"Don't ever feel guilty about wanting more. I'm not talking about material goods and just stuff and money. I'm talking about pure freedom, freedom and fulfillment in your life where you wake up in the morning excited. You don't wake up feeling like you're in a comfort zone of misery. Trapped in a career you don't like, relationships you don't like with horrible health. Waking up every day, excited to be alive, waking up with a sense of joy, not anxiety, not where you feel like you have to strive and struggle." — Curt Mercadante
This episode brought to our FREE Five Pillars of the Freedom Lifestyle Audio Course. Discern the areas of your life in which you want more freedom and fulfillment, and create your roadmap to get there. Click here to join the course.
In this episode, Curt shares his "Freedom Index" to help you discern the areas in your life where you want (and deserve) more freedom and fulfillment, and goes in depth on The Five Pillars of the Freedom Lifestyle (on which his bestselling book is based).
Click here to join the FREE audio course.
Click here to get the book.
FULL, UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE:
Speaker 1 (Curt Mercadante):
I am Curt Mercadante, welcome freedom lovers. This is the Freedom Media Network, Freedom Friday episode. Today, we're going to talk about freedom. We're going to talk about the five pillars of the freedom lifestyle. But first I want to let you know that today's episode is brought to you by my very own free five pillars of the freedom lifestyle audio course. That's right. It is free. If you go to Curt Mercadante.com, or look somewhere in the show notes, you will find a link. Listen, if you want to discern and discover the areas in your life where you don't feel as free and fulfilled as you desire or deserve, this audio course is for you. It also provides then a roadmap, a simple roadmap to help you create that life of freedom and fulfillment.
Speaker 1:
In today's episode, we're going to talk about the five pillars, but if you want to start that journey, it's free, it's delivered to your inbox. It's audio file. So you can listen to the course, just like a podcast. You don't have to stare at my ugly face, go to CurtMercadante.com. Find the link in the show notes, click it's free, free audio course, five pillars of the freedom lifestyle. Really discover and unlock those areas in which you want and need more freedom and fulfillment in your life and build a simple roadmap to make it happen.
Speaker 1:
And speaking of freedom in the five pillars, we're going to talk about that more today. About two and a half years ago, I published my little book called "Five Pillars Of The Freedom". Lifestyle became an Amazon best seller and given what's happened over the last two years, people have felt less than free for a variety of reasons. And I have found a resurgence in people finding the book, buying the book, reaching out after they read the book, because they want to find that freedom and fulfillment in their life.
Speaker 1:
And I'm here to tell you that whether or not you want to believe it, don't ever feel guilty about wanting more. I'm not talking about material goods and just stuff and money, I'm talking about pure freedom, freedom and fulfillment in your life where you wake up in the morning, excited. You don't wake up feeling like you're in a comfort zone of misery trapped in a career. You don't like relationships. You don't like with horrible health. Waking up every day, excited to be alive, waking up with a sense of joy, not anxiety, not where you feel like you have to strive and struggle. Waking up with a sense of joy and relaxation, excited to meet the day instead of just mediocrity.
Speaker 1:
Now, how do you get there? Well, the five pillars of the freedom lifestyle are meant to provide you a roadmap. But before we get there, we have something called the freedom index. It's 10 statements about each facet of your life because you see you farther those three facets of your life. There's relationships, there's work, and there's self care. A lot of people focus only on work. That's how they judge success and enjoy. And they shoehorn in their relationships and their self care and they find out their relationships suck. Their health sucks. Their self care is nonexistent. Oh, but they have a lot of money. And then you wonder why you feel less than free. But we were told it's all about financial freedom. No, there's three facets of your life. Yes. Work and career, but also relationships and self care. When you go to our free audio course, we read 10 statements to you. It's called the "Freedom Index", 10 statements, things like are your health and fitness excellent? Does your job fulfill you? Are your relationships excellent?
Speaker 1:
A number of questions that you can give rating in terms of how free and fulfilled on a scale of one to 10, you feel in each area. I'm here to tell you deserve a 10 in each area, you deserve a 10 in each area. There are some people who take this freedom index little assessment. And they say, well, I feel really free and fulfilled. And they take it and they discover they're not as free and fulfilled as they want. There's other people who don't feel free and fulfilled, but they have a lot of eight to nine in a lot of area, but maybe relationships are three or a four. You see, you got to be firing on all cylinders. You deserve to fire as a 10 on all cylinders. I'm not talking about struggling to get there. I'm not talking about striving to get there. I'm not talking about being anxious, if you don't get there, I'm talking about bill a life of joy, because it's that joy where freedom truly resides. Joy is where freedom truly resides and you deserve to live a life of joy.
Speaker 1:
So the first step is doing that freedom index. If you go to curtmercadante.com again, click in the show notes, you can take that free assessment. And one of the first modules lead feeds you through your freedom index. You deserve a 10. So what happens? You determine, you decide in these areas in your life where you're not free and fulfilled. Where do we go to next? Welcome to the five pillars. The first pillar is unleashing your superpowers. Everyone has superpowers. Some people will say, well, what if I don't have superpowers? Then your dad, you have super powers. Now I was certified by Gallup as a strengths finder coach in the book, we talk about strengths finder.
Speaker 1:
Anyone can go to Gallup strengthsfinder.com right now, or Gallup strengthscenter.com right now, and take the strengths finder assessment. I also coach people in the disk model of human behavior. We do that in our upcoming boot camps. And we utilize that because you determine those natural innate talents, those natural of thought feeling of behavior that you were born with. They become naturally to you. Once you unlock those and learn how to invest in them, you can turn them into strengths and the best way to success. The best way to freedom and fulfillment isn't to focus on your weaknesses, which is what society teaches you to do. That's called deficit based development. The best way to success is to manage your weaknesses. Yeah, you could be aware of them, but focus on your strengths, amplify your strengths and turn them into super powers.
Speaker 1:
That's the best way to get in the state of flow. It's the best way to be more efficient, more effective, have a better quality of life. Gallup been studying this for half a century and they have reams of data that show when you work in your strength zone, you're more efficient. You're more effective, you're more profitable, you're more productive. So go to Gallup strengthscenter.com. Send me a message. We can take the disk the assessment with you. You can learn your natural talents, how to invest in those, to turn them into strengths and how to unleash those strengths, amplify those strengths to turn them into superpowers.
Speaker 1:
So that brings us to pillar number two, vision. Do you have a clear vision for your life? I'm not just talking about a temporary objective. When we're young, a lot of us think, well, my vision is making partner. My vision is making a hundred thousand dollars a year. My vision is this, those are temporary objectives and it's so common to go through life, bouncing from temporary objective to temporary objective like a pinball and someday, maybe it's 35, 40. It was around 40 years old for me, I've had people come to me. They hit this wall and they're 50. When they realize they've been bouncing around like a pinball and they have no clear vision, they have no guiding star. They're bouncing around aimlessly. They don't know where they're headed. What is this all about? They lack that sense of meaning. That's why coming up with your vision, crafting your clear, compelling vision statement is so vital. It is your guiding star. Because guess what? It's no surprise. Life is going to knock you on your ass. And there's multiple paths that you can choose.
Speaker 1:
Without that guiding star, you get knocked on your ass. You get, oh, my gosh, I'm dirty. I got dust tummy. Where do I go? There's so many paths. Where do I go? With that guiding star, life can knock you down. You get back up, you dust yourself off. It's easy to know which path to choose because you have decided and defined clearly where you want to go. It's like the old days, right? If we wanted to go, we didn't have GPS. We didn't have Google maps. We had to put down a paper map. And before we planned our trip, we had to put a pin in our destination. Before we reversed engineered it, we're going to get to the reverse engineering in a second. But you first put in the pin in the map where you want to go. That is your vision statement. Everyone, you included deserve a one sentence clear and compelling vision statement. That is simple. That's aspirational. That's inspirational. That is motivational.
Speaker 1:
Again, you can go read more about this in my book. You can go to curtmercadante.com. Go down in the show notes, take our free five pillars of the freedom lifestyle, audio course. There are free and simple activities to help you craft your one sentence, vision statement for your life, which brings us to the third pillar alignment. Alignment. Now you may be saying alignment. It's all about balance. I'm seeking work life balance. I want more work life balance. Every day I get people reaching out, Curt, can you help me get more work life balance? My answer is no. And they say why? My simple answer is this. The term work life balance is bullshit. It is a myth. It doesn't exist. And your next question might be why because you got to put it all into work?
Speaker 1:
No, because there's not work and life, there's just life. You can't separate the two that's when we get ourselves in trouble. Oh, life is like a Seesaw or a Teeter totter when I put everything into work, I don't put it into life and vice versa. No, you can live a life of alignment. Forget balance, there's three facets of your life. Yeah, there's work and career, but there's relationships and self care. The key to freedom and fulfillment is defining a life in which your days are aligned where you don't need to take two weeks vacation. Take a vacation if you want it, but you shouldn't be worn out at the end of every year, just so you can balance it out with two weeks with your family. A lot of the ways people look at balances, oh, you know what? I'm working on this project and I'm going to put my head down and ignore my relationships, my self care for two weeks until the project is over.
Speaker 1:
And when it's over it all balance out because I'll come home, I'll go for a walk. I'll take my wife on a date, whatever it is. Now, if that happens and that's a big, if, a lot of times that two weeks turns into two months, turns into a year, turns into five years, turns into what I call the 65 year plan. How many people have you are either on that plan or know people who are? Oh, it all balance out when I'm 65 and I retire, then we'll travel the world. Then we'll spend time together and do all those things. Listen, there's no guarantee that you or I are going to be healthy or alive tomorrow. We spend our lives waiting instead of living, oh, balance will come at some point in the future. I'm here to tell you that just in my family, heart attack, knee replacement, stroke cancer between the ages of 64 and 67.
Speaker 1:
All that time that was spent waiting was for not because there's no guarantee that tomorrow will happen much less 65. And those people like to blame it on luck. It is not luck. It is your decision. It was your choice to wait instead of live. It was your choice to keep putting off this mythical balance. It was your choice to keep putting off life. It was your choice to keep putting off enjoyment. It was your choice. You are not a victim of circumstance. You're not a victim of luck. You are a victim of your decision to spend your life waiting, instead of living. You deserve and you can start living your life of alignment now. You put that pin in the map and you decide, what do I want my days to look like? What do I want them to feel like? Listen, we all have 24 hours in day.
Speaker 1:
You take away seven or eight hours of sleep. We have 16 hours in which to live in aligned life, work, relationships and self care. How do you want that to look? You can define it. Go to our free audio course. There are activities there to help you. There's one of my favorite activities. The pizza pie activity, helps you define your life of alignment. So you've defined your vision statement. You define what your life of alignment is like. And then we start reverse engineering, which brings us to the fourth pillar, which is outcomes. These aren't goals, these aren't monetary goals, they're outcomes because you define where you want to go. You put that pin in the map and then you reverse engineer it to create your mile posts. When my wife and I and our kids travel, we define where we want to go.
Speaker 1:
And then we reverse engineer it. So I determine turn, all right, we're going to stop here and eat lunch. We're going to stop here and go to the bathroom. All those things it's like that with life. And yet most people like to set these big audacious goals and not reverse engineering. Some people like to just throw spaghetti against the wall that see what sticks instead of reverse engineering, or they set this big audacious goal. They don't do the reverse engineering. And all they see is this big goal and they never hit it. And it comes to December 15th and they say, wait till next year. But when you set your long term outcomes, when you define your vision, when you define what alignment looks like and you reverse engineer it so that every year, every month, every week, every day, you know just the three outcomes you need to achieve each day to move you toward those outcomes.
Speaker 1:
Over 365 days, three outcomes a day, that's over a thousand outcomes, but most people don't do it every day because they haven't reversed engineered. So you define your vision. You define alignment, you reverse engineer it to determine those key outcomes. That's where the map comes in. You reverse engineer it every year, every month, every week, every day. And all of these combined allows you to get there in a state of flow. I'm here to tell you that the hustling grind pornographers here all over social media are wrong. They are trying to sell you dis empowerment. You are disempowered. Pay me to motivate you. That is your only hope. They are wrong. Flow beats grind every day of the week. Imagine you're water in a mountain stream and you're flowing down toward your vision and boulders come down from the mountain. Those boulders are life challenges, business challenges, whatever.
Speaker 1:
Now the hustling grind pornographers would tell you to swim up to those boulders and punch them till you're bloody. And when you have to give up, when you're full of blood, sweat, and tears, and you're tired, they'll tell you're weak. Give me more money and I'll motivate you more. Well, I'd rather be in a state of flow. This is what I teach my clients. When you're flowing down and those boulders come in because you know clearly where you want to go, you reverse engineered it. You're better able to just flow to the right or flow to the left around those boulders. And when you do it, I hope you wave at hustling grind pornographers who are bleeding and sweaty, not only that they're stuck behind the boulder, you are ahead of them. It's more effective and more efficient flow is the way to get there. And flow is de cumulative impact of the first four pillars of the freedom, lifestyle, superpowers, vision alignment, and outcomes.
Speaker 1:
The final pillar is flow. Now this was a very quick version of the "Five Pillars of the Freedom Lifestyle". There are two ways that you can dive in. One is go get the book on Amazon. You can go get the book "Five Pillars Of The Freedom Lifestyle", but you don't need to do that. In fact, before you read the book, I suggest going to my website, curtmercadante.com. Look for the link somewhere in these notes, show notes, wherever you're watching or listening, click on it and take our free five pillars of the freedom lifestyle audio course, we go into much more depth than I have on this episode. And it's very easiest it's delivered to your inbox.
Speaker 1:
First, you go through the freedom index and then you go through each, there are activities to help you go through each of the five pillars to help create that roadmap to the life of freedom and fulfillment you desire and deserve. It's free delivered to your inbox. It's audio files. You can listen to it like a podcast, the five pillars of the freedom lifestyle. And I just want to finish today by saying you deserve a life of freedom and fulfillment. There's a lot of things that have happened in recent years that have made people feel less than free and rightfully so. I'm not talking politically. I'm not talking economic, I'm talking all about it.
Speaker 1:
And I like to ask people, what does freedom mean to you? The key here is what does it mean to you? Your version of freedom? Shouldn't be limited by my version of freedom. What does freedom mean to you? Not your parents, not your teachers, not the people who brought you up, whatever it is. Get rid of that programming. Get in a state of joy. That is where freedom resides. Get in a state of zero where you're not just guided or limited by the bogus beliefs with which you've been programmed. That creates anxiety. It creates anything but joy. You deserve it.
Speaker 1:
The first step is giving yourself permission to admit to yourself that you deserve a 10, 10 out of 10, when it comes to freedom and fulfillment in every facet of your life. The next step is realizing that freedom is more than just what you do for work. Freedom is more than just the money in your bank account. Freedom encompasses yes, your working career, but your relationships and your self care.
Speaker 1:
Go take that audio course, you're going to learn to discern the areas in your life where you want and need more freedom and fulfillment and get a simple roadmap in the way the five pillars to help you build that life. I want to thank you for joining us on another episode. This is the Freedom Media Network. I am your host Curt Mercadante, have a wonderful rest of your Friday and incredible weekend and incredible life filled with freedom and abundance. Take care.