last episode to ask yourself simple questions. Questions like, am I surrounded by the right people? Are my values clear? And am I. Am I focused on the right things? Like, that's a big, big thing.

Am I focused on the right things? So. And then the call to action was very simple. I challenged you to write down 1 to 3 where you want to grow and get specific about it.

So here's an example. Instead of saying, I just want to get healthier you say something like, I want to run a 5K, right?

Instead of saying, I want to improve my finances, you say, I want to save X amount of dollars by the end of the year or within a couple of years, whatever it is. So be specific. All right? Now, when it comes to Horizon, the biggest challenge that most of us have, there are barriers, there are obstacles.

And so one of the things that I want to do today, or just to help you with, is help you to own your growth and overcome your barriers. So own the growth, overcome the barriers.

So what that means is we're going to talk briefly about what holds you back and how you could possibly overcome it. So if we're going to be honest with ourselves, we can have. We can have a great vision, and vision is great to have.

But if you don't take the ownership of that vision, if you don't take ownership of not just the vision, but the barriers that are in front of you, nothing's going to change. So you can own the vision, but you have to also own the reality of the barriers in front of you. So today we're going to break that cycle.

So here's how we're going to do it. First thing that I want you to do is think about what holds you back. All right? Let's get real. What's stopping you from making? Think about this.

What's stopping you from making progress? So here's a couple of things to think about. Is it fear of failure? Is that an example? And if so, what is that fear? And what would you be failing?

The second thing I want you to think about is lack of discipline, or do I have the discipline I want you to really think about? Do you have discipline? Look at your life. Look at the things that you've started and then did you finish?

Look at the discipline in between starting and finish. Were you consistent? That's the way you can look at your discipline. Then the third thing I want you to look at is your environment.

Are you in the wrong environment? Right. Is that a barrier? Is it your environment? So fear of failure, lack of discipline, wrong environment. Or how about this one? This one's big.

And one of the things I do in the uphill community is I help people get Clari. So do you have unclear goals? I believe in creating and getting clarity.

Clarity is first and foremost for you to be successful or for myself to be successful. So here's what I had to learn. Your best thinking in my own life. This is what I thought. Your best thinking got you where you are.

And if you don't like where you are. Guess what that means. You need to change the way you're thinking. All right? That's what I've had to tell myself. My best thinking put me here.

And if I'm not liking where I'm at, I got to think about my thinking. I can't put it on everybody else. I can't put it on my neighbor, can't put it on my spouse. I can't put it on my children. I can't put it on my boss.

I can't blame God. Right? God's not. There's steps that I can take, and I'm a believer, but there are things. I still have to make decisions.

He puts things in front of me to choose and to decide. And if I want to be in God's will, I have to be in alignment with God in order to discern and understand and learn what his will is for my life.

So I've got to get clarity, all right? And I have to think about it. It's my best thinking. I'm still involved. I'm not blindly being just pulled. I'm still making decisions.

So here's the thing. Growth is going to be uncomfortable. These changes will be uncomfortable.

I had to go through intense physical therapy to fix my knees without any surgery. And it was worth it. It was painful. But guess what? I had a choice. I could either stay in that or I can push myself through and go through.

But I had a vision. I had a horizon. I got two beautiful grandchildren to look at that. I want to play with that. I want to be involved with that.

I have all these sports injuries, and I've got plenty of stories to go along with them. But I don't want the sports injuries and the stories to be my trophies. Those are the trophies of the past.

I want to be able to embrace the things of the. The rewards and prizes in front of me and looking at my grandkids and being able to play with them.

I'm going to do everything within my power in order to do that. It's the same thing with getting over anything. That's a better horizon for friendships, relationships, business, all of those things.

I'm going to do the hard best to get there. Okay? So that's how personal growth works, guys. You're going to stay stuck is your choice.

That's the easy good, or you do the hard best and you push through. So that's how personal growth works. If you want a different outcome, you got to change your input.

So here's some steps that I Want you to make, to help you make growth a reality. So how do we break through barriers? Well, we take small specific steps. That's it.

Like me when I went to physical therapy to get my knees where I needed to be. It changed my mental health, my emotional health and my physical health. I'm not kidding.

By doing these weekly activities for one hour at a time in therapy, working my knees, working my knees, grinding those things out. Men where they're bone on bone with just Euflexa gel inside of them. That's all I've had to do and it was painful, but I didn't.

So for instance, small specific steps. If your goal is fitness, then you commit to work out three times a week.

Pick the amount of times, get with someone, figure out what you need to do and to get a plan. The next thing I would encourage if, here's another example, if your goal is for career growth, take an online course. This month.

I'm looking at pursuing some online education stuff myself right now. And I'm sitting here going, why not now I want to do this.

I'm in this phase of my life where I'm looking to do a full on course that's, you know, college level courses, university level, online stuff, not just certificate stuff. So I'm looking at some things because that's what I want and, but I'm going to take a course if I want to have a growth in my career.

Not that I'm self employed, so I'm not looking for that, but I'm looking for how I can add more value to people's lives. And some of this stuff is just for me to grow, just to improve the quality of the human that I am or I'd like to be.

If your goal is financial fitness, then guess what? Get with someone who can work with you financially. Get with a financial advisor, listen to Dave Ramsey, create a budget. I mean, figure it out.

There's things that you can do. But I'm going to tell you the secret to all the growth that you and I are pursuing and what we want to look for or what we're looking for. You ready?

Here it is, the secret. Accountability changes everything. That's right, just accountability.

So if you don't have people, and remember part of your horizon needs to be the people in your neighborhood, who are they? Who do you spend your time with? If you don't have people who push you to grow, you need to find them.

You need to be ruthless about the voices that are in your head and in your life every day. You need to surround yourself with people who challenge you and not just cheer for you.

You don't want people that are going to say, ah, just be comfortable. Ah, just be. It's okay.

Don't be so hard on yourself or people who, who are just with you and they don't challenge you because they're comfortable where they are too, and everything is just good enough. You weren't built to live your life in a good enough thing. And don't get that confused with contentment.

Contentment means I understand that there are limits, but it doesn't mean that I don't push myself to be better so I can have contentment with knowing I've hit my max. But.

But I can tell you where discontentment will be is when I don't work to be the person to maximize what I was created to do and be and settle for less. That's why I'll always struggle with discontentment. And then what I'll ultimately do is treat being content like a consolation prize.

That is good enough. No, contentment to me is first place.

When you learn to find contentment, that means you have, which, you know, I'm going to do a podcast on that I'm going to do. I'm going to do a whole thing on it.

But when you, when you understand and you embrace contentment, it means that you have learned that contentment means you know the max and you know the minimum. And you're okay because you are. You're not in the minimum because you refuse to do the maximum.

And you're not just chasing the maximum as a standard only you understand. When you hit your limit, you understand it and there's balance in there. Yeah, I'm going to turn that into a topic. So, yeah, be ruthless.

Get some accountability. Have people that are going to push you and challenge you. So here's your homework. It's real simple. And this is a short, short episode today.

I want you to first identify one barrier that has held you back. That's what I want you to do. Secondly, I want you to write down three action steps to overcome it. Third, I want you to share it with somebody.

Like, literally go and say, this is what I'm doing. But someone who's going to hold you accountable. Friend, please. Someone that's going to hold you accountable.

So, for instance, the people in the uphill community, what they do is they post it in the group and in the chat and they talk about it and they help one another. We do something that's called office hours, where I'm on and we'll talk about whatever's going on. Doesn't matter what it is, we talk about it.

And it's not just me, it's the folks in the community that help one another. So when you find accountability and you find an accountability partner, build community with them, but also work to add community to it.

And listen, this isn't about talking about this growth. It's about doing the work. It's about doing the hard best for the very best that you can see and have in your life.

Go ahead and get that clarity, raise your standards and embrace your call to and for more. So until next time, you keep climbing and we'll talk soon.