Why Slowing Down Wins: Lessons from a Month of Intentional Disconnection 

The appetite for applause is one of the most damaging of human. Desires. You know, there's a difference between doing that from like a content standpoint, like this went viral and people loved it, versus am I valuable because people enjoyed what I just posted? What if you could build a business in the modern world as big or as small as you want without having to compromise the things that were the most important to you in the very beginning?

This is the Wealthy Consultant Talks podcast with Taylor Welch and Mike Walker as they. Share with you today their learning lessons from stories in their experiences over the past 10 to 15 years. And share with you right here, right now. Let's get into it. So I took the 1st of June to the end of June off.

Um, and this is a time for me to slow down and to kind of peruse and think. And, uh, Jeff Bezos calls this, uh, puttering.  He'll wake up in the morning. He likes to putter around, grab a cup of coffee, read the news, not really do anything. In fact, interestingly enough, Jeff Bezos, who's the founder of Amazon, if he didn't know actively restricts the amount of decisions he's allowed to make every single day.

What I found is that entrepreneurs and power players, and.  Producers, we tend to try to make, uh, we try to cram too much into a week, too much into a day. And because of that, we end up making bad decisions. And so what Jeff Bezos says is he says, if I can make three quality decisions, three,  three, only, three, three quality decisions,  uh, then I have basically won, won the day. 

And one of the things that I've learned to do better at is not make decisions unless I am feeling like I'm rested and I have the energy to make the decisions. So in June, um, I took some time and I, I slowed down and I processed, and I started taking walks and just like doing normal stuff that I should probably do anyways, and I got a list of some lessons that I wanna share with you today, and we're just gonna kind of go off on 'em.

First and foremost, um, it became obvious to me when I took like three days off in a row, it became obvious to me that. I care way, way, way too much  what people think about me way too much. I know you're on this call because you wanna get fired up  and you want to go attack the weak and dominate your enemies and crush everyone.

Ah. But  sometimes the most motivating thing that I can share with you is that the things that I experienced and dealt with years ago.  Before I was successful, before I had money, before I had social media, before I had  all of the things I have today. Some of the things that I struggle with when I very, at the very beginning, I still struggle with the day, and there's a level of human nature  that is involved in Wrapped Up in Us is an interesting book called The Status Game, and human beings, by default, tend to crave  acknowledgement.

For who we are. I read this the other day and I can't remember 'cause I didn't write it down, but it said the, the appetite for applause is one of the most damaging of human desires. The appetite for applause is one of those damaging of human desires. What is it about us that makes us crave what other people, uh, can give us rather than really acknowledging and implo applause ourselves?

And so one of the things I, I started thinking about, and if you're anything like me, uh, you crave what other people think about you too. You may just not be self-aware enough to know it, or maybe you are. But when I slowed down, I was like, damn.  I am, I am constantly looking at what  people think and how they engage with my content.

And I'm like so wrapped up and like, did this perform well and did that perform well? But even though there's a difference between doing that from like a content standpoint, like this went viral and people loved it,  versus  am I valuable because people enjoyed what I just posted. Here's the distinction we have to watch out for is that your value does not come from the approval or the rejection of the market.

Your value comes from your approval or rejection of yourself  and the.  Byproduct of somebody who approves of themself is typically the approval of the market. Notice the spiral here. So one of the cures that I prescribed for myself over the month of June was less consumption from a social media standpoint.

I said, you know what? I'm going to show up on social for the purpose of contribution,  or I'm not gonna show up at all.  And an interesting thing happens. For a good portion of the month, I just didn't show up at all.  What does this say? What does this teach you? Sometimes you just need a break. Sometimes you gotta reset the dopamine.

In fact,  I'm about to go through a caffeine fast because I'm crazy.  I have no idea what's gonna happen. Pray for my wife, pray for my family,  uh, pray for my employees. I mean, we're gonna see what happens. Uh, but I don't want, I do not wanna have anything that is an addiction or that it makes me vulnerable  in my life that I am actually.

Encouraging. And so when we go through these social media fasts or um, these sabbaticals or things like, things like what, what we're talking about, the, the byproduct is that we get to actually meet. Who we really are rather than who we have dressed up to be for other people. So I decided for the month of June I was gonna show up as a contributor.

And it was profound. Uh, it was profound to me to realize that in my happiest, most default state, I actually don't give a shit what anybody thinks about it. Or what they think about me. Uh, I'm just content to show up and do my business.