In life, you have an important choice to make.
You can make things happen, you can watch things happen, or you can wonder what happened when life passes you by!
Most people either wait, watch or wonder what happened.
They simply react.
Life happens and they try their best just to survive.
They get done with work for the day, go home, flip on the TV and then go to bed. They wake up and do it again. Until one day something changes and maybe they lose their job.
Then they react and find another job and do it all over again.
This is called playing defense.
Someone else has the ball. Maybe it's just random chance. Maybe it’s your boss. But something outside of your control calls the shots. You simply react as the plays happen and do your best to limit the losses.
If you work a 9-5 you know this all too well.
You live in this city because this is where you got a job offer or this is where you grew up. You work a lot because someone else gives you a lot of work to do and you have to do it to feed your family. You aren’t able to make new friends or try new hobbies because all of your time is spoken for by someone else.
If you are a small business owner, you can fall into this exact same trap and be totally out of control as well!
You wait for the next fire and as soon as it happens it takes your attention and dictates your life. You run around solving problems all day every day. You take care of the urgent stuff but more and more stuff becomes urgent. More stuff than you could ever take care of by yourself. You’re constantly on defense. Your business controls you and dictates your every move.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.
People on defense complain about the same things over and over again without ever taking control and making changes.
I get it. A lot of things in life are uncontrollable.
You can’t control other people’s actions. You can’t control the weather. If you are in a situation where you have a lot of external factors that you can’t control ruling your life its a bad situation to be in.
I call these all risk factors.
Your spouse leaving you is a risk. Your friend letting you down is a risk. You're employee not performing is a risk. Your health is a risk. Getting fired is a risk.
But here’s the secret:
A lot of these risk factors can be influenced by your actions.
People on defense don’t understand this.
You can reduce the chances of illness by treating your body the right way. By eating the right foods, exercising, taking vitamins and supplements, etc.
You can reduce the risk of a friend letting you down by putting yourself around better people with better values.
You can even control the weather. WHAT?? That doesn’t make any sense, Nick! But it's true. I totally stopped the snow from falling by moving from Boston to Athens, Georgia! Moving to Florida would have done the same thing.
The incredible thing about life is that you can change the people you interact with. You can change the city you live in. You can change the job you go to every day.
Instead of continuing to wake up every day doing the same thing over and over again and wondering why nothing is getting better for you, start to look at the things you can actively change.
It's never easy, but it's possible.
Not many people think this way and that's why only a small percentage of folks are out there making things happen.
They are living life on offense.
These people live where they want to live.
They do the things that they want to be doing. They go get a new job if they don’t like their current job. They go get new friends if they keep getting let down by their old friends.
They control their income stream and make decisions that directly affect it. They get their situation under control by limiting the risk factors.
Some business owners play offense as well. They call all of the shots. They decide how they spend their time. They work on what they want to be working on. They stop fires before they start. They invest in growth and are constantly trying to improve.
I think that we can all agree that it’s better to make things happen than to react to things that happen. It’s better to control as much of our life as we can. It’s better to play offense.
So how do we switch sides and play offense?
You start spending your time on things that are important but not urgent. People on defense deal with things as they come and don’t do anything to stop negative things from coming in the first place.
People on offense work on their health. They learn and build their experiences to make themselves more valuable in the workforce.
They go to networking events. They make an effort to make new friends. They apply to new jobs if they want to make a change.
None of this stuff is fun in the moment. It’s work. Not only is it work but it's work that doesn’t HAVE to be done right now. That's why it's so hard and few people do it.
This can all be put off easily until tomorrow or next week or next year so it never happens.
This is the kind of work that won’t pay you back right now either. It will pay you back 6 months from now. Maybe a year from now. Maybe even 5 years from now.
People on offense understand this and they know it’s worth it. They still commit and get it done.
If you aren’t where you want to be in life and you still have some goals that you want to achieve its time to free up some of your time and lean out your life.
Remember that it takes courage. It’s scary to make changes and to take chances in the hope that things will get better.
It’s scary to leave even the most unhealthy relationships. It’s scary to move across the country. It’s scary to start that business. It’s scary to go ask someone for a job or an opportunity that you want.
Overcoming the insecurity and fear of failure isn’t easy and it takes guts. Anything in life worth doing takes guts.
Start by setting your goals.
What 20% of your activities bring you 80% of your enjoyment?
How much of your time do you spend doing those things? Maybe its spending time with your child? Maybe its fishing or cycling? Maybe its traveling? Maybe it’s building something and learning something and you want to do it every day at work so you need to find a new career.
Then make a plan:
Start doing the stuff that is uncomfortable. Start delaying your gratification. Start working hard in your free time to make it happen. Lean out your life. Spend less money so you have more freedom. Guard your time and put it to use.
No one is going to give you permission. You have to get out there and make it happen! I hope this helps to get you thinking about and playing on offense for the rest of 2025.
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A few posts from this week:
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Onward and upward,
Nick Huber
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