Student Of Life Podcast

In today's podcast we look at doubt and confidence, how to build confidence and overcome doubt.   We review the five strategies for overcoming doubt:   Revisit Past Successes Stop Worrying about what other people think Talk to some Encouraging Load up on Inspiration Don't do Nothing   Thank you for listening to Student of Life. If you enjoyed it, please review us at iTunes and Stitcher. It makes a difference and encourages others to check out the show.   Also, Joe's new novel, Rooster's Leap, is now available on Amazon. Please check it out here.

What you believe about yourself is just as important to your success as your skills and talents.  Are you overvaluing or undervaluing your abilities?   In today's podcast we look at the Dunning-Kruger Effect and how having Superiority Illusion can hurt you.   We review the seven behaviors which help you to discover your Purpose:   Quiet Time Step outside your comfort zone every day Surround yourself with people you admire Weed negative people and negative thoughts out of your life Stop lying to yourself - No more excuses Never stop learning Become an aggressive goal setter   We examine how to study yourself to discover where you might be over or under valuing your abilities and talents.  Finally, we lay out a plan for how to apply metrics to your core competencies, which allows you to gather data to demonstrate where you measure up or fall short.   Thank you for listening to Student of Life. If you enjoyed it, please review us at iTunes and Stitcher. It makes a difference and encourages others to check ou

Everyone has goals and dreams they hope to achieve.  What's keeping you from going after yours? Are you willing to do what it takes to accomplish something significant? It all starts with discipline and sacrifice. "Flipping the Switch" allows you to create great momentum by implementing positive behaviors that move you toward your goals.   In today's podcast we cover the four steps that allow you to Flip the Switch...   The Trigger - The event or thought that gets you started The Path - The clear goal and defined plan for reaching your goal The Mindset - Understanding your own psychology to create an All In mentality The Grind - Building your sacrifice muscles so you can accomplish the little things that make a big difference.   Thank you for listening to Student of Life. If you enjoyed it, please review us at iTunes and Stitcher. It makes a difference and encourages others to check out the show.

Fear keeps many people from being everything they created to be, from achieving their potential, from realizing their vision for themselves, and being able to spend more time working in their purpose. For many, fear is the biggest impediment to fulfilment in their lives.   What’s the definition of fear? Fear is an unpleasant emotion cause by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat.   The key part of that definition is two words: the belief.   Some fears do have to do with something really causing pain or being a threat, but many of our fears are simply the belief that there will be pain or a threat. It’s not real, but we allow those beliefs to get in the way of us being able to do the things that we want to do.   So, if this belief can stop us from achieving our goals, why we were created with fear as one of our emotions?   If you’re walking through the woods and all of a sudden you see a mama grizzly bear and two cubs, if you’re smart you’re probably fearful and wa

Are you allowing ‘defensive thinking’ to negatively impact your life? Today, we examine two kinds of defensive thinking, Brain Spin and Piñata Mind.   Brain Spin Brain Spin is when you are fixated on just one thought and your brain spins in circles over and over again. What makes Brain Spin defensive thinking is your thoughts are just spinning around and your brain is not working out solutions. Your brain is going too fast, creating anxiety and stress, as well as the inability to think clearly. It’s defensive because you are allowing your brain to happen to you. You are allowing outside influences and problems to have an impact on your ability to function because you are allowing that spin to happen.   Overcoming Brain Spin How do you stop yourself from falling into the Brain Spin trap?   S-P-I-N   When you have Brain Spin, go on offense. It’s a simple process: just remember the word “spin.” There’s a little exercise you can do to stop the spin and get yourself back on even footing, where you can take control

Your mindset is the biggest tool that determines whether or not you’re successful or have fulfillment in your life? It’s how you think and the filters you perceive the world through.   There are some people who naturally take in what the world throws at them and see all the possibilities. There are other people who only see limitations.   Which one are you? Do you see unlimited possibilities or do you think about all the things that could stop you?   The space between your ears is the biggest determiner of whether or not you’re going to have what you want in life, and whether or not you’re going to achieve fulfillment and success.   Pie People and River People For Pie People, there is a finite amount of all the success, fulfillment and abundance in the world. To them, there is a limited amount, like pie. If one person is successful, it means there is a little bit less of the success pie for the next person. If you are a pie person, and you see other people doing well and having success, you percieve that as l

Everyone has greatness within them. God has put potential in everybody, but are you playing your part to achieve that potential?   To Joe, potential is the maximum level of success or fulfillment you could possibility reach. If you squeezed out every ounce of that special something in you, to do what you were created to do, and you overcame every obstacle and you shed off all the negatives that come at you, what you will achieve then would be your full potential.   Another great definition of potential is “the best version of yourself.” If you take all the skills, experiences, qualities that you’ve got and you distill it down to the best you can possibly be, that’s achieving your potential.   Every one should strive to achieve their potential but too many people don’t work hard to achieve it. It’s also really easy to get caught up in things that get you off track, and cause you to lose focus. As a result, very few people achieve their full potential.   There are three things that have a direct impact on wheth

Do you start your day with a win every day? Are you on offense or do you start your day playing defense?   A morning routine is hugely important because it protects your energy and confidence. When you start the day with a routine where you know exactly what you’re going to do, it’s kind of like starting an engine. You get that thing rolling because you just go through the same process every day. There is no decision to make. There is no problem to solve. You just do the same thing on a regular basis to get the day going.   Remember the biggest drains of energy and confidence are problem solving and decision-making. Morning rituals and routines take all of that out of the equation.   Mark Twain said, ‘Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.’   You want to use the morning, when you have the most energy and the most confidence, to get the big things done in your day.   Are you operating each day in your purpose, the reason God created you? Are you doi

Energy and confidence are the fuel for your vision. How do you protect them?   By the term energy, Joe means your actual physical energy. It’s the physical stamina you have to get things done that need to be done. Confidence is your emotional and mental energy. It’s having the resolve to deal with problems as they arise.   Confidence and energy are very much like a battery. Picture the battery on your cell phone. There are some days you are dealing with all kinds of phone calls, working with apps and all kinds of things are going on. Before the end of the day, the battery is completely drained and the phone is worthless unless you recharge it. Then, there's other days where that phone is barely used. You might make a couple of calls here and there but you’re not really using it. At the end of the day, it’s got 70 or 80 percent of the battery charge still remaining.   That's like your confidence and energy in real life. Some days it's drained down, other days you've got unlimited amounts of it. If you have 27

It’s a force that drives you towards success or failure, and most people don’t pay it much attention: culture. Most people think about culture in terms of a business culture. But if you’re the leader of a team, you need your personal culture in line for your business culture to fall into place.   Joe’s definition of culture is your environment. When done intentionally, it's a philosophy about life and business that you play out, that's played out by your team and those around you. At its worst it's a demoralizing and destructive force. At its best, it’s an uplifting, motivating force that gives you momentum. It's a rising tide that lifts all boats, carries your team forward, and gives you and your team the ability to keep pushing.   Culture is one of those things that even if you don't pay attention to it, will still come to be. If you have a team and you don't create a culture intentionally, it's going to grow organically and it's probably not going to be what you want it to be. It's no fun to fight a bad cu

Fulfillment is when your purpose and core values are in full alignment with each other. Naturally, core values and purpose are two of the first things Joe covered, in episodes 3 and 4. You need to spend the time figuring those two things out.   When you take the two together and ask yourself, ‘What do I believe? Why was I born?’ the next logical question is ‘Who or what do I want to be?’ That is vision, and that’s the topic for today’s episode.   It’s really important that you know what your core values and purpose are when working on your vision. If you’re filtering your vision through your core values and your purpose, you’re much more likely to come up with a vision that will bring you fulfillment.   If you’re just coming up with a vision without thinking those other things through, you might be running 100 miles an hour in the complete wrong direction. So if you haven’t yet, go back and listen to episode 3 about core values and episode 4 on purpose before you listen to this one.   Doing the hard work of f

Do you believe God created you for a reason? Every one of us has a reason to be on this earth and it’s up to each individual to go through the exercise of figuring it out so that we can live up to the potential that’s been placed in us, serving people and world in the way that we were created to do.   If you are not sure what your purpose is, there are some questions you might ask yourself to help you figure it out. You want to look at things that give you hints as to why you were created. Your answers to the following questions will give you a good idea of what your purpose might be.   What brings you joy? What do you lose yourself in doing? What are the activities you do that are so engrossing you lose track of time? All of a sudden it’s 6 hours later and you’re looking at the clock wondering how the time passed so fast. Where in your life are you of the most value to other people? When you are solving some sort of problem for other people, what problem are you solving? In which area are your friends alway

What do you believe? You can never truly know yourself if you don’t take time to figure out the answer to this question. As Joe discussed in Episode 1, you can’t achieve fulfillment without knowing your core values and aligning them with your purpose. Core values and beliefs also build your personal and business culture. If you don’t know what you believe, how can you attract other people that believe the same things you do? Clearly defined core values allow you to attract the kind of people you want around you, and they repel the kind of people you don’t want around you. That’s the beauty of it.   The journey of self-knowledge begins with a single list Back in 2008, Joe had one of the greatest honors of his career. One of his mentors was Howard Brinton, a fantastic sales trainer, well known in real estate, whose company called Star Power Systems inspired thousands of real estate agents to get better at what they do. He invited people at the top of their business to be the ‘Star of the Month’, where they woul

Welcome back to the Student of Life podcast with your host Joe Hafner. In last week’s episode, Joe looked at fulfillment and what that means. Today's question: are success and fulfillment the same thing? It’s great to have both but you can have one without the other, which Joe has experienced. As discussed in the last episode, fulfillment is when your purpose is in full alignment with your core values. But what is success? To show the difference between success with fulfillment and success without fulfillment, Joe explains some of his story. Early financial success By time Joe reached his early 30s, he had achieved a fair amount of success. He had learned real estate from one of the top real estate agents in America, was responsible for getting him featured in Time Magazine, had been his primary editor on two books published by Harper Collins, co-authored with him a pair of real estate books, and had bought and flipped close to 200 single family residences. Back in the early 2000s, Joe was buying property on

  Welcome to Student of Life Podcast, a podcast for people seeking personal and professional fulfillment, guided by your host Joe Hafner. In this episode, Joe gives an overview of what this podcast series will be covering in the coming weeks and why he’s so excited about it. He wants to help you come up with questions to ponder in your quiet time, figure out what you’re great at doing and create a space where you know you’re listening to a kindred spirit. Your mind is a ‘use it or lose it’ organ. The goal of this podcast is to always give you reason to be using it, because the learning doesn’t have to end when you finish your education. Remember, fulfillment is not a destination, it’s a way of life. You never really gain full fulfillment, it’s something to always seek. Fulfillment is achieved when the purpose you were created for is fully aligned with your personal core values. A Student of Life A student of life is someone who is seeking personal and professional fulfillment. He or she is a seeker of knowled