The Freedom Formula: Mastering Energy, Money, and Leverage

In this podcast you are going to discover 3 powerful questions that will set you up to have the most extraordinary year of your life.

The urgent is something we’ve all grown to despise. It distracts you, it interrupts you, and somehow finds a way to take priority over the things that matter most in your life. It doesn’t care about your intentions for meaningful progress. It doesn’t care what you want. It’s selfish. It wants what it wants when it wants it.

And that always comes in a cost to you and to those around you. It means that book you’ve always wanted to write doesn’t get written. It means that friend you have been meaning to call doesn’t get called.

Then one day you wake up asking yourself, "why am I finding it difficult to love my spouse?” or “where does this extra 10 or 20 kilos come from?” or “or “why am I living here or in this job?” or “why do I feel like something is missing?” Well if you can relate to all of this or any of it, I have got good news, you’re normal but it doesn’t have to stay this way.

I mentioned earlier about what happened when my mother died when I was 14. That laid the seeds for this program.

Stay with me because I wanna walk you through 3 questions with the potential to change the course of your life. These 3 questions are the core foundation of a bigger system I developed called “The Freedom Formula: Mastering Energy, Money and Leverage in 9 Steps“ which is been designed to help you finally conquer the urgent and make meaningful progress towards the important things you hold near and dear to your heart.

I developed this process because as you’ll soon see, I had to, and when I started using this process year after year my life, in all areas, completely took a turn for the better. My career, my relationships, and my health. I was more alive mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and I was having a far greater impact than I ever was before.

People around me saw the change and asked what I was doing. So the beginning I shared it with just a few people and what I found is that they are looking for the same thing, clarity. Clarity on what they needed to do to get themselves going on the right direction, and most importantly how to stay on track.

That is why I created this podcast and ensure more people could benefit after I saw the amazing results people were getting in my programme.

Coming up: 3 Powerful Questions that You NEED If You Want to Have an Amazing Year

The first question is this, “What would your ideal life 5 years in the future look like?”

Most people life their lives as if they are going to live forever. There is this belief that there will be all the time to change. Life will carry in pretty much the way it always has. There will be lots of time to adjust to the changes that will occur in their lives. At the right time pieces will just fall magically in place and it will all be as right as rain. They may not say it, but this is pretty much how they live it. They often give no thought to how the future will change and if they will be ready for it.

I recently met this gentleman who later became one of my business partners. He was incredibly focused and driven person about his future while being very careful to maintain all his relationships with people. When he had had first graduated as an engineer, he had worked for an engineering company and decided he wanted to focus on being a management consultant.

After he completed his MBA, he tried to get his job. He figured that he would have no problems with his double degrees and years of working experience. To his horror, he went through 26 interviews before he got a job. This gave him a foretaste of the probable future. When he finally got a job, he made a resolution that he would never be at the mercy of another interviewer.

Eventually he left, to set up his own company, investing in other businesses. Fast forward 5 years later, he currently has invested in 30 companies in 6 countries in multiple industries. He recently got married to a very special lady who is studying to become a doctor and has a beautiful son. His major concern is, how could he give his son a great life in the future.

What would your ideal future look like? What gets you excited and motivated about it?

The second question is this, “If you continued like you are doing now, would you feel fulfilled 5 years in the future?”

Now one of the illusions of our culture is that you can do it all. And you know, I just don’t buy it. I believe you can do anything you want you just can’t do everything you want so if you are going to live a designed life it has to be based on priorities and intentionally choosing the priorities that’ll guide your life.

Now you probably know what’s important to your husband or your wife. You certainly know what is important to your boss. You may know what’s important to your parents, or your kids. But who is setting the priorities of your life? What’s important to you? Are you being honest with yourself?

I had a close friend and client. We had gone to school together. He had also done my personal development programs. He consistently put other people in his life first. His ex-wife, his children and his brother. He put himself last.

I finally told my friend that he needed to do significant emotional work about his relationships with people. That it would take one year. If he chose not to do this, it would have serious repercussions on his future. He told me that it sounded too painful to do that type of work.

Fast forward five years later. His brother defaulted on his bank loan. The banks foreclosed on the loan. Since my friend was the guarantor of the loan, they went after him. In one year’s time he would have achieved financial freedom for life. Instead one year from that he was declared bankrupt.

He then came in to do some emotional healing, too little, too late He got very stressed and a latent heart problem activated and became life threatening. He needed surgery to carry on. Fortunately he survived the surgery.

If you continued like you are doing now, would you feel fulfilled 5 years in the future? Or do you need a rapid reality check on where you are going in your life?

Now here is the third question, “What commitment will you now make to your ideal future?”

We had you identify the core priority in the previous podcast. So if you did the exercise in the previous podcast, you know the trajectory of what you need to do. The question right now is, what will you commit to this future. Are you going to be lukewarm and say "Let me think about it?" or are you going to be committed and all in?

Let me give you an example with my own priorities. My first priority is me. It didn’t used to be. If you don’t exercise appropriate self-care you’re not going to be of any use to anybody else. For example if you don’t deal with your emotional baggage then you’re gonna drag that into any relationship you have. If you don’t take care of yourself physically which, was me at one point, it can lead into something serious like a heart attack or some other health crisis. Some health issues can’t be avoided. I get that. You are going to get increasingly less productive at work or in your business.

Years ago when I was living “The Compulsive Life” my priorities weren’t in this order and you can tell by my daily actions. But going through this process starting with these questions I made an important discovery. And it contradicts a lot of people who saying you can win at business and you can win at life but you can’t win at both. But here is my experience, you can’t win at one without winning at the other. Success takes both.

Don’t let the urgent take precedent over the important. Don’t convince yourself that the situation you are now in is temporary. Why? Because those temporary thing have a way of becoming permanent and then becoming a lifestyle. So don’t just drift or drive. Ask the third question, So ask yourself, “What commitment will you make now to your ideal future?”

A few years ago before I formalised “The Freedom Formula”, I was working on my schedule for the forth coming year. I thought I had a really good plan, but remembered that one year earlier I had the same thought but I had grossly over committed. So I looked at my plan again and broke it down into the number of hours and realized that I had under estimated how much time and resources I needed. I needed 500 more hours that year.

That was a major wake up call. I felt really desperate because so many things were riding on me. The current businesses, the future projects, my staff. I felt exhausted. I felt there had to be another way. It took 3 months to reconfigure everything. It took another 6 months to implement and change all the ways of thinking about managing time, energy and resources that I had been doing for the last forty years. Once I did, and I got everyone in my companies on board ,everything changed.

Suddenly I had time to exercise, go on movie dates with my wife once a month instead of twice a year. I could exercise nearly every day. Plus our companies became more profitable.

So often we build up things in our mind. And it really comes down to making that one single commitment. So I let me ask you this today, as we’ve been talking about this, you probably thought of a commitment you need to make right? Maybe it’s a tough conversation you need to have. Maybe it’s an action you need to take. What is it for you? What’s the thing that’s going to move the needle?

It may push you outside of your comfort zone but listen, all the important stuff happens outside of your comfort zone. If you feel uncomfortable just thinking about what I said, fantastic! Embrace it. That’s right were you should be. Nothing really good happens inside the comfort zone. What is the next single commitment that you need to make? Again if you want to live a life by design, if you want to be courageous, not live by default, not be in over drive. These are the 3 questions you need to answer:

Number one, “What would your ideal life 5 years in the future look like?”

Number two“If you continued what you are doing now, would you feel fulfilled 5 years in the future?”

Number three, “What commitment will you now make to your ideal future?”

Now you are clear about the questions you need to answer to live a life by design, the next obvious step is the practicality of implementing this on a daily basis. For example, how will your everyday life change from what you are currently doing? How your daily decisions be different based on the answers to the questions we discussed today? And how will you manage your time so you are giving attention to the things that matter most. It’s all just dreams and wishes unless we take our 30,000 foot view of our ideal life and bring it down to practical, daily actions.

This is critical because I’m sure you’ve wanted to make a big change in some area of your life before now. But for whatever reason you didn’t. Am I right? We’ve all been there so what’s gonna be different for you this time. For most people, nothing. And that’s the reason most people will never get what they truly want in life.

To succeed we’ve got to break this old habits, I had to. Been ultra- driven about my business, I needed a serious wake up call to realise I had to do something dramatically different with the way I approach my day. If I didn’t, I’ll get sucked in that same old same old way.

One lucky listener that posts a review on iTunes will win a private confidential consultation and coaching with me on discovering your soul’s purpose. I will lead you on a personal journey to discover your unique mind-body psychosomatic map of your life. You will get a detailed report and a personal 45 minute consultation with me that is worth thousands.

On this podcast I’m going to help you design a life that works. So you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The more clear you can be about how to organise your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you’ll step into your true potential, stay on track and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen?

Feel free to reach out to me to ask your questions at AskDrSun.com. Your life is a gift. Design it. Do what matters and join me each week as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams. I am Dr Sun. Join me next week on Your Life by Design .