The power of time and timing and your life's journey

George was 19 and a half years old, serving as a cook on the USS Cunningham, a missile guided destroyer. He was everybody's friend, especially when he was the night baker and people would come back from the club wanting donuts at 1:30 in the morning.

Then he started breaking out in hives. Not just on his arms or back. These were internal too. Rapid heartbeat. Hard to breathe. They put him on massive doses of Benadryl and steroids.

One morning, they tried to wake him up. They couldn't.

When he finally did wake up, they sent him to his chief petty officer, who sent him to the ship doctor. The doctor checked him out and said something that changed everything.

"Seaman Apprentice Thomas, I can't figure this out. Not that this would ever happen, but if there was a fire aboard ship, we wouldn't be able to wake you up. We wouldn't be able to get you out. This isn't safe. We're gonna send you to a transient personnel unit."

A helicopter came. George packed his seabag. The doctor's last words: "We're gonna get you figured out. We'll get you back on. You're gonna be good to go."

George got to shore. Did what every good naval person does. Went out to the bar that night. Had a few drinks. Came back and fell asleep.

He woke up about 13 hours later.

Everyone was huddled in the main area on the couches around the TV. Everybody was leaning in. George walked in just in time to hear the news announcer say: "USS Cunningham, missile guided destroyer DDG-17. Number one boiler explodes. 18 injured. 1 person died."

He just stood there. It was almost an out of body experience.

13 hours earlier, he had been on that ship. 13 hours earlier, they weren't able to wake him up in the morning to go do his job. Where he would have been sleeping was located right above the number one boiler that exploded.

"At that point in time, I realized, man, holy crap. Timing is everything. I'm 13 hours away from not being on this planet. Time is precious."

He was 19 and a half years old when he learned this lesson.

Time Is a Really Weird Thing

George opened the episode with an observation that hits differently when you know the story behind it.

"Time is precious. We only have so many hours, days, weeks, seconds, however you wanna measure it. And what we choose to do with that time is completely up to us."

Time is strange. It can go so dang slow. It can also feel like it goes so dang fast.

"I'll never forget when I was a young whippersnapper and my grandparents would be like, the older you get, the faster it goes. And I'd be like, yeah. That's something that old people say. But I'm not even old. I'm only 51, and I'm like, whew, where is it going? It is flying by."

The Cake That Wasn't a Cake

Liz asked George how he tells the difference between moments when waiting is key versus moments when movement is key.

His answer: "I'm really bad at one of those and really good at another."

He's bad at waiting around. Usually a guy in motion. The type who's gonna at least do something to advance 1 step, 1% into the direction he feels like he's going.

But he shared a story about what happens when you rush.

Ever since he was 16 or 17, George would tell his parents he wanted to be married. He needed to be married. He needed to have kids. That desire caught up to him.

He's been with his current wife Kelly for almost 23 years. But his first wife was a different story.

"I really ran into the situation. I didn't pause. I didn't reflect. The cake was not even baked. As a matter of fact, it wasn't a damn cake."

Liz offered: "It was still wet and dry ingredients on a skillet."

"It might have looked like a cake, might have smelled like a cake, but it wasn't a cake. It was a pile of... and I'm just gonna tell you. But I ran into it because my desire, my wanting, my believing that that was something that I needed to make me whole. I wanted to fulfill that piece. And because I rushed into it, it ended up in 3 years of my life that ended in a divorce and somebody that I couldn't trust and just a corrosive part of my life."

He's had to forgive her for that. And forgive himself. So he could move forward in a healthy way with Kelly.

"When I started dating Kelly, it was pretty slow. We knew each other as friends first. We started dating. We dated for a good while. And then we finally got married."

Two Types of People

George believes there are different types of people listening to this conversation.

Some people need to hear: You should probably pause more and think more. Be more strategic about when to zig or zag.

Other people need to hear: Start moving more. Make it part of your daily ritual. Your habits. Your goals.

"If you have these goals, then you need these habits, which mean you need to at least move this much each day. And if you program out 'I need to move this much each day,' you should be able to program in 'I'm gonna sit still this long and think about these things that I'm about to move on.'"

There's probably a whole morning ritual you could put together that is a little bit of pause and go. Pause and go. Pause and go. Covering both bases.

The Field and the Tree

George admitted something he knows he needs to work on: taking time to pause and reflect and think and contemplate.

"I think the travesty is there's so many people out there that can't turn off the radio, can't turn off the TV, can't turn off the social media. When's the last time you went out into an open field, sat against a tree with a blank notebook, and just started jotting down the things that you want to think about or the places that you want to go?"

Not places like Greece or Italy. Where do you want to go in your life?

Before he started his business, George took half a day on a cruise ship with a notebook and a pen and a beverage. He sat and jotted out all of the goods, the bads, the dreams. "I'm about to embark on this journey. I'm about to make movement in a direction of no longer being an employee, but maybe potentially one that will employ other humans."

That's about as much waiting as he can do.

"I am a big advocate of at least be moving a little bit in the direction that you believe to be heading because you can always pivot when you're moving. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. If you sit too long, I personally worry about getting complacent."

The Yeah Buts

Liz put George on the spot. If he had to look at his life and identify an area where he's doing a lot of movement and could afford to slow down, where would it be?

"First of all, let me just preface. My life is pretty darn okay right now. I like where I'm at."

Then he got honest.

It would probably be his business. Not the work for clients, because clients deserve his best. But the stuff that is next phase. The things he's racing toward that don't have to happen as fast as he wants them to happen.

He listed what he had done in just the previous week: 12 videos for a forms course, 6 videos for an email course, 4 videos for a sales enablement course.

Some people might hear that and think this dude is on fire.

But George beats himself up about it.

"Yeah, but I haven't been keeping up with my HubSpot certifications. Yeah, but I could be reading my Bible more. Yeah, but I could be spending more time with my family. Yeah, but. Yeah, but. Yeah, but."

When he starts hearing a lot of yeah buts out of himself, he knows he's not paying attention to what he knows he wants to pay attention to in the future.

The 1% Matrix

George has lived by "1% better each and every day." But he's realizing that what got him here won't get him to the next level.

He wants to create a rubrics, a matrix. A visual way to see the buckets he wants to pay attention to. The amount of time he's spending to move 1% better in each of those areas. And where his time for pause fits in each one.

"Time of pause for each one is gonna look dramatically different. On finances, time of pause might be just giving you time to research the type of investments you might make. Spiritually, time of pause might literally be that field and that tree with your Bible and no other sounds or people around you. Time of pause for family, it's whatever your family likes."

He's reached a point where he feels like he's spinning his wheels.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the terrain got a little bit more treacherous. The mountain got a little more steep. So it might be time to change tires and add a little bit of an engine that you might not have had before to get the rest of the way."

GPS for Life

George shared something he's always asking himself: Does it matter? Am I doing what I feel like I'm put on this planet to do?

"There are many days where I'm like, well, I shouldn't have done that because that's not why I'm on the planet. But I pick myself up, dust myself off, and continue to move on and do the best I can. I'm not a perfect human. There are no perfect humans."

He looks around sometimes and wonders if some people have forgotten to download their GPS app.

"They just seem to be going in circles and circles and circles. You'll hear this: 'Yeah, Bobby, he never grew up.' Well, did he install his GPS? Did he or she know where they were going? Had they diagnosed the different routes? Did they understand the places they needed to stop along the way?"

"You can either circle around your block 500,000 times or you can make it around the world. It depends."

Success Versus Significance

George's GPS, his journey, the time he spends doing things, dramatically changed about 6 years ago.

When he was younger, his destination was success.

Now, his final destination is significance.

"There's a major difference in the choices you make, the questions you ask yourself, and the journey that you take when you're chasing significance over success."

Liz pushed him to define what he means by significance. Because it might be easy for someone to hear that and think he's looking for glory for George.

"When I meet somebody, my ultimate goal is, how can I leave them better than I found them? How can I, if they were sad, leave them with a smile? When I say significance, it's tied to less of what's in it for me and what's in it for them."

How can we put massive amounts of value into the world? Not noise. Value. Things that people can use. Things that will help unlock whether it's professional or personal.

"I believe that being a servant to those around you. I believe in finding the Samaritan on the path of life and being the person who picks them up, dusts them off, and gives them that hand up. I believe in being a blessing bomber."

Success comes with significance. That's the way he believes it works.

"When you become very significant, the other stuff just comes. But too many times, we're chasing success first."

You Can't Go Back

George has been running his agency for a little over a year. Liz asked how his relationship with time has changed.

"First of all, it feels like a week. I'm gonna let that set in for a minute. It's been over a year, but it feels like a week. Time has been flying by."

The big lesson: It's real hard to go back.

"When you say, hey, I'm gonna do xyz, especially for other humans around you in the organization. Can't go back. It's real hard to go back. So make sure you pick the right things."

Take that time to contemplate before you tell people you want to do something. Or you're going to give them something. Or you want them to be in charge of something.

"If you have made a decision, you have made your bed. Now you need to figure it out from there."

You can reboot in life if it only involves you. It's real hard to reboot when it involves other humans.

The Last Time on the Field

George brought everything back to the beginning.

"You got one go around. You got one chance at this."

He acknowledged there are different beliefs out there. But for him, the amount of years he made flip decisions and selfish decisions, feeling like life would last forever, changed when he adopted a different mindset.

"You get one go at this. Why would you not make it the best?"

He offered an image.

Pretend you're a professional athlete. Somebody looks at you and says, this is gonna be the last time you're gonna be on this field. What kind of game would you play?

"You would play the hardest game you've ever played in your life because you would want to know that you left it all out on the field. You would wanna walk away joyful to the journey you just took because you knew it was your last time."

Here's the thing.

"We wake up every day, and we don't realize it could be our last time on the field."

When you wake up in the morning and realize it fundamentally could be the last day you get to step foot on the field, you play a little different.

"Time is precious. Time is limited. This may be the last day I get to step foot on the field. Put me in, coach. I'm gonna give it my all."

Quotable Moments

"Time is precious. Timing is everything. I was 13 hours away from not being on this planet."

"The cake was not even baked. As a matter of fact, it wasn't a damn cake. It might have looked like a cake, might have smelled like a cake, but it wasn't a cake."

"My final destination is significance, and there's a major difference in the choices you make when you're chasing significance over success."

"When I meet somebody, my ultimate goal is, how can I leave them better than I found them?"

"We wake up every day, and we don't realize it could be our last time on the field."

"You can either circle around your block 500,000 times or you can make it around the world."

Questions to Sit With

1. Are you someone who needs to pause more and think more? Or are you someone who needs to start moving more?
2. If time and money were of no issue, what would you add to your list of what's important in life?
3. When you think about your destination, are you chasing success or significance? What's the difference in how that would change your daily choices?
4. If you knew today was your last time on the field, how would you play differently?

Press play above to hear the full conversation. George shares the full story of being 13 hours away from death, the first marriage that taught him about rushing, and why his destination shifted from success to significance. Plus, the questions he asks himself to make sure he's playing like it matters.