263: End Destination Thinking, Enjoy the Process, and Complete Daily Goals with Motivational Speaker Todd Lemense

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show Episode 263 end destination thinking enjoy the process and complete daily goals with motivational speaker Todd limits.

Unknown Speaker 0:12 Hey, everybody,

Robert Plank 0:12 and welcome back to the Robert Plank show. And let's welcome back our very first return guest ever on the show a few 100 interviews, very first guy to come back because he's just that good Mr. Todd laments. motivational speaker, how are things today, Mr. Todd? Oh, Rob, everything's great. How are you? super fantastic, better than ever can't complain. And so, you know, less than that we talked about, you had a bunch of cool stuff to share with us. But then at the end, we can remember at a time and he said that you had even better stuff such as destination thinking. So can you kind of tell us maybe about this destination thinking and maybe even what you've been up to last few months and stuff like that?

Speaker 2 0:49 Absolutely a destination thinking, us as humans were instilled with thinking that some life events going to happen. And I'll give you an example, graduated from college, getting a dream job, having a new baby, you know, new parents getting married. And so what happens is, let's say, let's just take the one having a baby, what happens when you when a baby's on the way What do you have, you have a baby shower, and you get lots of gifts, you get clothes that the kid grows in two days, and you get diapers? Well, when the baby's born, that's when it's time to do the labor. That's when the work start. And anyone who's been a parent knows that parenting is a lot of work. And it's a little bit of love. You know, and same thing with getting married people will 99.9% of the population will spend more time planning the wedding, and the honeymoon. And then after that's over, that's when the work starts and and relationships at work are a lot of work. You know, so we got to think that, you know, once you graduate from college, and get your dream job, that's when it's time to earn the highest salary that you get, that's when it's time to do a lot of work. Because high salaries come with, of course, high expectations.

Robert Plank 1:56 Interesting. So So I mean, what's sort of the what's what's the takeaway from that? Is it that, you know, everyone's only looking at like, the one big day the one big payoff, and there's more to it, or sort of what's the is that like, that way that people normally think about those events? Is that incorrect? Is there a better way? What's the way that we should be feeling about all that,

Speaker 2 2:14 I think we just got to concentrate on processes. You know, it's, um, I used to think that once I made a certain amount of money, I would just be happy. And I would just have no more problems, or if I met somebody special, but you know, life isn't static, it's it keeps moving. So we have to kind of kind of get, you know, kind of like exercise, and you have to get that muscle memory of this is going to be a marathon, you're not not just a short sprint.

Robert Plank 2:40 I gotcha. So so people need to maybe enjoy the process more and stop and stop hoping for like that one big day where everything is going to change or that you know, better job or that better partner, and that's suddenly going to change everything, when in fact, people sort of take you take you with you, right?

Speaker 2 2:56 Absolutely. We see this in relationships, you know, when it's when it's a new relationship, your President, you're passionate, you know, you put the other person first you give that person lots of attention. But what happens over time, less and less attention to that person or less less, and then what happens, the relationship will start to deteriorate, because you're not being present and passionate anymore. And you wonder why it doesn't work the way he used to, it's because we were not putting the time in like we used to.

Robert Plank 3:23 So with all that kind of stuff, where you know, we need to, you know, do that, that daily effort and stuff like that, how do we sort of prevent ourselves from getting tired or getting bored from kind of, you know, doing the work every single day, so to speak.

Speaker 2 3:37 I think that as humans we run a lot of is fear and hope. You know, we have to, we have to have expectations, and we have to have daily goals on every part of our life. And that's spiritual health, financial, everything we're doing. And for me, it's important, just be busy. Because when I'm not busy, I sit around and I feel sorry for myself. And so I think life is short and end to just do as much as you can, while you can, it's never gonna get easier than it is right now. You know, we always think that down the road five years from now, I'm going to have more money while I save or more resources. Well, if I haven't saved any money in the last 15 years, what makes me makes me think I'm doing next 15 months, you know,

Robert Plank 4:19 right? Well, cool. So people need to be sort of maybe maybe more aware of those expectations and those daily goals and like the spiritual and the health and financial stuff in sort of along those terms, you know, you're mentioning like those kinds of errors, people maybe need to, you know, do better or be more aware. So is there like a, Is there like a checklist or some kind of like, do you yourself like go through those sorts of categories? Or like how do we even know like, you know, what, what needs help there? How do we take that out?

Speaker 2 4:50 So the Great question, what I usually do when it comes to inventory, is I look at a lot of times when I go and speak to groups and talk to to high achievers, one of the things they always say It makes me almost scream is they say, Well, I don't have that problem. Or Yeah, that's, that's not me, I got that handled. And that's destination thinking in itself, I like to look at it, like, if you're already good in an area, I look at it like an education, kindergarten through high school, if you're already naturally inclined for certain things, then you should hold yourself to a higher standard on those. If you're in high school on certain subjects, you should be in college, you should graduate from Harvard. And then vice versa, if there's things you know, for me, it was emotional maturity, I'm a very emotional person. And, and sometimes it's gotten the best of me, and in my dealings with people, I can be kind of, you know, have a bad temper, or get angry easily. So I'm in the third grade on that. So that's something I have to least to get competent. In, I want to get into middle school or high school, at least, I might not go to Harvard, but better than I am right now.

Robert Plank 5:51 And that's a pretty good way of thinking about it. And, and I've kind of realized that I've done that myself without realizing it, but like, sort of, there's all these areas where I just need to like kind of kind of study or be more aware or, or even like, even to the point where like, you know, sometimes especially as like, you know, work a home entrepreneur, like there'll be some days when I'm just not motivated, or days where I'm super stressed out. And I've noticed that like, if I sort of study that problem that I have, and I realized number one that other people kind of have that same problem as me. And then number two, I can overtime, kind of sort of sort out all those raw emotions into like words and phrases and sentences, and then I can kind of then look up sort of the antidote, I guess, or like the comeback phrase for that. And I mean, do you kind of experience something sort of similar where like, just that sort of converting that all those raw thoughts and emotions into words helps.

Speaker 2 6:45 It does, you know, I write 500 words every day, and they're all self help, I think self help 24 seven, and, and so when I see when I run across something that happens, I think it's really hard when you know, when something bothers you is when it's true. If someone insults you, and it's not true, it doesn't bother you. It's, it's when something sensitive, that you're sensitive about, or they try and secure about and someone touches on that hurts your feelings. And so I'm ultra sensitive to other people's feelings, I had experience, I'm working on a speech. And when I do a speech, I practice at the gym, there's the aerobics room, and there's mirrors all around. So there's a lot of time, there's people in there listening. And I had experienced a young woman who just graduated from she got a secondary degree in forensic science. And she got her dream job and, and she said that, that was the speech, I was talking about the destination thinking happened to her because she gets his dream job. And none of it is what she thought it was gonna be, it's paying half as much as she thought. They're not treating it with respect, they're not giving you the resources she wanted. And she feels really, I guess to say, desperate, like, like, I made a life decision and made this commitment and it hasn't worked down and I know exactly how she feels. Because a lot of times you arrive at these big goals and dreams and and you're like, Is this it? I can't believe I did all this work and, and I'm totally miserable. So I think people have to keep moving and keep thinking that there's more, you know, I think with destination thinking you can really put yourself in limits your options for happiness in life.

Robert Plank 8:13 And then in that sort of destination thinking, how do we keep ourselves from like, if there's, if there's always more if we know like, Okay, well, I'm not just gonna stop when I, you know, hit the first, you know, big milestone, how do we, how do we keep doing more, but at some point, be happy? Like, how do we avoid that whole trap of just wanting more and more never being happy.

Speaker 2 8:33 I think enjoy what you said earlier, join the little victories. We don't have to, you know, to win the Superbowl to be to be a good football player, you know, you're, you're winning every game and, and just enjoy the practices. And every part of it. I try to for my own life, the I think the quality of our lives is the quality of our relationships. And I tried to enjoy everybody for the way they are right now. And and I don't plan on them changing. And when you focus if you get outside of yourself when you get outside yourself and put to focus on that focus on Team focus on group focus on winning, as opposed to focus on Robert and focus on Todd. That seems to be a lot healthier way to live, I think.

Robert Plank 9:16 Okay, so enjoy people for the way they are right now. And I totally get that. And then it sort of makes me think of like, the other day, I was kind of thinking that, you know, like, any of us, if we think back, you know, like 10 to 15 years, we think about like the old, you know, apartment, we lived in the old car and the people were around. I mean, I mean, I know that I would give a ton just to be able to sort of relive that just to kind of go back for a second and just kind of see my old play, see my old stuff. And then I was thinking about that. And I was like, Well, you know that that's right now and you know, five years from now, 10 years from now, I'm gonna be looking back at today being like, Man, that those were the good old days in a sense and so it's like, kind of kind of blew my own mind for a second there as far as like that whole like appreciating everything. That's around. And so, you know, you mentioned a few minutes ago that you know, you do a lot of self help stuff, you write a lot of self help stuff, there's like self help in your head all the time, do you ever sort of get like self helped out or get just like too much of a jargon kind of crammed in your head and stuff like that, I, what

Speaker 2 10:15 I do is I get upset with myself with the I know better than this. So so you know, you don't always have good days, and I'm not always positive. And then you get that kind of feeling like, you should be above this by now. And, and I've come to the realization that I'm going to be battling my demons for the rest of my life, it's not going to be something I'm just gonna overcome. And, and that's gonna be it. It's net, I've come to the, you know, in this country, we're number one last 20 years or two things, the sale of recreational drugs and the sale of antidepressants. Americans, we feel like we should be happy all the time. And what and what that's doing is setting us up for unrealistic expectations. So we're bound to be not happy all the time. So we have to accept that, you know, not every day is gonna be a good day.

Robert Plank 11:03 Fair enough, and sort of good to manage those expectations going in. And so, you know, you you do a lot of, like, you know, motivational speaking and stuff like that. And I'm sure that you've got like some really good stories, some really good, like, sort of go to stories that, that you use a lot that, you know, kind of give us a good message and help us out. So do you have anything like that in your arsenal?

Speaker 2 11:23 I do. I do one of my one on ones I like to share about his managers and who like to complain about people babysitting people, or if people just do their job, you know, they get this kind of sarcastic tone. And I've been here 20 years, and if people would just do their job, and I always stop them right there. And so if you've been here 20 years, you should know 20 people that you've either work with or you call up and recruit to the company. And they just kind of stare at me and I said, Well, you don't know. 2020 is a lot You must at least know too. And then I tell him about babysitting. I said you know I have two of my favorite celebrities. One is a Grammy winning American Idol when Carrie Underwood, the country singer, and the other one is the five time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady. And Carrie Underwood has a singing coach that she works with every day. And Tom Brady has a quarterback coach that he works with every day. So do you think that Carrie Underwood's coach or vocal coach on the way to the studio says, What's going on with Carrie? She's been singing since she's in the church choir, she wanted American idols. She's recorded hundreds 1000s of songs. She doesn't know how to sing yet. And the same with Tom Brady's quarterback coach, you drive into the facility does he say? What's wrong with Tom, his dad taught him how to throw a football. You know, he went to Michigan played in the Rose Bowl, he still does not to play football. And then on the flip side, do you think Tom Brady and Carrie Underwood says, I don't need someone micromanaging me telling me what to do on the rich famous one. Of course they don't they work as hard as they can they surround themselves to the absolute best people, they can they pay him with their own money. And they listen to every word they say because they want to get 1% better, they'll do whatever it takes. And because there's such a high level, they'll do whatever it takes just to stay at the same level they're already at. So that's one of my go to stories.

Robert Plank 13:14 Awesome. And there's so much good stuff in there. Just that, you know, we're I mean, if if it's good enough for Carrie Underwood and Tom Brady, and probably like every successful athlete, every successful musician you've heard of has had, like, you know, has tons of coaches that at the same time and, and I imagine that I mean, I'm not like a huge, you know, sports person, but but I used to play like little league baseball. And a lot of the times when we would do like practice and stuff, it was just like fundamentals, just you know, catch fly balls, like hit grounders. And just like all the simple stuff over and over, because it's like, as soon as we think we have a, we have a handle on that or as soon as you want to move on to other stuff, but we're not careful, we kind of lose track of those of those basics. So that's super freakin awesome that, um, that you know, all these super, I mean, like the top top people in the world, not only are they they know that they're not too good for a coach that everyone still needs a coach, but like you said, even just to get 1% better, or even just to stay at that level is totally worth it for them. So good stuff.

Speaker 2 14:14 Well, we think about that in the corporate, you know, in work, we think, Oh, I'm the boss. I know at all, I've been that person. And that's just not true. The best bosses and the best leaders are looking to get better. You know, and, and like you said, maybe not even get better. But go back to I think there's more value in going back and doing the basics that God has promoted that God is where we are. Because that's what that's what's really our strengths are. You know, sometimes we take on a new person persona, because now we're in charge. But the reason we got promoted was because we outworked everybody. And we did we did the basics so well.

Robert Plank 14:49 Right. And yeah, and it's almost like for some people, maybe, maybe we were, you know, young and hungry and motivated 10 years ago and maybe some people got to maybe like rose to a level of their income. competence and kind of got to a certain position and kind of got fat and happy, maybe need to go back and look at their older stuff. And I think that, like, for me as like a, like an internet marketing person like I, the other day, I had to redo some videos, like some videos for membership site had to go and like, you know, convert them and re upload them again. And like I happen to play a couple of them. And this was like, you know, suffering like six or seven years ago when I was thinking like, Whoa, like, this guy's, this, this sounds like a different like, this whole time, I thought that I was more or less the same person that was even you know, 567 years ago, but even listen to this, this kind of slightly older stuff. I'm like, well, maybe I should listen to a little bit of this and maybe even see if, you know, see how I've changed? Was that change good or bad? Did I like forget a few things? Is that worth kind of revisiting? So yeah, I mean, even just kind of going back to some of that, that older stuff, and maybe seeing, you know, what was my frame of mind? What was my work ethic, what how you know, hydrolate behave and act back then I mean, huge.

Speaker 2 15:58 Yeah, that's, that's a good point. And, and that's a good way of doing it, because you have a way of measuring it. Sometimes we think we're always better now, because we're older and wiser. But that's not always the case, sometimes our energy enthusiasm that we used to have, that we've let negativity beat out of us. And we think we know better. A lot of times when we're talking to people, we, we don't represent ourselves as well as we could, because we kind of think being the leading actor and actresses in our own life, we think everyone's been following us full time. And they're not there, they're living their own movie. So a lot of times,

Robert Plank 16:29 we have to get back to two to communicate a little bit better. Awesome, and and sort of get a get a better handle on that story. Because I mean, you're so right. It's like, we've we've been with ourselves every waking moment, but then other people might have only kind of seen what we're doing here and there, or maybe haven't heard from us in a couple years. And so we don't know what someone else's story of us is for sure.

Speaker 2 16:51 Absolutely. You know, anytime you made a good point about, you know, why someone successful, there's no one in the world, you know, anytime I talk to any successful people, and they start talking about how tough they've had it and and how they got successful, I found that successful people are very poor, self valuators. And so they'll go into a thing about, you know, how tough it was uphill both ways. And I always stop them and say, Well, tell me about the breaks and people that have helped you too. Because that's as much of the story is just the hard times, right? You know, and everybody, like you said, Rob, every single person who's successful has had a lot of people help them, and a lot of breaks, and they've made a lot of their own breaks, but they still have been there. So you have to appreciate those two, you know, you have to surround yourself the right people, and you have to be thankful. And you have to be grateful.

Robert Plank 17:38 Right? And like, what's that saying? You probably know that saying, like, isn't there like, there's, there's like three types of people like the ones that, like helped you out of the hole, or the ones that like puts you in the hole? Or like there's something like that, like there's, there's like those those categories, the people in your life? And it's like, and yeah, good, good, good reminder for all of us to kind of remember those people who helped us out as well.

Speaker 2 17:59 And don't forget those people that have hurt you that have made us in so much pain that we said, You know what, the people that are fired, I am most thankful for people who have fired me from jobs because I needed to get fired. And I went on to bigger and better things. And I'm thankful for the people who have left me in relationships that are treating me badly, because it makes me appreciate people treat me well. You know, so not everything that happens to us that bad is really bad. It's in our best interest.

Robert Plank 18:25 Right? That's good perspective. So so just to kind of recap, as we're starting to wind down and I want to make sure that we, you know, talk about about you and what you've been doing lately. But so just to kind of recap this destination thinking. So basically, people have always kind of have this tendency to look at these life events having a baby getting married, and they, they kind of they kind of so what's the problem there? Exactly. So just the weekend recap. So they have this life event coming up. And the problem is what exactly

Speaker 2 18:55 they don't realize that it's a process another thing with you know, let's the new new baby being born and this and that. People think as the kid gets older, it's gonna get easier, they think, oh, once the child's walking or once the child's walking, it's gonna get easier and then once the child's in school, or once the kids driving Well, everyone knows it doesn't get easier just gets different. You know, so we have to keep in mind we have to be profitable, what we talked about earlier, enjoying the journey, you know, keeping everything in perspective that went along, we're going to enjoy more of it not just just not just events, not just graduations.

Robert Plank 19:30 Awesome. So So the answer is enjoy every day, not just the one event that's coming out that's going to be there and gone before you know it and and it sounds like we should also be avoiding that. If only blank happened and now only I'd be happy so so awesome stuff. So destination thinking good thing for people to be aware of and have a solution for and just so that everyone knows what you're up to as far as like the speaking and everything else. What's been going on with you.

Speaker 2 19:56 I've been very busy. I'm doing two radio shows a day. I did over 60 speaking gigs this year. So next year, I want to do twice that many.

Robert Plank 20:06 Awesome. So to make sure that you hit that goal and exceeded, where which, where should people go to find out about you? Like should people go to find out about you to, like hire you for their event? Or like, who should go in and check out Mr. Todd and where should they go to do that?

Speaker 2 20:22 Just follow me on Twitter. I have over 200,000 followers on Twitter. I'm very active on there. And if you reach out to me, I'll always respond back to you.

Robert Plank 20:30 Awesome. And what's that Twitter username?

Speaker 2 20:32 It's Todd underscore, and my last name is Ellie, m. n se.

Robert Plank 20:37 All right, good stuff. So everyone should go to Twitter and check out Todd underscore, l e. m e n s. e. Todd lemons. And thanks so much, Tom for sharing some of that wisdom and getting all of us entrepreneurs back on track to where you want to be. So I appreciate you stopping by the show today. Thanks for having me on Robert flatfile awesome right back atcha

Unknown Speaker 20:57 please

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