Welcome to better today with your host Shawn Maguire, and with over 25 years of counseling experience, this is the podcast. It inspires you to create both an amazing family and marriage. This is the podcast that helps you to navigate the challenges of modern life. In this podcast, you will be given the same tools, techniques, and stories that Sean and his team have used to help thousands of people to transform their lives. If you’re ready to make real progress, that will change your marriage, your family, and your Edmond Christian Counseling life. Then get ready because better today starts now.
Hi, and welcome back. This is Sean McGuire and I am so excited to talk to you today about part two of how to reduce stress by cleaning up the mess. So we’ve already gone over part one and I just wonder how many of you, like Fridays, I think about what you feel like on a Friday in the morning of a Friday. What you start to think about what happens when you transitioned into the afternoon. You start thinking about your plans for the weekend. If you’re gonna go on a date with your wife or girlfriend or boyfriend, if you have friends that you’re going to get to spend time with or maybe you have kids activities scheduled out that you’re really looking forward to enjoying. Well here’s the great news about what I’m talking about today. Today I’m talking about how to get more specific. I’m going to give you very practical ways to implement the strategies before he talked about, and before I do that, I wanted to just briefly go over the podcast number one and just go through this, this six step process of kind of how to decide what to include in your Edmond Christian Counseling life and what to get rid of.
And I’m going to do this briefly. So go back and listen to the podcast number one. And for a lot of this you may want to take notes. If you’re a note taker and you’d like to remember what we talk about or want to share it, then that’s a great way to actually implement these strategies, this or write it down and then think about a time to do it. So the first one is a cycle of completion and we’re going to go through the step one is to decide and I would draw a circle and at each intersection and be like, on the top would be decide. The next one would be plan. So the first one is decide what you’re going to do. Is it going to be something you’re going to do or not do it? If you’re going to do it, then you go on to phase two.
If you’re not, they move onto the next thing. The second phase is to plan, make a strategy to succeed. And the third one is to start playing a start date. Whether that’s today and 10 minutes right after this podcast is over, start to implement whatever it is you plan to do. The fourth is continue. Continue, continue. You know how many books I’ve started? Probably six, seven, eight, 10. I don’t know a lot of books. And how many have finished to this date? Zero. You know why? Because it’s not been my season to finish the book and something else that God’s called me in to. I’ve stepped into that season through discernment, realizing, okay, this isn’t my season, it’s my season. I grew up practice. It’s my season to build a family. It’s my season to help mentor young men, whatever the season is, that’s what I want to be a part of.
So just set yourself up to succeed by scheduling activities to move the forward. And then the fifth one is finished, finished the job well. So if you run a race, there’s a finish line, but even after the finish line, in some areas, you’re going to find that you’re going to want to complete some of the activity. So part of, even after you run a race, completing the race is in your mind. If you lose or if you win, doing the mental gymnastics to clean yourself of the loss or clean yourself of the victory so that you can go on and enjoy or or grieved the loss or enjoy the victory, but then move on to the next phase of what you’re going to do to practice, to get better, or to enjoy whatever’s happening at night. So this is a real high level. I went really in depth in the first podcast on this.
So go back and listen to it. So let’s go into the second part. Think about what it’s like to succeed at completing tasks. And a great way to start that process is to go back to my analogy of the books I have. I said route 10 ish books that I’ve started and not finished. My wife’s actually started a book on parenting, which would have been amazing, but it’s only about 65% of the way done. But it would be outrageously amazing and life changing, but you didn’t finish it. And you know the reality is one finished book is more effective than 10 books than 20 books in 30 books that are halfway 75% of the way done. Because if we have all these areas of our life that are unfinished, then they are like weights that kind of draw us back to the past to finish what we’ve not completed.
And so think about areas of your life that maybe you want to finish, that you want to complete. And as you do this, I’m going to give you the four dues to how to complete. Now there’s a guy named Jack Cranfield or Canfield. He wrote chicken soup for the soul. He’s a super wise guy, didn’t a lot of cool things, but he gives these four dudes and they are one. When you’re deciding to execute on something, do it. When you come upon something that you want to do, do it right. Then. If you have about five to 10 minutes and if you’re showing Maguire, I would say anywhere from one to five minutes, do it right then. If it’s more than five minutes for me, I want to plan it out. I want to plan it out because my time is so valuable to me and I want to be intentional about using it.
I want to plan it. So for me it’s one to five for you. Maybe 10 minutes do it right. Then if it’s not something you can do right, then delegate it, delegate it to a later time or delegate it to somebody else. So delegating to somebody else is like me finding a time to make a time in my schedule to hire an assistant to train the assistant. I have an amazing one right now and her name is Elizabeth and I call her Elsa cause my, my phrase for the year is let it go. Let go of stress, let go of the burdens of responsibility to give them to God, let go of all these unfinished things and trust God to do what I can do and only focus on the areas that I can make impact on today. So that was part of mine is I found somebody to delegate tasks to.
I have somebody that works in our website, I delegate tasks to them. I have only a certain level of skill and on the Internet and all the things that make a website go and it’s really small. But I have this guy named Dave Stringham and Clay Clark that are geniuses in these areas and they do a great job of executing on areas that I’m deficient in or don’t have the time to work on it. So delegation’s a huge investment and it will profoundly impact your life if you find the right people to delegate to because then you’re not as concerned and worried about delegating it cause you know, the job will get done. You know, even so, I was, um, currently I’ve made a lot of progress in my own life because I used to not delegate unless they could do it at least 75% as good as I can do it.
But with rolling and having a family and realizing there are people in my life that I so dearly love as my family relationship with God and friends and even my clients that I need to learn needed to learn to delegate areas that I was really good at, but that somebody else could accomplish it like a 65% level. If they’re quality character, if they have momentum and they have the potential to be great at it, I’m going to go ahead and delegate that to them. The third one is delay. You know? Right. And I talked about writing a book. Well, I have a friend named Murs, Sean Copeland or Sean Copeland. He’s a budding author. He’s got, I dunno, four books out, just signed a two book deal, huge pay out for him. He’s worked so hard and diligently at it and he constantly inspires me to write books, to go into social media, to do all these things that are in my heart to do.
But I need to know the season Aman, he’s in the season of heavy investing in that area where he gets to talk to Francis Chan, Louie Giglio, really amazing godly men and women of God. And he’s doing these great things and inspiring people to move the needle forward as a kind of a lay pastor, late social media motivator. And when I’m around them, I want to do more and I get so excited and my wife reeled me back in. She said, Sean, God’s called you in this season to build your practice. He’s called you to invest in counselors. He’s called you to change lives in this capacity in this is where he’s giving you the space to do it. And so I’m delaying another part of my heart in a vision God’s given me to grow in speaking again, to grow in my social media presence so that I can impact people’s life to counseling and motivation to see that God really contains your life and even through books that I want to write in books.
I’ve partially written in ideas that I have. I’m delaying that because I know the season I’m in now, it’s a grill practice. You know, I have Edmund Marriage counseling, Oklahoma City marriage counseling, and we have Edmond, you know, dealing with trauma and anxiety, helping people to parent more effectively. And I’m doing that hands on right now. But as these leaders and counselors that I’ve bringing in and investing in our raising and growing and maturing, I’m going to begin stepping back and still see people. But then my next season will include more of the book writing and I think even on a macro micro level on a daily basis today on my fry on days that I record podcasts often and work on the business and on dreams not in it, it’s a day where I delay. I have all these phone calls that I know have come in emails to respond to people needing my help in different areas, but I’m dedicating this time because it’s valuable and I’m delaying those other areas until later today or even Monday to finish up.
So think about those areas of your life that you’re delaying the big dreams you’re laying, the things that really God’s made provision to do today because the two doulas takes it over or people around you are taking your time. Just think about that. And then the fourth D is dump, dump, dump it. Now we have a lot of problems with dumping things for various reasons and I’ll go more into that detail into that later, but dump it. You know, junk mail is a great analogy. When I get, when I get mail, I go through, I see what’s for me, what’s for my kids and wife, and then what even is for like coupons or different activities. They’re sending up promos that we might do that weekend or the weekend in the future. And then there’s the junk pile, the dump pile. It’s really important to have a dump pile so that you don’t look at it again.
You don’t touch it again. You don’t give any mind spirit, emotional energy to it because it’s gone. You’ve dumped it, you’ve thrown it away. Now, these are great ways to start thinking about dealing with opportunities, stressors in your life, people in your life. Because what happens is so much of our lives, and I see this so much in Edmond Marriage counseling and even Oklahoma City counseling as well, where I’m helping somebody out and I, the older they are, the more baggage they’ve come to counseling with because you just pick things up along the way. I mean, think about it. You don’t have to make a lot of effort to pick up baggage or wait when you eat Brahms everyday we live in a fallen world and and without us being intentional baggage just as heaped upon us, constantly heaped upon us. So think about in your life, what are those bags that you’re carrying around?
Is it a garage? It’s just just to the rim that’s just filled with junk and garbage or things that you’re going to put on craigslist that you’re going to have a garage sale next year. Next season are, is your car cluttered? Maybe it’s not. It’s it’s full of wrappers and things like that from the kids or from Mcdonald’s or chick filet. Or maybe it’s your office where maybe it’s you have a keyboard that has missing keys on it and you just not made the time to buy a new one or save them money to buy a new one. And it’s just really annoying and it’s taking emotional energy and time away from being more productive and other areas. So think about what that is like for you because if you’ve ever, ever had anything hang on for a long period of time and you really evaluate the costs, it’s a daily payment that you make.
You know, I talked about in the last podcast, my office has been being renovated for four months and even the planning phase was three months. And every time I walk in, I see the areas that are not done and I’ve delegated those out in this season of life, but every time I walk in, there’s this subtraction and so it’s worth it to me to bring up another contractor in to finish up some of those areas even though it will cost me more money because emotionally it’s releasing me from that burden every day when I walk in and I see these issues. So thinking about do you need to spend money? Is it a time thing you need to just take, make the time to go do these things? Is it your garage? Because if you don’t make time, if you don’t make space for something new, then you’re going to just have more of what you’ve already got.
And so many people say, well time heals all wounds and time does this tie listen time only does one thing without effort. It makes you more of who you are and it gives you more of what you’ve already got. Those are the only things time does without your effort. Now with intentionality, you can heal, you can change, you can learn, you can get a doctorate degree, you can do all these amazing things for God and if you do things intentionally during that time. So just think about that. It’s a big deal. So if you, I remember this one girl that I knew, we went to her house and I remember walking into her, her mom’s house and check this out. There was, there was stuff everywhere. I mean newspapers piled mile high from, and I’m joking, not joking. This is before the hoarders show came up.
See it from the floor to the ceiling newspapers. We went to her mom’s bedroom cause that was the only place they had a functional bathroom that you could actually get to. Like the other bathroom was blocked off the stuff, clothes and, and you couldn’t even go into a room. You had to like walk sideways and I’m not super heavy so I to walk sideways, I’m pretty thin and I barely was going back. All these star trek books and all these other books that she had power to the roof. I remember talking to her about her mom and the issues. He’s like, my mom is so caught up, she had car wrecks in the past that she drives on the highway at 70 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour. She drives so slow, it’s unsafe, it’s more unsafe than speeding and, and the reality is her mom was stuck.
She was stuck in the past of having a bad relationship with their dad and they never worked it out. And so instead of dealing with the issue, she read all these books and because she couldn’t let go of that past relationship, she had trouble letting go of these books. And because she had a wreck in the past and she never got over that wreck in the past, she drove 30 or 50 miles an hour on a 75 mile an hour road. And it was costing her. She had no healthy relationships in her life. She had no romantic relationships in her life. Why? Because she had not finished the business of dealing with the issues in real time that were coming up. And so she was stuck. And so this lady is still not married today and she’s still not functioning fully free because she won’t let go of those issues.
She won’t throw away the books. They have meetings too where she’s afraid, you know, like the guy with all the screws, every time he gets a screw by putting something together or finds one of the road, he puts it in his garage in his box and he’s got tens of thousands of different screws that’ll never use and tens of thousands of different tools that we’ll never use. Really small ones. I mean just one wire here one way or there because he’s afraid. And I think that’s the key is so often times it’s our lack of trusting God that he’s faithful enough or loves US enough to make a provision for the future. So we get caught and holding onto the things of the past, whether it’s material possessions, whether it’s relationships of somebody that has been divorced 15 years. But when they talk about their ex bows, it’s like they just got divorced yesterday.
They’re bitter, they’re angry. They’re still blaming them for their deficiencies and their financial ruin. 15 years later and they’re stuck. And the way to do this well is to realize that we all have these issues in different ways and we all have experiences that have hurt us. We all, you know, even in my closet at my wife said he ever think about this hanging your clothes backwards at the beginning of every year. And then, unless it’s a seasonal thing, like I don’t get rid of my jacket, but after three months of not using something that I’ve hung backwards, if it’s not hung forwards to give it away to goodwill, give it away to a friend, give it away to a single mom’s place that can help them either help them, have clothes or help their kids have clothes. Find a place to give it away and trust God that in the season if you needed again, that he’ll give it to you if you needed again, that he’s faithful and just, but, but bless somebody else with giving it away.
And then guess what you have in your closet, you have only the clothes that you’re wearing in the season. You have only the clothes that fit you right now, so you’re not feeling guilty about being too overweight. You’re not feeling weird about being too skinny or having, you know, Bell Bottoms and Ron Style. You’re not feeling guilty about having bell bottoms thinking they’re going to come back. But really it’s a way to live cleanly and relevant and stay current to what God’s doing in your life today. And what I think is you’ll find a profound impact when you do this. It’s pretty fun. It’s pretty amazing. So how many things in your life do you need to dump? How many things do you need to delegate to other people? What do you need to delay doing in your life to let God and give God this space, to bring in the right people to bring in the loving relationships that you so long for, but you’ve hung onto these relationships that are toxic.
What do you, what do you want God to do? Do you want a new lawnmower? Let’s be really practical. We’ll then start making room for that. Start praying about it, seeing it, visioning it in your mind that you’re going to get a new lawnmower. Do you want new clothes but you can’t afford them. We’ll give away some of the ones you don’t. Where are all of the lens you don’t wear and believed God to fill that space in the season that you’re coming into next. So one thing to consider is 25 50 60 a hundred different ways that we can begin to completing. I’m just going to give you some example. I won’t give you a hundred I’ll just bury that, but I’ll start. So let’s start with everyday things. Friends are their friends in your life that you’ve had for a really long time from high school, College Sorority or fraternity brothers, sorority sisters that you really need to move on from?
Well, if you want great friends and the ones you have are critical, are drawing you away from or drawing you away from your relationships that are healthy, like your marriage and they’re just not a value anymore because they’re hurting. Instead of helping, we’ll evaluate those. Think about those that you need to move on from to build new ones moving forward in the future, to give space. What about in marriage? If you are so busy with stuff that to do’s, this and that, arguing, fighting, maybe need to take time to sit down and plan a vacation with your spouse and make space. You know what? The kids won’t die if they missed the sports event. They just won’t do it. This, you know, if you think about it, those teams are going to come and go, but your family is called by God to be here for the duration of your life into eternity.
So you want to really make sure you invest where God’s telling you is most important to make space for those things. What about your kids? Think about this. Oh, this is a big deal. Almost every parent that I see comes in with kids activities in the issues with sports, but they’re other, they’re in drama. Whether they’re in chess club, debate club or they’re in basketball. It doesn’t matter. Having to manage these kids. Sports sits in an evaluate what things are best and maybe you’re delaying making decisions on, maybe they should not be in that sport. Just because they’re great doesn’t mean they should do it. Or maybe you need to say yes, they can go to that camp in the summer. Maybe the activities that they’re in or too much too little. Think about that, so what I want you to do is consider what those areas of your life are.
The other thing is think about, do you have a former business relationship that needs to end? Do you have somebody that you’ve been in relationship with the long time, but this man, they’re not a good partner that maybe you need to start exiting out and going to do something different? Think about something else that you can think about in those ways. Also, is there a promise that you’ve not kept that maybe you need to make good on? Is there a promise in your Edmond Christian Counseling life that you need to think through that God wants you to keep, even if it’s going to cost you money, time or effort? Is there an unpaid debts that you’ve been avoiding pain because there’s so much do you need to make plan to move forward? And you say, Sean, you’re going so fast. There’s so many things. I just want you to see that every one of the things I’m talking about, I mean I, I have a list of all these I wrote down.
I’m not going to go through. They are subtracting from your value. They’re subtracting from the abundance that God wants to bring into your Edmond Christian Counseling life. The blessings because you’re looking at them. They’re irritants that just slowly or knocking on the door and they continually require you to open it and look at it. And when you’re looking at them, you’re not looking to the future that God is calling you into. You’re not looking at the new relationships that are possible. If you release these old ones that are unhealthy and toxic, you’re not looking at the new job opportunity because you’re so focused on and just consumed with what’s happening at this current job because you’ve allowed yourself to get stuck there. And so I want to help you complete these by applying what we’ve talked about. So another thing to do is go through every room in your house.
Go through every office, every room in your Edmond Christian Counseling office. If you have a big office. Now, I would not go through my Edmond Christian Counseling office because that’s something that they get to control and I don’t, I don’t feel burden or responsibility as long as it’s well captain, it reflects their style. Man, I’m great with it. But my office, the waiting room, my other office, my bedroom, the garage that these are places by our fire pit that I’m, I’m over it and I value what they look like and think about how you can, what you need to throw away because what and what you need to give away and what you need to bring in. And maybe you need to find some shelves and things to make it better and something if something’s expiring your life, realize just like a food you need to get rid of it.
Relationships expire, material possessions expire. Make sure that you don’t keep things or people around past the expiration date because just like food, they will absolutely begin to progressively poison you in your life. And now you may say Sean, ah, it’s just overwhelming. Hey, there’s a great, he was great news. One of our Edmond Christian Counseling friends, Audra George is an interior decorator and she’s actually a professional designer and she’ll do a great job. Now she’s Oklahoma City, Edmond area, but uh, we want to bring her in for some Edmund Marriage counseling to her. And her husband are fantastic people and um, have a great marriage, but she’s a professional organizer. So what she does is she comes in and she finds out your needs, your desires, evaluates your space, and then you together come up with a plan that she will help you execute or she’ll execute all by herself depending on what you need.
Now there’s all over the world, people like her that will absolutely revolutionalize and change your life. You just got an invite him in your space. So we have all these different activities that gave you do find a lot of value. Maybe you want to go back and listen to this again with a notepad. There’s somebody you know that could benefit from this man. Please share it. It means the world to me that when I invest this time and effort to change your life and the lives that people around you that you would go to Google radius. Uh, our Edmond Christian Counseling website is New Vision counseling that live and that’s also a place that if you say, Shawn, this was great, but man, I need way more help than this podcast. It’s a good start, but I need more great news. We have a team of Edmond Christian Counseling that Mary Biblical principles with cutting edge counseling techniques and they all want to join you and your story today without just sitting on the couch and taking notes and listening.
We actually jumped into your story with you. It’s part of how I mentor and encourage the people that I bring on board on our Edmond Christian Counseling team to serve the people in counseling is that we join you in your store. You’re more than just a number and a nameless face. You’re a real person. God created and made unique to live out a destiny that he has and we want to help you accomplish that. So if we can do that, if you’re there, man, today, as soon as you’re done listening, go to the website, Nivision counseling.live and schedule a time to meet with one of our Edmond Christian Counseling therapists to email. Call us up. Either way works great, but no matter what, you’re so valuable. Take the time today to make space to start changing your life, getting rid of that which doesn’t serve you and serve the calling that God has in your life, and then bringing in because you’ve got space now that which God’s called you to start doing, living and becoming. God bless until we talk again. Create an amazing day.