Hey, what's up, champions? This is your host, Neal, and I want to welcome you back to another Fire podcast today. Today, I'm going to talk with you about something that I believe is a huge subject in the personal development space, but it can also impact your leadership, your business strategy, and every area of your life. What we're talking about today is how to start living life with intentionality. You know, so many people are just drifting through life right now. They're just being pulled in whatever direction life wants to pull them. But there's a better way, a more meaningful way to live life when you learn how to live life on purpose with intentionality. Guys, I'm fired up for today's show, and I pray that you are also. Get ready. This is your captain speaking. We want to let you know we've been cleared for takeoff. We have clear skies today with no wind, so we are expecting a smooth and highly enjoyable flight. However, should you experience some personal turbulence, don't worry as you've chosen the right airline. As we are trained in navigating unexpected bumps, our destination today is high performance and success. Sit back, relax, get hyped, or do whatever you do. As we too are pumped for today's flight, we understand you have options when you fly, and we are grateful that you have chosen to fly with us today. We recognize by choosing to fly, Neil Reyes, you are committed to growing personal development and reaching higher than you ever have before. Enjoy today's flight. Be blessed, and remember, the best is yet to come. What's up, champion? This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to the Executive Perspective. For years, I struggled to answer the question, what do you do for a living? Why? Because most people who ask only expect to hear one thing. I am an executive with a deep level of understanding of business, operations, leadership, and technology. I'm also the president and founder of a worldwide ministry and CEO of an executive coaching and consulting firm. My number one passion is people, and I receive significant gratitude in life from sowing into others and encouraging them as they grow to achieve their fullest potential. If you're a high performance individual like me, or you're simply ready to take your business leadership or inner potential to the next level, then strap in because I'm locked in and all in. This is the Executive Perspective. Hey, what's up, champions? This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you back to the Executive Perspective. Today, I'm going to be talking with you about a subject that I refer to as living with intentionality. Again, the topic that we're speaking about today is living with intentionality. You know, here in the executive perspective, and I mention this on every single episode, we focus on three main areas within this podcast. We focus on leadership, business strategy, and personal development. And today's topic can be applied to all three of those into every area of your life. And. But today we're going to do another deep dive in the area of personal development, because I want to make sure that you are living with intentionality. I want to make sure you're showing up with intentionality in order to connect with your best life. You know, one of the things that's very valuable to me is to help you connect with your best performance, which helps you connect with your best self and your best life. And it's important to me to know that you're living your life intentionally or living with intentionality. In other words, we want to make sure that you're not just kind of coasting. Or a better term that I like using is drifting through life. I don't want you just kind of drifting from one thing to the next. You know, oftentimes I give biblical references within this podcast, and the one that comes to mind when I talk about drifting is found in the Book of James, where it talks about being like a wave that's just tossed here and there. The wind just blows it wherever it wants. Or being like a grain of sand that blows here and blows there. In other words, when you live with intentionality, you shouldn't just be tossed by every circumstance. You shouldn't be blown around by just whatever next thing comes along. You should be locked in, dialed in with your focus, and living with a form of intentionality that says, I know what I want, I know the steps I need to do to get there, and I'm going to pursue it. Now, sometimes you may not have clarity on all the steps, but we've taught this over and over again in this podcast that clarity comes with movement. In other words, when you finally step out to do whatever the thing is that you're supposed to be doing, you will get clarity with each step. And as more clarity comes in, wow. With clarity comes confidence. And as confidence comes in, you now have a robust nature inside of you that helps you to be able to step out in confidence. Operating in clarity and living with intentionality, man, those are dynamite things that you can do as a high performer. And we want to jump right into today's podcast. The first thing I have for you is intentionality separates motion from meaning. I'm going to Say that again because that's a big one right there. Intentionality separates motion from meaning. What do I mean by that? Well, you know, sometimes you hear in life where people kind of just go through the motions, or you hear about where people are kind just going through the motions in life and they're kind of just doing, going with the flow. And you can do that. And sometimes you can do that and think you've been going through the motions for maybe a week or two weeks or maybe a month. But before you know it, it's actually been years that you've been going through the emotion, through the motions. And as you go through the motions, and if you're just floating here and there, living without intentionality, man, you can waste or even use lose years of your life to non productive things or non productivity things that don't matter, things that don't move you closer to your goal. Now oftentimes when we're talking about intentionality, sometimes we encounter people that they just don't know what they want in life. They've kind of just checked out, they've unplugged. They're not living with happiness, they're not living with joy. And as a result, they don't even know the things that help make them happy anymore. They don't have any hobbies. Their only identity is maybe in their work or maybe in their family. But the problem with tying your identity to, to a job or tying it to a person is that if those people leave or come in and go out of your lives, then there goes your joy or your happiness as well. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you shouldn't find joy by being with family. I'm not saying you shouldn't find joy or fulfillment by being with family or being in the job. You definitely should. You don't want to be in places that are toxic environments. But if your joy or happiness or fulfillment is tied to someone else, if it's codependent on someone else, if those situations change, whether because of something positive or negative, man, that's a tough thing right there. And you can find yourself lost and then just drifting through life and we don't want you doing that, you're not just meant to move, you're meant to move on purpose. In other words, you're not just to be busy. You're not just to be move or have movement going on in your life. You're meant to move with purpose. The difference is when someone's just moving, they're moving in whatever direction they're being pulled. Oh, man. That speaks right there. And I know that resonates with a lot of you out there. They're just moving into whatever direction life is pulling them. But when you move with purpose, that's a different thing right there, because that's where you're recognizing what direction you want to go. And as you recognize what direction you want to go, you're now moving on purpose towards that direction. You know, even if you go swimming in something like a river or something like that, and even if you hit a current and it's trying to push against you and send you the other way, if you swim and swim hard enough, you can still make it upstream, moving with purpose and intentionality in the direction you know or you want to go. But if you jump in that same river, you're not being intentional. That current is going to take you a few hundred feet down the stream or down the river, and you're going to be in a completely different place. And it can happen in a moment like that. It can be quick. You need to learn how to move with purpose. The other thing I want to share with you is when every action aligns with purpose, even small steps carry really big weight. Man, that's strong right there. I'm going to say that again. When every action you do or perform aligns with purpose, even small steps carry a big weight, meaning that it makes big differences when you're doing action or taking purpose with alignment. In other words, what do I mean by alignment? Those are the things that are in alignment with your values. Those are things that are in alignment with the things that bring you joy with, bring you happiness, that bring you fulfillment. Those are the things that are in alignment with your values, or those are things that are in alignment with what you want to achieve or what you want to do. For example, if you look at someone who goes to college, maybe you have someone who they didn't get the chance right out of high school, or maybe they did, but they just didn't quite take it serious. And now fast forward years later, and they've got a family and they've got kids, or they got a spouse, or they just got a lot of bills, it don't matter. Or maybe they have all of that and they just want to really go back to college. It's their desire to go back and finish a degree, to go into a field that they highly desire to do well. When they take those steps to jump back into college, they in most cases have researched what's the degree they need in order to go into the field they want to go into. And now when they show up for class and they show up to study on a daily basis, they're moving with purpose because they're moving towards the direction that degree. And the reason why they're moving towards that degree with purpose is because that degree is going to be what helps them connect with the career or the future that they want. This is important stuff right here. Now, that's just one example. I get that many of you have already gone to college and you're in your careers, but we're talking about living life with intentionality. That being said, I have our first leadership truth bomb for today. Movement doesn't matter if it's not aligned with your mission. That's a big one right there. Movement doesn't matter if it's not aligned with your mission, man. Being in alignment. Being on having purpose and understanding what your mission is. That's when it matters. That's when movement matters. Those are big, big things. The next thing I want to talk with you about is living intentionally means choosing impact over autopilot. Another way of saying it would be cruise control. Living intentionally means choosing impact over living on autopilot or cruise control. In other words, you're just not on coast mode. You're actually living with intentionality. You're living with your foot on the gas. You are moving forward. Stops letting your calendar run your life, man. This is a big deal for people because a lot of people who listen to this podcast are high performers. They're people who are endeavoring to grow, whether they're already at the executive level or they're in some form of a leadership role, or they're in management or something, but they have leadership in them in some capacity, or they're leading people in some capacity, even if it's just by being an example to others and they are allowing their calendars to run their life. I want to share with you something champion. I'm a big proponent of calendars. In fact, I have entire courses and stuff that are coming out and content on how to have advanced time management practices within your life to help you accomplish more with less. But all that being said, doing more things in less time. But all that being said, your calendar is a tool. Your calendar is always meant to be a tool for you. It's not meant to be a leash. Whoa, that speaks right there. Your calendar is meant to be a tool and not a leash. Meaning it's not meant to be a leash that has you under control and it drags you wherever it want. Remember I talked a little bit about earlier and I. I talked about being dragged in life wherever life wants to pull you, man. You don't want your calendar dragging you wherever life wants to pull you. You have to learn how to reclaim your schedule. You also have to learn how to reclaim your energy, how to reclaim your focus, and those are big ones right there. When you learn how to reclaim your schedule, which oftentimes reflects to your time, and you learn how to reclaim your energy and you learn how to reclaim your focus, life begins to get a whole lot better. Let me give you some examples with your schedule. Oftentimes you'll hear me tell business owners. Now, if you're not a business owner, sometimes it's just hard. And if you're not at an executive, high executive level, sometimes this is hard. But to find true fulfillment in life. When I'm working with business owners, whether if it's small, medium or large, business owners doesn't matter. Usually what most business owners do is they schedule their calendar with all their work that they've got to do to support their business. Then they try to fit life in the gaps. In other words, they try to fit it based around their business. And when their business gives them time, it's almost like they're asking their business for permission at times to take time off and the business wants to tell it no, because the business always needs more. What I'm doing when I'm helping people who are in those types of situations who are business owners, as I often tell them. When you generate your calendar, let's first identify the things that you want on your calendar that mean the most to you. And once you identify those things, how do we fit business around that so it supports the lifestyle you want rather than your lifestyle just getting the leftovers of when you can fit it in. That's a really, really powerful way of working with your calendar. Now, that doesn't translate to everybody though. So for other people, it begins with healthy boundaries. If you have a job that you're required to be at, let's say you've got the job that's a Monday through Friday and it's an 8 to 5 job or something of that nature. If you've got that job, then you know your responsibility is to be at that job during that time. That's what I refer to as the Matthew 6:33 principle, keeping the first things first. And your job is the first thing you need to take priority over. But having healthy boundaries means that when five o' clock stops, then you Already know where you need to be and that might be somewhere else. That might be at your child's soccer practice, that might be at t ball practice, that might be a volleyball practice or dance practice. If you have a family, that might mean something. You sow into your life, maybe that's you going to the gym or if you have a pilates class or a yoga session or some type of thing that's for you. Maybe you scheduled yourself time at the spa so you can go and get a massage or a facial or something like that that helps you with your personal self care. These are things that matters, but it starts by having healthy boundaries. Now when we talk about the area of your energy, what are those areas exactly? Well, the number one thing I'm going to touch down on is sleep. If you're not getting good quality sleep and that's going to take a toll on you and your body and your performance, on your well being, on your mind, your mood, man, not getting good sleep can impact you in so many areas. But sometimes in order to get good sleep, you have to make sure you're going to bed at a good time. And as you're going to bed at a good time, then you have other times where you're like, all right, well now I'm going to bed at a good time, but now I need to wake up at a good time. And so sometimes you have to set boundaries around that. And sometimes you can do with an alarm clock. You know, there's a lot of people who use an alarm clock to wake up, but there's not a lot of people that use an alarm clock to go to bed. Now there's some and there's out there. I hear you. Right now, there's much of us. I do, I do, I hear you. There are a bunch out there that do. But if you use an alarm clock to wake you up, there's nothing wrong with using an alarm clock that goes off that says, hey, it's bedtime, but you have to be in a position where you can actually take advantage of that. If your alarm clock goes off to go to bed and you're still out partying with the boys or hanging out with the girls, then maybe you're not going to get that bedtime. But when you're at home and you put yourself in the right condition that when the alarm goes off, you're ready to go to bed, well then now you have life with intentionality. And in regards to your focus, focus deals with being laser focused or dialed into what matters. What's important and keeping it in front of you. If you don't keep the things that are in front of you in front of you or the things that you want to do in front of you, it's real easy to drift off over to the side and start working on something else. Or it's real easy to allow life to pull you in whatever direction at once because you weren't paying attention to the focus. Now here's the next leadership truth bomb we have for you today. You weren't designed to be managed by your schedule. You were created to steward impact. Whoo. That's a big one right there. I'm going to say it again. You weren't designed to be managed by your schedule. You were created to steward impact. And one of the best ways you can do that is by not letting your schedule manage you, but you learn how to manage your schedule. There's a big difference there. And if you're not very good at that, then maybe you need to get some help, Whether if it's studying resources, or maybe you need to get you an assistant, or maybe it's simply a virtual assistant that you hire who can help you with your schedule, because your schedule is not meant to manage you. You're meant to manage your schedule. And when you learn how to manage your schedule and manage your time, man, now, now you can begin to fulfill what you were created to and learn how to steward the impact that God's created you to do. The next thing that I want to talk with you about is success without purpose is just polished survival. Man. That's a big one right there. So many people are stuck in survival mode. Success without purpose is just polished survival. You can win by the world standards, and you can still feel empty. I'm going to say that again. In life, it's possible to win by the world's standards, but still feel empty. You know, there's a scripture that reminds me of this in the Bible. And this scripture says that in a man's mind, the way may seem right, but in the end can lead to death. But there's another scripture that I think hits really strong home, especially in this. It's sticky for me in this area because it sticks. It makes sense. And it talks about that man judges by the outward appearance, but God. God judges by the intentions and motives of the heart. Whoa, man, that's fire right there. Because what I'm talking to you about today is the subject of living with intentionality. And there's a way where in life it can look like on the outside to everyone else that you're winning. And man, if you don't believe what I'm saying, all you got to do is go jump on social media, on something like Instagram or TikTok or something. And as you watch these influencers, they're trying to show you the perfect life. They're trying to show you the perfect physique by having the lighting just right and sucking it in just right. Or photoshopping their photos to where it looks like they're maybe thinner than what you would think, or than they actually are, or like they're more muscular or something of that nature. Or they're trying to show you that they're out with their expensive cars or expensive houses, or they're in this real elaborate vacations. And it's meant to give a desire outcome, meaning that people are like, oh man, I desire that. And you look and you look and you look because it's like you're trying to live your life through someone else's life, but yet behind the camera, on the other side, for most of those people, their life is not like that anyways. That's why they're called influencers, because they're attempting to influence you in something. But that doesn't mean that it's based on truth. That's why when I tell you that the scripture says that man judges by the outward appearance, but God judges by the intentions of the heart. In other words, he knows the intentions and motives you're living by. And as he does that, and he judges that, he's not judging that from a place of being mean or trying to critique you or be. But he's saying, hey, I created you to steward impact in this life. I created you to live a life filled with greatness. But what I'm seeing on the inside right now, no matter what others see on the outside, I'm not seeing that. You know, sometimes on the outside, people can see success or they see that we're being successful because we got the nice home or the nice car or the nice clothes, or maybe in public it even looks like you have the perfect relationship or marriage. But behind closed doors, things are miserable. Either miserable in your marriage or your relationship, or they're miserable inside, inside you. Because you have no joy or you have no happiness or you just don't feel like you're living for anything. And while you have a lot of stuff, you don't have any joy, you don't have any happiness, you don't have any content, and you're just feeling empty in life. And that's not how we want to live. We want to live life with intentionality. And if you're feeling like that, it simply starts with a simple step in the opposite direction and of discovering what fulfills you and start moving toward that with purpose. Real fulfillment comes from alignment, not achievement. I'm going to say that again. Real fulfillment comes from alignment, not achievement. If you're living your life without a core set of values, then that's where I recommend you start. You need to identify, create, or discover or connect with some values that you can use as your north compass, as your north, your true north, to start living life by. And then as you start to come into alignment with those things that resonate with you, life begins to have more meaning. This are big, big topics that we're talking about right now. When you do that. Now, for me, my compass, it's the Bible, my relationship with the Lord. For you, it might be something different. But what I will tell you is that I know my compass works for me and a lot of other people, and I know it can work for you too, if you have an open mind and you decide to pick up the book and read it. But whatever it is that you have within your life, you need some type of value set, a core value set, a set of principles that you want to live life by, and then learn to come into alignment with that. And for many of you, you already have your value set. You just haven't been living in alignment with it. You haven't been living true to it because you've been chasing noise in the world. You've been chasing all the noise from the things that people tell you you should have or should want or need, rather than things that bring you joy and fulfillment. Here's our next leadership truth bomb for today. Don't confuse being impressive with being in alignment. And that speaks again. Again, don't confuse your being impressive with being in alignment. When people confuse themselves or confuse others, in other words, when they look at the Instagram or the social media or things, and they see how it looks like someone has a perfect life, man, they don't know what's going on behind there. If you go driving through some nice neighborhoods and you see these really big homes or maybe homes on the water or the lake or the beach, and you're like, man, I wonder what those people do for a living. You may not know what they do for a living, but you also don't know what their checking account looks like. You know, there's a term out there that's Called like house poor. And it's when someone spends so much money buying a big home, but they don't have any money, they even go out and eat. They have to manage their gas because they can't really afford gas or fuel. They can't even go to the movies if they want stuff because they have a really big home, but they're gobbled up in debt. You know, oftentimes when people have larger paychecks, they just have larger amounts of debt as well. Even people, whether they make a little bit of money or they make a lot of money to live in alignment, that's a whole different level of living right there. Living in alignment means finding what matters to you, what fulfills you, and living in purpose with that. Not living in purpose by outward show about trying to show others, like, look at me, look at what I have, but by what fulfills you. Now, if you're able to be prosperous and have those nice things and live in alignment, the more power to you, because that's the life that people wish that they had. But it starts with alignment. And whether you ever get rich or not doesn't matter. But you want to be wealthy on the inside first. And the way you do that is by living in alignment with your core set of values and the things that bring you happiness and bring you joy. The next thing I want to talk to you about is what you give attention to becomes the atmosphere of your life. If you're constantly reactive, you'll constantly feel behind. You can either be proactive in life or reactive, but when you're reactive, you're reacting. That's when you're getting pulled every different direction, being pulled by life wherever it wants to take you. But when you're being proactive, that's living life on purpose and moving in the directions you want to move. Purposeful living starts with choosing what gets your energy. Whoo. That's important right there. Earlier I talked about schedule, but now we're talking about energy. Meaning when you're living life with purpose, you're saying, hey, if I have a gas tank or if I have a meter, you know, a fuel gauge for me, that shows how much energy I have, I have to decide how I want to use that energy. You know, when you go to the gas station and you fill up your car with fuel, you only have so many miles before you need fuel again. So you have to determine if you're going to go on a road trip, which direction are you headed? You know where you want to go is located north. You don't head west because you're going to run out of gas and be in the wrong direction and be even further away from where you want to be. You have to know the direction of your heading. You have to know where it is, your destinations you're wanting to go. And then you make sure to conserve your energy and apply your energy towards going in the direction you need to be going. Now, here's our next leadership Truth bomb for today. Focus can be your most expensive currency, so spend it on what matters. Who. That's a big one right there. Focus can be one of your most expensive currencies in life. So make sure you focus to spend it on what really matters. And that's powerful right there. Every day will give you two options in life. You either have the option to drift, or you have the option to design. What do you mean by that? You can either drift through life or you can start to design your life. Drifting feels easy, but it costs you deeply over time. Design will take effort, but it delivers a life worth living. And I'm going to say that again. Drifting is easy. It feels easy, but it costs you deeply. Over time, it'll exact a tax from you, and it's often a tax you don't want to pay. It's often a tax of regret at the same time. Design. It'll take effort, but it delivers a life worth living. Man, that's powerful. Our next leadership Truth bomb for today is. If you're not designing your life, don't be surprised when it feels like it belongs to someone else. Who? That's a deep one right there. If you're not designing your life, don't be surprised when it feels like it belongs to someone else. And my closing thoughts for today are this. Your attention sets your atmosphere, but your atmosphere sets your outcomes. That's a fire statement right there. Your attention sets your atmosphere, but your atmosphere shapes your outcomes. Guys, I want to encourage you before we let you go today that I believe in you. I want to encourage you to start living a life with intentionality. And if you feel like you're on coast mode or cruise control or you're drifting, all you got to do is bring yourself back into alignment with what matters and then conserve your energy and spend it on what matters rather than just on drifting. Don't be in drift mode. Be in design mode. Be purpose with your life and understand that I believe in you. I believe you have greatness that lives on the inside of you. You just have to cultivate it and bring it on the outside so others can see it as well. And then whatever the thing is that you're working on, whatever the thing is that you feel you're called in life to do, whatever assignment you've been given for that calling, go out and smash it. Give it your all. Put your everything into it and go out and smash it. I believe in you, champion. Go out and smash it. Guys, before I let you go, I want to encourage you to swing by our website@neil Reyes.com where you can find all of our teaching resources in addition to that. And we have a bunch in addition to that. If you're liking this podcast, then please follow it. Please consider leaving us a rating or even a comment on it, because that helps us grow in podcast land. Guys, thank you and have a blessed day.