186: Living a Legacy

Joseph: First let's just jump up and start off in prayer, man. Father, in the name of Jesus, we just thank you for this amazing night. I thank you for JJ and I thank you for everybody else that's gonna be hearing and listening to the recording, father God, and those that'll jump on, Lord. I ask right now that you'll just come into this place. Holy Spirit, we invite you right now to show up, father, to show up and show off or to use what you have given me tonight, father God, to just pierce the hearts, Lord Jesus, to change lives, Father God. Lord, I just speak blessings over each and every person that's here today, Lord. I speak favor over their lives and I come against every attack of from the enemy against men and men's identity and men's legacy, father God, and the leadership father, and the communication breakdown, Lord Jesus. Lord, I pray that each and every man that hears this will just continue to work towards being a, the leader, coming into alignment with the way you created them to be as a leader within themself, within their marriage, within their family, within their business, and of course, most of all within you, Lord God, in Jesus' name, Amen.

Alright man, very important thing that, I come across a lot, and we know this as men is, and we hear this all the time, is, how we build ourself up, how, who we are and what kind of person we're gonna be when we leave, and a question that I want to start off and ask is what's, what is worse? Let me rephrase this, what is worse than winning and the only thing worse than winning if you want to go ahead. Yeah, you can chime in.

JJ: No, I was gonna say like the only thing worse than winning is like winning all the time.

Joseph: Okay. So what's worse than losing?

JJ: Winning all the time.

Joseph: Okay, winning all the time, alright.

JJ: You don't, if you win all the time, you never have a chance to learn anything.

Joseph: Alright, that's good, that's good. I believe the only thing worse than losing is winning at something that doesn't matter. In the book of Mark 8:36 of the Bible says, what prophets a man to gain the whole world, but to lose his own soul? Nothing worse than losing, to winning at something that truly doesn't matter. And this just, this goes right into the aspect of, especially men we, if you're competitive in any type of way or nature, we wanna win at everything, and like you said, winning at everything. We wanna win at, hey our business, we wanna win at how many kids we have, or we wanna win at that we have a successful marriage, or we wanna win at adult softball. And we go all the way back to everything that we do, we wanna win, it's so crazy because, the I detox at night, sometimes I just get on my phone and I'll play a game. And remember the old game, phase 10, and even though I'm playing against a computer, I want to win. And so if I know that I'm losing at the multiple stages, I'll just hit reset and it starts everybody off at the bottom or what I've also been tempted to do at times is buy the extra spend the nine, $10 to buy all the extra coins and tokens and extra cards. So it gives me advantage upon on everybody, and I'm like, I catch myself, I'm like, this is just a computer game, but yet I'm so driven to win, that I'll go through my mind sometimes, I'm like, I am willing to do whatever it takes to win, and for some people that definitely leads down to the wrong road, lack of integrity cheating to win, or the aspect of being even unfaithful or being, cheating, so to say of, going through this just to do everything, to win and no worries, brother.

One thing that we have to ask our ourself is what is it worth? What we do to win? What are we doing in our life? How are we building things just to win? Is it winning just for the trophy? Is it winning because our own ego, is it winning because we're trying to accomplish something or is it simply winning because? We're doing what God has called us to do, and I think that's the biggest win. And ultimately the biggest win always comes in our own salvation. Going back to Mark, what profits a man or a woman to gain the whole world, but yet lose our own soul. So we know right now, right then just hearing those words, the best way that the biggest win we could ever have in life, the biggest win we could ever have is the fact that we accept Christ as our personal Lord and Savior because we know now our soul, okay, is going to heaven. We know that our soul won't burn an eternity as the word of God says. So the thing about when it comes to legacy, Is you've always gotta think and create legacy. 'cause that's what we're talking about tonight, is creating legacy with the end in mind. So when we get saved and when we win that, that that have that victory of our own soul is the thought and the aspect of having Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. So we don't, so we don't live life in eternity and damnation, but we live it in heaven, that's thinking with the end in mind. We all, like I said, most people would say no, but millions end up with the unintentionality of doing things in their own life that don't ultimately win. We think I want to have the healthy marriage, so I win there, or I've got to have healthy children, I win there. But we end up giving up things unintentionally to win at life, we do that, I want to win in my business. So I unintentionally give up time with my family, I want to win at raising my children, right? So unintentionally I may sacrifice things that I don't even realize I'm doing to win at the aspect of fathering my children the right way. So the biggest thing about winning is clarity, clarity requires priority because when we ignore the difficulty of determining what we care about most, then we're left with unmet expectations. I like that because when we have clarity about what we want to do, especially as business owners or in leadership positions as men, is men and women. 'cause men and women, you find men and women across the board in leadership positions, okay. And when you're looking across the board, it requires the clarity to create the priority of what. We put our mind to what we put our actions to, what we invest our time or even our money in. We've heard the phrase work-life balance, and I think that's so far fetched to even think that we can truly have work-life balance. I believe it's a fallacy. I don't believe there is such thing as a work-life balance. Now, I believe there are times that we can. Operate in one of the other, where I am balancing out time, so to say, but for me to go and make money and provide for my family, they're going to spend less time with me, for me to grow, go out and speak and coach, they're going to end up spending less time with me. So when it comes to a work life balance, I don't believe it's a true statement to say that we can have 50% of family time and 50% of work time, okay, is, especially as an entrepreneur is, there's never a time you can give something 50%. There's never a time that you can give your family 50%. So what you do is you give everything of what you have in that moment to your family, or you give everything in that moment to your family, and I'll never forget this story about, when right after I lost my wife is, I remember reading a journal from her. In regards to her coming home and sharing some news with me and my head, my face was buried in the computer and, it really bummed her out. That she saw that and she wrote this in her journal, it really hit me afterwards. And ultimately what I was doing is, in my mind, I was just really plugging away at my business. But what she wanted me to do at that moment was pay attention to her, okay. And so when you have those aspects when you, especially as a father and my kids want to go outside and play, I might be knee deep into something. I might have to stop just simply to please them or meet their needs at that moment, because what I don't want it to become is every time my, especially my youngest being five, he's always wants my attention is I don't want that to become where every time he comes up and asks me, dad, can you do this? I either send them to somebody else or I say, I can't do this because, 'cause ultimately what that's doing is telling him I don't have time for him, and so you can't sit there and do the whole from eight to 12 it's gonna be nothing but work, and then 12 to six is gonna be nothing but family because they integrate each other, they integrate with each other. And when you run a business out of a home, you can't help to be integrated more. So we have to have clarity, what we do in terms of priority when we are winning at things, right? And there's nothing wrong with winning as long as we're not losing at something, as long as we're not losing number one, but we're not winning at something that ultimately doesn't matter, I can build a great and strong business. Going back to the comment from my wife is I was building and I was winning my business, but at that moment, I lost at being able to focus on her, so that's why I don't, I am not a big fan and believer of the work-life balance because at what times do you focus on one and not the other? I think it's a back and forth to where you give a hundred percent of both, if that's even possible, you give it a hundred percent to both, when I am dealing with work, I am given a hundred percent of my mind and my attention to work. And then the moment I have to switch, I am giving it a hundred percent attention to my family, to my kids, but it requires clarity so that we are not ignoring the difficult times, or we're trying to determine in difficult moments, which is more important, okay. I know for me that I have to schedule the time of telling my kids, Hey, I'm on a Zoom call, or, Hey, I'm on a call, I can't be bothered at the moment, but when I'm done, then my shift, my focus goes back to them. So ultimately is when we are building a legacy, especially as men, when we're building a legacy, we have to think of it with the end in mind, but if, and if you think that way, we do those things now with the goal of finishing or completing whatever we're trying to build, but if you notice, legacies are not really mentioned. They're not really the accolades don't come until when most people are dead, you know the name on the building, the big statue in front of the stadium, the movie presented the autobiography written about you from somebody else, or the biography written about you. The accolades normally come after we're gone, so how can we ultimately build a legacy while we're still here on earth? And I believe, leaders when it comes to building legacy, good leaders are the type of men or the type of people, men and women where I can only take you to where I've gone. If you contact me, say, Hey, I want to know how to build a seven figure business. I can teach you how to build a seven figure business because I've done it. But if you're like, Hey, I wanna build an eight figure business, then I can't really do that. We can figure it out together, but a good leader can take you from where you're at to where they are at, but a great leader takes the people that he has surrounded himself by and pulls them in to help you out to saying, I can no longer take you from where you're at right now, but I can point you in the direction, or I can surround you with the people that can. That's what a great leader does. A great leader also, another great example of a great leader is, is having the kid that can't see over the wall, can't see over the barricade, and we tell them everything that's on the other side of the barricade. Man, on the other side of that wall is this amazing, glorious, it's just this wildlife full of buffalo. And it would be showing them something they can't physically see. That's a good leader, but a great leader picks that child up, puts them on their shoulders so they can see over the wall. A great leader allows people to see what they can't see themselves, a great leader points them in the direction, or a great leader says, I can no longer take you from where you're at right now, but I have people that I've surrounded myself with to two take you to the next place. So that's what a great leader does. So how do we ultimately leave the legacy? Is your relationship with God more important than your accomplishments? Is your relationship with your wife? Is your wife more important? Is your kids more important? Is your fa business more important? Is the things that you do more important than what you're called to do? Is it more important than the relationships that you're building? We have to get clarity in terms of prioritizing what is more important, we all know this, for those that don't, anything that you put above the time that you spent with God is idolatry. So for me, if I'm listening to worship music and I wanted to listen to a secular song, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with it, but if I'm listening to secular music more than I'm listening to worship music and feed my soul, it's idolatry, if I'm spending more time with, my friends and even my family than I am with God, it becomes idolatry. So what am I really winning at? Am I winning at the aspect of growing my legacy or am I winning at the fact of I'm just doing things to get through life? Another thing that we have to do is when it comes to leaving legacy, is we have to develop a life plan, once we decide what the scoreboard that the decide what scoreboard really matters, do we truly know that we're winning? Most people think about, the accolades, I won this, or I've trained this many dogs, or I've got this many businesses, or I've made this much money. And I remember even at times in my life, it was more of the who I met, who I got a picture with, who I shook hands with. Who was I on stage with, and it was about building credibility, but then it became about, man, I just gotta hurry up and put this on social media so everybody can see, because I've already figured out what makes comments, what gets comments, right? How many listeners do I have on the podcast? How many people are following me? How many likes do I have where society has painted the picture? You know that e even in the aspect of keeping up with the Joneses, oh, my marriage is great. My marriage is great on the outside of the house. My marriage is great because we got a car in the driveway, or we have a beautiful home, but deep down inside you're struggling deep down inside. You're thinking that if we can just go on vacation, we can repark things within my marriage. We just, if we just go to this marriage retreat, things will all work itself out. If we just go to a men's leadership program, things will work itself out. But knowing each and every day we are not filling in, we're not feeding ourself with the thing that's going to create the legacy for us, when my mom passed away, and this was over 18 years ago, I'll never forget, not only just who she was for my life, but the impact that she had on so many other people. I learned to serve behind the scenes and getting no recollection whatsoever. No Pat on the back, no reward from my mom because she was always the one at church, she was always the one helping the community, she was always the one doing things behind the scenes that nobody ever even knew. I really saw the impact of that when she passed away, not only by the people that showed up to her funeral, but what people were saying. It's man your mom impacted my life by this, or she did this for me, or I'll never forget this, how it changed my life. And though she didn't get a building named after her, or a trophy erected from her for her or a statue, it was the people, lives, it was the people's lives that she ultimately changed, but she did that. She did that with the legacy and end, and the way she did that was impacting lives every time she saw somebody every single day. So what lives are we impacting is we go throughout our journey of life. Because it's so great and I know that I've been there in my life before and I've seen other people and I've seen marriages struggle where a wife may say he treats so, so many other people so great, but yet he treats me like trash. And so where does our legacy lie? Is building who you are to other people more important than the people that are closest to you, what are we building and how are we going about building it? We have to have a plan. What kind of person do you want to become? Do you want to become the person that's always on TV that always has the stages, that has everything to them to access to them? They have money coming out their ears, okay. And there's nothing wrong with that. I believe the wealth of the wicked is laid up for the righteous, okay. I believe that money doesn't buy you necessarily happiness, okay? But it buys you the things that can make you happy, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn't become an idol in your life. Because me making money is not more important than me spending time with my family. However, it takes money to be made to support my family, so I know that I have to be able to do both. But I'm not so driven that everything I do circulates around making money or being on the next stage, or winning the next speaker competition or doing a podcast. So what do you want those areas of your life to be like? What do you want your relationships to be like? All this, all this takes a plan, and there's no doubt that divorce is on the biggest rampant, race of mankind, a divorce happens every 36 seconds on this earth, okay? Not just in the in, in the United States where we live at, but on earth every 36 seconds. But a lot of that happens because we truly don't have a plan. We don't have a plan in place of how we want our marriage to look like. How do you want your legacy to look like? How do you want your leadership as an individual to look like? How do you want your business to look like? How do you want your relationships with your wife or your children or stepchildren or ex-wife? How do you want those things to look? That's how we build legacy because if you're not thinking with the end in mind, all we'll do is go throughout life, wandering around in the desert, so to say. We'll be circling the mountain, alright. If you think about, and this is not to down anybody, but if you think about homeless people work almost harder than people that have a job. But the only thing that they have is mind is how can I survive at this moment in time versus how can I survive over the next month to two months, three months, four months, the rest of my life? And that's the difference is they'll stand on the street corner looking for money for the next opportunity, and that's it, I don't wanna be somebody that's thinking about just the next opportunity. I want to have a plan in place, the plan is not just to build my legacy. So my first legacy is the fact of, hey, I wanna be known as a godly man. So first I know that I have to have a salvation in my own heart, I have to have Christ living in me. The second thing is I know that I have to have, live by scripture and have the word of God in me. And, live that ex example, not only to my children, but also to my wife, those are the first people. Then it comes to the people that I'm closest with, and that's the people that are at work every single day. So I've gotta have that plan in place. Then the last thing when it comes to building a legacy is giving to something bigger that will outlast you. Now, that can go in a lot of different places. What will it cost me to make all these things a reality? Something that I know that should outlast me and I pray to God that it outlast me is my children. My biggest legacy to anything is in my children. Beyond that, it goes into the people that I touch in life throughout my journey of life. I pray and believe that they will outlast me because it's those words, it’s like the stories by the campfire, it's the stories of the war stories. Dad used to do this, or Mom and dad used to do this, or my brother used to do this, or this person, they did this for the church, or they did this for their community. We still talk about today, Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks simply did nothing more than take up for her own right to sit in the front of the bus, that was it, that's all. She did her one action, but it wasn't just her one action that left her the legacy. It was her belief system. It was the fact that she stood up. It was the fact that she took action when nobody else did. It was the fact that she refused to give in. But in that one action is what led to so many other things. It empowered people, it empowered other people to start making those same kind of decisions of, I'm going to stand up for what is right. What are you standing up? For what may be right in your life today. Are you fighting for your relationships? Are you fighting for your marriage? Are you fighting for your children? Are you fighting for things that may be coming against you? What are you fighting for? Because it's what we fight for, it's what we're willing to lose. It's what we're willing to win that creates and builds the legacy. Are you winning at something that won't ever matter? Or are you losing at something that eventually will be worth the win? Because there's, like I said in the beginning, nothing worse than losing, the only thing worse than losing is winning at something that truly doesn't matter. And so we've gotta think about those things, what are we winning at today? Are we winning at the aspect of losing relationships? Are we winning at different things in life where we're losing things that value that we should value the most? 'cause we know no matter where you come from, no matter race, No matter sex, no matter poverty level, no matter prosperity level, no matter your dialect, no matter the culture you come from, whether you are born in a rich family or born into a poor family, the one thing that no matter any of those things that none of us can get back, it's time. We all have the same amount of time every single day, so what are you? Investing that time in, what are you spending that time in that will allow you to win at the right things at life, no matter who you are, no matter where you've come from. We all have 24 hours, is that 24 hours spent sleeping? It's crazy to know that at sleeping at eight hours a night is a third of our day, A third of our life will be spent sleeping. It's crazy to even think that sometimes. If that's the case, what are the other two thirds going towards? Is it going towards winning at things that will never matter? Is it building who you are as a leader? Is it building who you are as a godly man or a godly woman? Is it winning at some at your relationships with your wife, your relationships with your children? The reality for me is like my daughter is 15, and in my own mind it's like she'll be outta the house when she graduates, not because I'll kick her out, but she may leave, and in my mind I'm like, I only have three years with this girl left. Now she may also be the one that stays until she's 25. I don't know, but I have to look at it as I may only have three years left with her. What am I going to do over these next three years? When she looks back when she's 18, she can remember all the different things that she did because I'll tell you this, and I'll tell you this. As a father, you can deposit positivity after positivity, great experience after great experience. You have one bad experience with a child, and they will remember that over so many other things that you did positive in their life. So again, the question is what's worse than losing is winning at something that doesn't matter. That my friends, is how you go about building legacy.