The Art of Alignment, Part 4: Growth, Peace, and Discernment

Matthew Gottesman (0:02)

Welcome to The Niche Is You. My name is Matt Gottesman, at Matt Gottesman on Instagram, and this is my daily podcast where I create short, quick hitting episodes to help you uncomplicate life, creativity, and the pursuit of your highest self. There's only main character energy here. Now, let's get into it.

Welcome to episode 901 We made it to over 900 episodes. Just first of all, I want to say thank you, by the way. I'm so grateful for all of the listeners and for who've double and tripled in size over the years. It's been about three and a half years. I was on a mission and it's just beginning. So episode 901, this is the fourth part in the four part series of The Art of Alignment on growth, peace, and discernment. And I actually just jotted down about six or seven different points. We're just gonna riff today, even more so. Well, I always riff, but sometimes I take a little extra notes, but I was like, you know what? This is fine. We're just gonna go off of these. But this one's focusing more on learning to make choices that reflect what matters, even when life isn't entirely certain. Congratulations. Life is not entirely certain.

It's not to say that, I think that that sometimes bothers people because they go, oh, then like, if there's nothing certain, then why do anything at all? And it's like, no, no, no, like that's the, there's beauty in that.

It means that there's still so much to learn and that instead of constantly, always thinking and playing in a future tense, you're actually brought more present. And the thing of it is, is that like, you just don't know enough details and variables until you actually make a next step. Now, you can prepare for a lot of different things, but there's so many variables outside of you that you do not control, none of us do. You know, that's why even like when you see, you know, all kinds of people, there's that expression like we make plans and God laughs. Well, that actually applies to everybody, even if it looks like it may be working for them, right? So, life is not entirely certain. So, the first point I want to make on growth, peace and discernment is that something can stop fitting your life without becoming something you need to regret. Okay, something can stop fitting your life without becoming something you need to regret. Listen, alignment is accepting that you're going to grow. And it's okay to grow. You're supposed to grow. Some things may no longer be growing with you. Some things may have already, or people may have already been a part of that process and they helped you and they're just going to stay put where they're at, right? Some jobs you may have now, maybe your skill set has outgrown it or some environments. And so, it can stop fitting your life and you can move on. It's not anything that you have to regret. There's not anything that you have to hang on to. In fact, if anything, gratitude should come in and be like, oh, wow, I'm so grateful for that experience. I'm so grateful for those people. Because then it becomes less about, like you're letting somebody or something down, and instead becomes more about, oh, I'm so excited to keep growing. And yeah, of course, not every environment and not every person is going to like that. And then that's an even greater question to ask yourself, why not? Like, so and so, I'm growing. You do not want me to grow? You know, it's like you could almost ask him a question or like a job, you know. And I've used this example countless times with one of my best friends, and he was always really good at just being very entrepreneurial within organizations. And he would always right up front ask the job, like, hey, what is it that you expect of me? And they'd say, this is what we want. And, you know, in about two years time, this is the role that we were going to have you get into. And he'd say, that's great. Okay, done. And then, of course, he would execute and get all the results and do all the things. And then in two years time, he'd be like, okay, so are we ready for that position? And they would kind of often, you know, how corporations can be often, they'd say, oh, no, you know, I don't think we're going to be able to do that yet or we're not ready. And, you know, they would kind of drag their feet a little bit. So he would always go to a competitor and tell them exactly what he was looking for within the positions that they were hiring, which is always, you know, the next one up. He was very qualified, so they naturally wanted to hire him. He would always take that job back to his original employer and say, hey, this is what I was offered. This is the title plus more money. What you said you were going to do. Can you do it? And sometimes they would say, no, you know, we can't. You'd say, okay, then I'm going to leave. And so he was always very, very honest, but his thing wasn't like he regretted, you know, that he was leaving or anything like that, or that, you know, he was like, I have to go. I have to keep growing. You're not fitting into my life. And funny enough, they always respected him for doing that, even if they weren't happy that he was leaving. And of course, sometimes they even try to hire him back later on, and sometimes they did.