A Letter From Chris Suarez
YOU CAN’T HAVE IT ALL
Good Morning Team,
My message today may not be popular. And that’s OK, as I realize these letters are as much letters to myself as they are to the team. I write from a place of being willing to struggle with a topic much more than from a place of mastery of a topic.
Sometimes we need to hear things we don’t want to hear...because we’ve been hearing things we shouldn’t be hearing for too long.
Our books, our screens, our podcasts are filled with loud voices and “influencers” telling us and our children that they CAN have it ALL. They can have incredible wealth and incredible vacations and incredible relationships and incredible bodies and incredible cars and incredible health and incredible experiences and incredible lives. And they can have it all, right now, together, at the same time, if they just...(fill in the blank).
They have convinced or more appropriately brainwashed, people into thinking that anyone can have everything and do everything and experience everything all at the same time.
And you know what? They are right about one thing. It is “incredible”. We just forgot that the definition of incredible is “impossible to believe”.
We need to stop believing we can do it all, have it all, be it all, experience it all. Because when we put down the book, or turn off the screen, or pause the podcast and step back into our reality, we are left feeling less than, or unaccomplished, or imperfect, or worse, a failure. Because if “they” can have it all, why can’t we?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not one to put limits on the life or world we can create for ourselves and others. But we create by choosing. And choice requires elimination. Our lives don’t get bigger by addition. They get bigger by subtraction.
Each one of those “incredible” areas of your life can be achieved if we make the right choices sequentially. Unfortunately, because we are human, we want them all, now. We want to keep adding the incredible, instead of subtracting.
But that isn’t what a choice is.
Some years ago I wrote a course called Master Time. We talked about the need to choose what you want to have so you can choose what you need to do. It is impossible to have it ALL because it is impossible to DO everything. In order to become excellent and to be elite in any category, it will take obsession. And obsession takes time, our non-renewable resource. We must be obsessed with learning, with improving. No one becomes a master chef without being obsessed with food and cooking. No one becomes a master gardener without being obsessed with horticulture. No one becomes a master in fitness without being obsessed with working out and eating healthy
The key to choosing, or saying “yes” to something, immediately forces us to have to say “no” to something else, or give up something else that we have decided is “less important” right now. Obsession forces you to eliminate a split focus. We must decide what matters most.
In fact, the Latin root of the word ‘decide’ or ‘decision‘ - cid or cis - literally means “to cut” or “to kill.” Think about it. You find that same root word in “scissors” or “pesticide”. You must kill off or say no to distractions.
Cut away your options. Cut away the less important. Minimalist or not, there is a genius that develops when obsession around one thing allows for the discipline of saying no. Every cut matters.
But remember, when making decisions about what we want, we also have to make difficult decisions about what we don’t want, or what is less important to us right now. And yet, we don’t hear that from those that tell the story about “having it all” and “10X-ing their lives”. So we are left feeling as if there must be a way to do it all and have it all and achieve it all. And our seeming lack of achievement winds up causing self-doubt, lack of self-worth, and eventually giving up. We relegate ourselves to the fact that “they” must be more talented, more developed, more intelligent, more athletic, more disciplined, more self-actualized.
Instead, we need to realize that most of those books, those videos, those podcasts are nothing more than motivational.
Can you have the wealth you want? Yes.
Can you have the vacations you want? Yes.
Can you have the relationships you want? Yes.
Can you have the body you want? Yes.
Can you have the cars you want? Yes.
Can you have the health you want? Yes.
Can you have the experiences you want? Yes.
Can you have the life you want? Yes.
You don’t need the motivation to have any of those things. You need to make the incredible, credible. And that comes from choosing what is important to you, right now. It comes from choosing what you are willing to be obsessed with, right now. It comes from choosing what really matters to you right now.
You can’t have it all. You CAN have anything. You just can’t have everything.
Yours in making choices,
Chris Suarez
