In this episode of Investing for Freedom, Mike Ayala discusses recreation, telling us all why it’s so important to keep recreation in your time budget and how it can help on your pursuit of Investing for Freedom.
“People don’t decide their futures, they determine their habits and then their habits determine their futures.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro
0:46 – The literal definition of recreation is the action or process of creating something again
1:04 – At a couples goals setting retreat, they spoke about making sure you schedule out your recreation and your vacation time
2:12 – Mike and Kara decided early that they were going to make memories, not possessions
2:37 – Ron Lewis would talk about a 7 7 7 plan, which meant every 7 days, the family carved out a day to spend some time together, every 7 weeks you would take a mini-vacation, and then every 7 months you would take a major vacation
3:43 – Keeping family time and recreation time has been extremely important to Mike and Kara
3:58 – Mike is still living the life he wants to live, despite COVID-19 restrictions, and is still taking mini-vacations
5:34 – It’s still important to budget time to get away, even in COVID times
6:05 – Figure out ways you can still get out with your significant other, friends, and family
6:25 – Adjust your lifestyle, but do not remove recreation
7:10 – Your brain gets to think and dream of new ideas and you come back refreshed
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Thank you for joining me on the investing for freedom podcast. Today I’m going to talk to you about recreation. So I just got back from a long Labor Day, weekend. Should be a week or two that you’re hearing this, but I’m kind of irrelevant actually. But just thinking a lot about recreation and literally if you look up the definition, it’s the action or process of creating something again. And I just wanted to share this with you. I don’t know how many of you guys out there actually practice or build in your vacations, but I’ll never forget a couple of years ago. We had Jeff Woods from the one thing come in and speak to our team. Do a little workshop for a day or two. I can’t remember how long it was, but anyway, just remember talking to him about this same concept then, and then Kara and I ended up going to a couple’s goal-setting retreat in Austin with Jay Papasan and Jeff Woods and their wives.
And one of the things that they talked about, and the one thing is making sure that you schedule out your recreation, your vacation time, and then you put everything else in around it. And even if you actually don’t know exactly where you’re going to be going on vacation or whatever, just schedule the time in. Because we get busy, we’re productive individuals, we’re grinding, we’re working and not to mention budget wise. If you don’t put it in there, then you don’t plan around it. And this Alexander quote, people don’t decide their futures, they determine their habits and then their habits determine their futures. Well, it’s the same thing with making vacation and recreation time a habit. It’s very important to me. And I just want to kind of share this with you guys and tell you mine and Kara’s way of thinking.
So we decided early on Kara and I were married early. I think I was 20. She was 19. We had our first kid at 21. She was 20 and we decided early that we were going to make memories and not possessions. And I’ve shared this with you guys before, but the nice thing about it is you can actually have both and fortunately we’ve lived a great life and been able to see the world. We’ve taken our kids all over the world. We’ve always taken vacations, but I’ll never forget. Early on I had a mentor, his name was Ron Luce, and he talked about a seven, seven, seven plan. And none of these are a golden ticket or a silver bullet. I’m just going to share some different philosophies. And my thoughts on this, but Ron Lewis is seven, seven seven plan was like basically every seven days, the family made sure that they carved out a day to spend some time together. Every seven weeks they would take a mini vacation. So that could be a two to four day mini vacation, even if it was just going camping or a staycation, or they’d go to the next town over and just
get a hotel, whatever it was, a little mini two to four day vacation. And then every seven months they would take a major vacation. So Kara and I kind of modeled that, we set some goals, just like we have financial goals, just like we have investing goals, just like we have business goals. We have created personal life goals as well. And this is part of our wheel of greatness, by the way, if you want to download that wheel of greatness, just go to www.wheelofgreatness.com and you can watch a quick little video and download the wheel. And that just kind of helps you measure the different areas in your life, but family time, keeping that family time and that recreation time has been extremely important to us and Kara and I have always honored that and taken that. So here’s what I’m really getting at right now. The reason why I think this is important with everything that’s going on in the world with COVID and the shutdowns and travel problems. We can’t fly on airplanes. We can’t do all this stuff. I’m not in the camp of I’m concerned
with COVID. I refuse to not live the life that I want because of fear. And by the way, if this was something that was killing, 50, 60% of people, and there was some major long-lasting concerns that we had or something, I would be more I guess, cognizant of staying home more, but we’ve been traveling quite a bit. We picked up an RV because we can’t travel international. Kara and I’ve had a goal of at least one international trip per year. We usually take two or three family vacations, but my point is we’ve built that in, and the recreation aspect of this is extremely important. After the long Labor Day weekend, we went to Malibu in our RV with some friends and just spent some time at the beach.
We went to dinner once we went to breakfast, once we went on a hike even though the park was closed. I’m just not going to live my life in fear. And we went out and enjoyed the world. And in times past we probably would have went out to more breakfast, more lunches, more dinners, done some more social things, but it was nice just going there in the RV, setting up the RV parks, spending some time at the beach and yeah, the beaches were crowded, but I mean, let’s get real, even on crowded beaches, you can stay six feet apart. Everybody’s out having a good time. It was fun. And we recreated ourselves. I think it’s extremely important. Even within the times that were at COVID that you budget. It doesn’t have to be extremely expensive, but you budget time to get away and recreate yourself. If all you’re constantly doing is in the same habits, same grind, same environment, which by the way there’s a great book out there called willpower doesn’t work by Benjamin Hardy. It really changed my thinking about my environment and where I do certain things. But get out there. I’m just encouraging you right now. If you haven’t been traveling as much, if you haven’t been getting out as much, figure out ways that you can still get out with your significant other, your friends, your family, and just
go out there and do some recreation, we need to recreate ourselves. We need to be out in nature. We need to be out having fun. We need to smile. We need the laugh again. And yeah, I realize, some of us are struggling financially and maybe we’re not making as much money. I would encourage you to adjust your lifestyle. But do not eliminate recreation from your life. As humans we need to go out and we need to play. We need to have fun. We need to smile. We need to be with friends. We need to interact with the world. And yeah, it’s a different place out there. I mean, we went to California, I’m from Arizona. People were definitely much more I guess, fearful there, not as friendly as they are around here and all that kind of stuff. But I think generally speaking we need good humans in our life.
So I just wanted to throw that out there. What does this have to do with investing for freedom? Everything, because I’ll tell you what, when I go on trips like this, I read an amazing, well, we listened to an amazing book called the dream manager. My brain gets to think, I’m dreaming of new ideas and I just come back refreshed. And I’m also taking inventory of areas where I’m not spending enough time. I’m not focused enough, areas that I’ve been lacking in, areas that I’m spending too much time in that I shouldn’t be, that I should delegate. I don’t know if you’re like that, but when I’m in the middle of a war, I can’t see straight sometimes. And so I need to go out there and recreate myself. So anyway, I would just encourage you to make sure that with everything going on, you’re taking time for yourself. You’re, you’re getting out there. You’re being with friends and I can’t say this enough, you’re laughing, you’re smiling. You’re having fun and you’re finding happiness. So after a long Labor Day weekend, I hope you enjoyed it. If you didn’t, I would encourage you to just figure out a way to go out there and find some recreation. Some recreation, have a good day.
