Time Isn't the Problem: Four Strategies to Transform Stress Into Success

By Chad E. Cooper

Learn to live every day with purpose, passion, and joy with this practical guide to proven success strategies.

We all start out with a personal vision of the ideal life. Then, all too often, the realities of living get in the way. So how do people like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, and George Clooney manage to live the lives of their dreams. Do they possess unique abilities or some magic elixir?

The truth is that while these people’s lives are extraordinary, they themselves are not. What sets them apart are certain qualities that keep them performing at their highest levels. In Time Isn’t the Problem, success coach Chad. E. Cooper teaches you how to cultivate those same qualities—and reap the rewards.

Everyone gets 168 hours in a week. The question is: how will you use them? This comprehensive, entertaining, and action-inducing program is designed to get you living the life of your dreams right now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781630477011

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

—Abraham Lincoln

You know that feeling. Maybe for you it happened when you opened your alumni magazine and read about your old roommate’s latest achievement. Perhaps it came when you saw your neighbor pull into his driveway with a brand new luxury car. Or maybe it was the phone call from your brother bragging about the new diamond necklace he bought for his wife. I’m talking about that strange unsettling emotion, a combination of happiness for their success mixed in with some degree of envy, along with that multi-million-dollar question: Why them?

I’m betting that you’ve picked up this book because that question has been lingering in your mind for quite some time. Why do some people seem to work less and still receive a greater share of the pie? How are they able to navigate through the immense amount of information overload and live a satisfying, balanced life, while you stay up at night stressing out over how you’re going to pay for that new roof? Why are they on item 128 of their dream list, while you can barely get past item one?

Why indeed? That doesn’t seem fair now, does it?

Every day we’re bombarded with news about people around the world who are living extraordinary lives, from the Silicon Valley executive showing off his latest yacht to the adventurer climbing the five highest mountains in the world. The media would like to have you believe they are exceptional, lucky, and somehow smarter and better bred than you.

That’s a bunch of hogwash.

People such as Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson, George Clooney, and Oprah Winfrey have led extraordinary lives, to be sure, but there’s nothing in their DNA that makes them exceptional human beings. Yes, they are all talented. However, it was not their talent alone that brought them their success. There are scores of equally talented people who never reach their levels of achievement, and it’s not for lack of trying.

What’s their secret? There are lots of factors that go into their success. Study any of them and you will find that the most important factor has been their mastery of one very important part of their lives—something that made all of their achievements possible. This something is common to all people, whether you’re male, female, rich, poor, educated, street smart, tall, short and everything in between. I call this the great equalizer.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours is the number of hours in one week. I don’t care how much money you have; you can’t buy 169 hours. Week in, week out, there are 168 hours, and once you use them they’re gone forever. Yet if they’re used wisely, anything’s possible.

People who live lives that matter know how to use their 168 hours each week most effectively. They are able to do this by being very clear in their purpose and passionate about what they do. They set goals and act on them consistently.

If you can do this, great. You’re living your intentions, getting things done, and—unfortunately for me—probably don’t need this book. However, if you can’t do this, then yes, you’ve got a problem. A big problem.

All is not lost though. Wherever there’s a big problem, there’s also a big solution.

How can you—with the same amount of hours per week—replicate and produce the results that you want? How can you go from a life of working your tail off to a life of financial stability, freedom, and the happiness that comes from living life on your terms? How can you reignite your relationship with your significant other into something extraordinary?

Right now all of that might seem impossible, especially if you feel so overwhelmed with what life has handed you that you don’t believe you have time for more personal development. In one sense that’s true. You still only have those same 168 hours to work with. However, in these pages I will show you how to leverage those hours so that, with a few tweaks to your daily regimen, you can create a life that matters.

•  More time to travel and vacation? Done!

•  More quality time with a spouse or loved one? Done!

•  More time to pursue hobbies or personal development? Done!

However…

(You knew there had to be a catch here, right?)

If it were just a matter of managing those 168 hours, there would be no real need for this book. If you don’t believe me, type in the words time management into the search bar on Amazon.com. You’ll come up with over 126,000 books dealing with the subject and over 5,000 books with the words time or management in their titles. That’s a lot of writing and a lot of advice on how to effectively use your time to your benefit. Most of it is valuable. I’m such a big proponent of time management that I devote the last section of this book to my formula for how to make the most of those precious hours in your weekly life. It’s important and valuable information, yes, but time management alone doesn’t address the most important factor in transforming stress into success.

That key is YOU.

Yeah, I know. That stings. You want to believe it’s something else—your boss, your co-worker, your spouse, your kid, the government, or the weather—that’s keeping you from really getting what you want out of life. You want to believe you’re giving your all. You want to believe there’s another, easier solution than having to confront your weaknesses.

Here’s something to consider. Go to the gym and take a look at that guy with those rock hard abs. He didn’t get them from waving a magic wand over himself. He worked at building those muscles, something that took him time and effort. Success in life works the same way. Success just doesn’t happen. The amount of success you achieve is directly proportional to the amount of effort you put into knowing yourself and how to use that knowledge effectively.

Let’s get back to those reactions you may have had on seeing the achievements of others: That twinge of envy, that shock of surprise, or even outright bewilderment at how others succeeded where you haven’t been able to up to this point. You may not have realized you harbor these not-so-nice feelings, and you may even be feeling a little ashamed, embarrassed, or upset that you do.

But before you throw this book across the room and give up in despair, take heart. You’ve done your best up to this point. You have the best of intentions and are frustrated by your inability to make things better and more productive for yourself. You just don’t know how to transform your stress into success.

That’s what this book is for. Consider this your how-to manual on how to make the rest of your life the best years of your life. This book is my way of offering you proven strategies that I’ve learned and tested so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did.

I will teach you that you have the ability to be your own solution. I will show you the how, to enable you to see that you are extraordinary and your dreams can become real again and again. But more importantly, I will also show you the why, the impact that effects little changes in your routine will have on you, your loved ones, and your community.

HAVING A LIFE THAT MATTERS

In my time on the planet, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to be one of Tony Robbins’ top tier Platinum and Master Coaches. I’ve taken my family on trips all over the United States, Caribbean, Central America, and Europe. Not only did I do the Ironman race, but I was sponsored by nine major companies, one which gave me a $13,000 bike, and I got to tour across the nation as a result.

More importantly, I’ve been able to be of service by being a leader to others. I’ve had the extraordinary privilege of serving on thirteen different charitable boards, and been an elected official for our city of 8,000 people. I’ve also had the honor of being named Regimental Marine of the Year. I’ve led missionary trips outside the United States, and brought children from the Chernobyl nuclear fallout zone into our home to help deplete the radiation from their bodies and bring nutrition and color back to their skin.

Most recently, I’ve led twenty other extraordinary people across the Grand Canyon and back in two days (46 miles) to raise awareness and funds for cancer and traumatic injury survivors.

I don’t say this to impress you, but to press upon you that what I’m about to share with you works! These methods work every time and for everyone who applies them.

I’ve gotten to this point because I took the advice I give my own clients and told myself to be open to all possibilities and see how I could make them my own. I didn’t let limitations get in the way just because other people said there were limitations. Ultimately, I came to see that my life is driven by one important rule: to put more into the world than I take out. That’s what drives me when I wake up in the morning.

Even though I can say that my life today is extraordinary, I wasn’t always surrounded by sunshine and rainbows. I’m not special. I wasn’t born into privilege. I’m the product of divorce. My intellect is average. Sometimes my wife accuses me of doing some really dumb things.

That’s the point. I’m no different from anyone else. I’m no different from you. I truly believe that anyone is capable of achieving what I have, if they too, have passion and the right tools.

While I say you’re the problem, that doesn’t mean that I think you’re dumb. In fact, I believe you’re smart. In fact, after working with hundreds and thousands of people, I know we all have significantly more power, and ability then we are using. After all, you took the time to buy this book, and I want to make sure you’ll come to see it as the wisest decision you’ve made this year. You have everything you need to transform stress into success, right here in your hands.

LIFE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE HARD

When I was a young kid, I did a lot of things that held me back. Sometimes, when things didn’t go the way I wanted, I felt like a train wreck. If I had not changed course, I would have been in the same boat as a lot of people—living a life of survival, instead of a life of unlimited possibilities.

I kept making mistakes that prevented me from achieving anything great. But I didn’t question anything, because in many ways I was fairly comfortable. I had a job, a car, a place to live, friends, and a loving family. I was certainly in okay shape, especially compared to a lot of people, and for a long time that was fine for me.

However, when life is so-so or even okay, the tendency is to believe life will always be that way. The idea of becoming extraordinary was way, way off my radar.

In many ways, I was really just limping along. Like a lot of people, I limited myself to simple thoughts. My vocabulary for expressing emotions? Happy, sad, angry or pissed off. There was a lot of black and white and not much shading in between.

I had no grand scheme for my life. I wasn’t really doing any planning. I was living a life of reaction. I was in a situation where I was working ninety hours a week and saw no way out. I was in an unhappy marriage, and for a long time saw no way out of that either. My life was all about getting through the day, paying the bills, having some fun on the weekend, and that was that.

I didn’t have a purpose. I was just trying to survive. Trying to thrive wasn’t even an option.

In short, I was subscribing to society’s indoctrinated beliefs. Life is hard. Work for survival. If there’s anything left over after the bills are paid, great, but don’t necessarily count on any great rewards.

One day I woke up and realized that time was ticking by. I heard a voice inside me say, It’s time to live! Then a moment later, the voice added a phrase, But how?

I embarked on a decades-long journey predicated on my desire for growth and to be better. I began the process by tiptoeing outside my comfort zone and getting educated. I studied writings from Carl Jung, Viktor Frankl, Napoleon Hill, Warren Buffet, Gary Chapman, Eckhart Tolle, Billy Graham, and David Deida. My education also included workshops and training with some of the masters in their fields: coaching giant Tony Robbins, financial guru Al Granum, and marketing genius Mike Koenigs, among others. I didn’t go into any of those workshops feeling like this one will fix me or fulfill me, but I trusted they would be a piece to the puzzle. That’s why, along this journey I also engaged in much meditation and self-reflection work, trusting that the path I was on would bear fruit.

Like following breadcrumbs through a forest, I went from one inspired role model to the next, which eventually led me to discover my own system for success. I’ve taken pieces of these mentors’ wisdom, and the insights I’ve gained in my years of coaching, to develop a strategy that, with commitment, practice, and persistence, can help you achieve everything you desire.

The system is based on my belief that there are four components of a totally fulfilled life.

•  Time management

•  Purpose

•  Effective self-expression

•  Operating from your highest self

It’s also based on the premise that you hold the key to your own success. By truly understanding yourself and how to break free of the limits you impose on yourself, you can transform your life and the quality of your experiences, and create a life that truly matters.

I can’t make the promise that getting all this will be easy. But I can promise that if you follow my suggestions you will have fun. In fact, I can wholeheartedly promise that if you come with me on this journey, you will find it absolutely worthwhile.

At the heart of doing this successfully is to have you create a winning life. Winning isn’t a sometime thing, it’s an all the time thing…and winning is a habit.

To have a winning life, I suggest you look in the mirror and say:

•  I don’t care about what other people say…

•  I am more than what other people say I am.

•  It’s time to live a life that matters to ME!

THE KEY TO GETTING RESULTS THAT MATTER

When I finally discovered my purpose, I started down the life path I’m on today. For instance, because I believed in the importance of giving back to my community, I followed in my grandfather’s footsteps and ran for City Council of our small town. Since I’ve always wanted to mentor others, I’ve spent the past four years doing just that, with students at the University of Michigan. Discovering my purpose gave me the courage to live the life I love.

Being a father was important to me too. I desperately wanted to be a big influence in my son’s life, but I came to the conclusion that being a great father was incompatible with my corporate job that kept me out of the house all day. I didn’t want strangers to be his main caregivers. To be the type of father that I wanted to be, I realized I needed to be his major male role model, which meant being around for him. To do that, I had to retire.

I did. At the ripe old age of thirty-five, I retired from the corporate world and the ninety-hour workweek.

Guess what? Not only did I get the time to be a quality parent for my child, I got the opportunity to do lots of other fun things, like take annual trips around the country and learn new hobbies.

Some of you reading this might stop here and think that it’s easy for me to say all this, because I have the time and the money to make these things happen, while you’re sitting there wondering if you’ll ever take another vacation again. Stick with me, please. Be patient. I didn’t get here overnight. It took work, and a lot of planning and discipline—and I’ll show you how you can do the same.

HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS BOOK

Are you an extra in someone else’s movie script, or are you the lead author of your own blockbuster?

—Chad Cooper

Do you want to learn how to live a life that matters? I know that you recognize you need to learn new tools, new methods, and to unlearn old unproductive habits that aren’t doing you any good. Why else would you pick up a book that says right on the cover that you’re the problem?

You’re smart enough to know you have limitations and smart enough to want to do something to change them. There’s a lot of ground to cover here, and throughout this book I’m going to ask you to look within yourself for answers by asking you questions you may never before have considered. I believe you have the answers within you, and I’m going to help you discover how to find them.

I’ll be spending a large part of this book emphasizing the role that language plays in our lives. Here’s a preview. Take the word because. When you think because, think be at cause. Don’t get into the mindset of I can’t do this because of this thing or that thing. In other words, be the cause, not the effect, of everything that happens in your life. You take a stand to make it happen.

Most of us will follow and live in the effect—that is, accepting what we get. That may be an okay way to live if you’re happy settling for the crumbs of whatever may fall your way. But the likelihood is that you’ve picked up this book because that isn’t what you want out of life. You want the whole loaf, right? In a life that matters—a life that’s free of stress—you’re somebody who is the cause of the matter, not someone for whom life just happens. When you settle for other people’s actions or material things (these being effects) you end up on the short