Cultivating the Devil-May-Care Attitude

03 Aug Cultivating the Devil-May-Care Attitude

Transcription by Otter.ai:

Hello, hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Causey Consulting podcast. I’m your host Sara Causey and I’m also the owner of Causey Consulting, which you can find online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. Today I want to talk about the power of cultivating a devil may care attitude. I have a friend and to protect her privacy I’ll just call her Jane for this episode. She and her husband are what I like to call real deal old school hippies. They went to Woodstock in 69, dropped acid, rolled in the mud, all that so they’re not like the sort of nouveau hippies. They’re the real deal. Late 60s hippies from the old school. As you can probably imagine, after she and her husband finished school, they both went into corporate america and got jobs and did not like it. I always go back to Scott Grayson’s term cubicle zombie because I think it’s so handy and it’s, it’s so true to like, if you have any kind of free spirit, if you’re a free thinker, you’ve got any kind of bohemian edge to your soul. It is really difficult to just go sit in a cube and have to conform to what somebody else is telling you to do all day just makes you feel like a robot. And keep in mind, you know, Jane and her husband were out in corporate America, doing the cubicle zombie thing before the technology boom, blurred the lines so severely between your personal life and your work life, your personal home time versus your work time. Like I remember back in 2006, which for the record, it doesn’t Feel or seem like 2006 was 14 years ago, like even fathoming that as crazy to me. But back in 2006 I took a job with an oil and gas company. And I did technical writing CAD drafting, I’d kind of be a liaison back and forth to the shop sometimes, anytime somebody said, Hey, do you want to learn how to do whatever I always said yes. And so I got very good at a lot of different skills while I was there, but I did not have a laptop. And I didn’t have a company provided cell phone. So when I clocked out to go home, I was home. I didn’t get bothered. I had a really great boss at that job. She never like bothered me at night or on the weekends. On holidays when I was on vacation, none of that stuff like I remember being on vacation one time with one of my girlfriends and she was like neck the whole time by her boss and it was like, ya know, like no Just know I wouldn’t put up with that foot. Boy was I in for a shock. So it was great at the oil and gas company that I was not bothered, you know, there was a real true separation between my working hours and my personal hours. When I pulled out of the parking lot. It was like that place was in my rearview mirror immediately. And I was already thinking about other things that I was going to do that night or that weekend. And I didn’t have to think about my job until the next morning. And I really liked that aspect of the work life balance, being able to just tune out and go on and have like a real life. You always go back to what Marlon Brando said about the press like people would ask him Well, what did you do when you weren’t acting? What did you do when you quote took time out? And he was like, hmm, acting is my job. It’s not my whole life. When I go and act in a movie that is taking time out, like the stuff that I do as a citizen of the world or in my own private life, also The other months out of the year when I’m not filming a movie, that’s reality for me and I’m like, Yeah. Hellur. So i i went a few years later into staffing and I got such a rude awakening because it was like yeah, there’s no separation, you’re not you, you’re gonna have to make sure that you put your company email on your phone and keep up with it. You’re gonna have to make sure that you got a tablet or a laptop or something at the house where you can edit resumes and correspond with candidates or with clients like except for the hours that you were in the bed physically asleep you need to be on and there is a tremendous emphasis placed on money calls. You know, if a if a candidate is calling to accept an offer, if a client’s calling to give you a search assignment, like you need to be on it as fast as possible. It doesn’t matter if you’re with your kids. It doesn’t matter if you’re with your spouse it does it does not matter. Like you need to be closing all the time you need constantly be making money, and at first it wigged me out I mean, I was like, Yeah, I gotta get out of here. And I really like I knew I had made a mistake. But you know, you know how you do in life you you realize that you’ve gone in the wrong direction but instead of like pivoting in another direction and moving on, you don’t know. I’ll cut my losses and just stay here and see what comes of it. So I did that. And at various times I got sucked into that mentality I got sucked into that lifestyle. Always be closing. Always be on, you know, you can call me at two o’clock in the morning and give me job orders. You can bother me on holidays. If you’re a candidate and you’re calling to tell me Yes, I accept this job offer. I don’t care where I am. And and I’ll tattle on myself. There were times when I closed deals in the bathtub. There were times that I closed deals in airports in hotel business centers when I was traveling and on vacation. Probably the weirdest place I ever was that I closed a deal was in a public bathroom. I was getting ready to go and speak to a group of college seniors And give them like some job hunting and career coaching advice. And the phone rang I was going to make like you know one last tip before I went in to do this lecture and the phone rang and it was somebody calling to say they were accepting a job offer and so I was like trying to strategically mute the phone around the flushing of toilets and washing of hands. So yeah, I got I majorly got into that lifestyle of like always beyond, you know, the competition is gonna scoop you if you’re not right on top of it, Money Never Sleeps so you better not sleep either. And it was really effing exhausting. So Jane and her husband came to a very similar conclusion that the corporate rat race the being stuck in traffic every morning the rushing around, trying to curry favor with your boss and look good and make all the right moves to climb the ladder and, you know, maybe one day get to that corner office and maybe one day get that pension and the gold watch and some kind of retirement party with a cake and some punch At the end of it was just bogus. They didn’t want to be part of it they wanted out. So it made this sort of pact with each other that the husband would escape first, I guess it’s I’m calling her Jane they could be John and Jane Doe. So john doe maids makes the decision that he’s gonna escape first. And they got together some money, they they did scrimp and save and I sit here and paint some pretty picture for you that money just fell out of the sky, they did save it up, they started investing in rental properties. And when the rental properties were making enough money to replace john salary he left first and the decision was made that All right, next is Jane’s turn, she’s going to GTFO of corporate America. So they kept investing in properties, they got a great opportunity to invest in like this office complex. So then they went from just having residential properties to lease out to residential tenants to having office space and that really allowed them Even more income at a higher level when tenants who quite frankly weren’t as big of a headache, because you’re talking about business owners and not, well, the dishwashers broken so I’m gonna call the landlord at 2am, that kind of thing. He started, you know, making some pretty good money. And it allowed Jane to also escape corporate America. And she decided that she wanted to open her own like kind of little boutique shop in one of the spaces in their little strip mall, office space thingamabob. And she loved it. And one of the things that she imparted to me like Jane and I met during my first iteration of self employment, I was miserable. I was stressed. And I just it was like, I was punishing myself all the things that sales managers said and did to me it was like I just took it right on in my own business. So all this freedom and happiness and autonomy and allows a fair kind of schedule that I really want. If I did not give to myself, and it sucked one day I went into Jane’s shop not by coincidence, of course, you know, these things are so often divinely appointed. I went into Jane shop to look for some odds and ends, she and I struck up a conversation and got to be friends. And one of the things that she imparted to me that I just could not receive and understand at that time was, something will always come together. You don’t have to always be chasing it down. You don’t have to be efforting and trying so damn hard all the time. Like you gotta you got to have a little bit more flow in your life. You have to let life happen. let some opportunities find you instead of you going out and acting like you have to force everything to happen as if you have some kind of death grip on life or death grip on your business like, lighten up girl. And it was Jane who initially introduced me to people like Wayne Dyer and Esther and Abraham Hicks, I bought two or three of Wayne Dyer’s books and I really enjoyed them. But I just like with Esther and Abraham Hicks, I could not get into law of attraction and the vortex and deliberate creation. I was like, Huh, I just don’t think life is that easy. You know, I got into this trap of, well, if it were that easy, everybody would do it. You know, the reason why people don’t have all these things that they want is because all this you know, New Age law of attraction stuff is mumbo jumbo. So like, I appreciate what Jane is trying to do here. I know she has good intentions, but I think she might be just a little bit cuckoo birds on this stuff. But she told me if one of the tenants moves out of one of the rent houses, I always know somebody else will move in. If somebody’s business goes under, or they need to get into a bigger space and they leave one of our office complexes. I know another tenant will show up like that. It always happens. I do not worry. I don’t stress out over it. And she said, Yeah, there’s been times where a one of our rental properties has been vacant. And before I could even put a sign in the yard or put an ad out on the internet to say, you know, home for rent, or there’s an office space on such and so street in town, I already had inquiries. She said, I don’t I don’t get uptight. I don’t worry. I don’t fret about, Well, where’s the next tenant gonna come from or if I have a month of sales in the boutique that’s a little bit slow. I don’t spiral into a full on panic. I know that the money that john and i need to be able to take care of ourselves is going to show up. I don’t always know where or how and I’m fine with that. I have learned over the years to just roll with it. As Wayne Dyer says, Let life unfold. Give yourself some space in the world in the universe so that some real magical things can happen in your life spontaneously. But as I said, I just was not at a place in my life where I could receive it, then, thank god the seeds were planted, and they took root later because being able to understand all of those concepts now has fundamentally changed my life. It’s not just that, oh, I’ve got this thriving coaching and consulting practice. And I know that, you know, if one client finishes the program and doesn’t read up for anything else, or I put a bid in on a business consulting proposal, and I don’t get chosen, something else is going to come along, that income is going to be replaced. And the cool thing is, if I miss out on an opportunity, a number one I’m always glad that I missed out on it because there was something wackadoodle or funky about it, that makes me glad in hindsight that I didn’t get chosen. I always wind up you know, like, sort of leaping from lily pad to lily pad and like getting into something that’s even better. And remember, this is not a hippie song. Remembering Herman’s Hermits, something tells me I’m into something good. Like, yeah, absolutely. So anytime I’ve ever missed out on something or you know, I’ve had a consultation call and the person didn’t turn into a client, it was always a good thing. There was more money and a better opportunity over the horizon. And it made me glad that whatever I seemingly missed out on did not come together, but these concepts have also changed my life overall. You know, being able to step into that mode of deliberate creation. And maybe it’s a habit that I want to get out of, or maybe it’s something else in my personal life that I want to have show up. Instead of stressing out and feeling like okay, I’ve got to dot every I and cross every T and figure out every possible scenario that could go right or go wrong. I can just relax. You know, like the old phrase, let go and let God like you really can do that. And if you’re listening to this app, Episode and you’re thinking, Well, no, I can’t like I have to have a white knuckled grip on the steering wheel of life, or the steering wheel of business or else, then that tells me you’re definitely in the right place like you this you, you were destined to hear this episode today. This is definitely the place where some seeds are going to get planted in your mind. Even if the seeds don’t take hold today, or next week or next year, there may be a point in your life just as there was for me. And looking back on some of my early conversations with Jane and her store, look back on it and I’m like, oh, man, there was so much good information that was being transmuted to me. So even though I didn’t understand it and receive all of it, then I have been able to receive that information and put it to really good use in my life and in my business now, and to bring it back to the original point of the power of cultivating a devil. may care attitude and looking at the way that john and Jane have lived. You know, they’ve never as Jane herself will tell you like I’ve never been without food. We’ve never been without water or electricity. We’ve always had shelter. We’ve always had heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. Like we’ve there’s never been a point where some kind of something didn’t come together to our benefit. We’ve never had to make like crazy amounts of mortgage payments on a house because a renter didn’t show up. We’ve never had problems finding tenants for our offices, like things have just always flowed. Now when we stressed out about it and started getting up tight. It was almost like putting a bottleneck on the universe. But the minute that we said you know what, it’s gonna it’s going to happen the way it’s supposed to happen and there’s no reason for us to wig out about it. Really great things occurred. Having that knowledge and that sense of confidence. Whether you want to say it’s confidence, In higher power and God in your higher self in the universe, in science, whatever like whatever it is that you ascribe to that’s greater than your sort of highly logical conscious mind that knowing and that confidence of something good is going to happen I’m not going to starve I’m not going to be without I’m going to leave enough room for life to unfold in surprising and delightful ways and having that you know, laws I fare devil may care attitude of you know, whatever is meant to be will be and I’m going to be alright I got this will change your life and it will grow your book of business in ways that all of these other advertising and marketing strategies never will. Now am I saying not to hire a salesperson or not to run ads or not to do anything to promote yourself? No. I am saying that more opportunities to do those things and to do those things artfully and with a lot less waste. will come to you. ideas will come to you. People will seek you out opportunities will find you in ways that you would never imagine as long as you have that sense of open mindedness. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to this podcast and leave a review for us on iTunes. Bye for now.