In this episode, Garrett Maroon discusses the concept of the hierarchy of attention. He explains that we often allow our attention to go anywhere and everywhere without being specific about where it should actually go. He encourages listeners to create a hierarchy of attention, starting with God, followed by spouse, children, work, and other commitments. Garrett emphasizes the importance of giving more attention to the relationships and responsibilities that are most important and cannot be easily replaced. He reminds listeners to be intentional about where they direct their attention and to prioritize the eternal over the temporal.
Takeaways
Create a hierarchy of attention to prioritize where your attention should go Start with God, followed by spouse, children, work, and other commitments Be intentional about where you direct your attention Prioritize the relationships and responsibilities that are most important and cannot be easily replaced
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Welcome 05:05 Prioritizing God, Spouse, and Children 08:59 The Importance of Prioritizing Relationships
Help us fund the continued work of The Faithful Agent by sending us your Hampton Roads and Richmond, VA buyer and seller referrals! https://faithfulagent.com/referral
In this episode, Garrett Maroon discusses the concept of the hierarchy of attention. He explains that we often allow our attention to go anywhere and everywhere without being specific about where it should actually go. He encourages listeners to create a hierarchy of attention, starting with God, followed by spouse, children, work, and other commitments. Garrett emphasizes the importance of giving more attention to the relationships and responsibilities that are most important and cannot be easily replaced. He reminds listeners to be intentional about where they direct their attention and to prioritize the eternal over the temporal.
Takeaways
Create a hierarchy of attention to prioritize where your attention should go Start with God, followed by spouse, children, work, and other commitments Be intentional about where you direct your attention Prioritize the relationships and responsibilities that are most important and cannot be easily replaced
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Welcome 05:05 Prioritizing God, Spouse, and Children 08:59 The Importance of Prioritizing Relationships
Help us fund the continued work of The Faithful Agent by sending us your Hampton Roads and Richmond, VA buyer and seller referrals! https://faithfulagent.com/referral
What is up, faithful agents? Welcome to another Tuesday short episode. Garrett Maroon here with you. I am so excited to be with you all today wherever you're listening. I appreciate it. We are so grateful for you all tuning in to the podcast. I hope that it is encouraging and helpful to you. Maybe you laugh with us. Maybe you laugh at me. Let's be honest and that's okay either way. We genuinely want this to serve this community. I personally love Christian agents and want to serve you all in any way possible. So today we're going to talk about something called the hierarchy of attention. Where if you were at the conference, you heard me talk about this, I'm going to share that with you all podcast listeners today. But before I do, as always, if this podcast is helpful to you, will you please leave a five star review wherever you listen to the show and will you please click follow so you don't miss another episode and share it with a friend. We really want to reach more people for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of bringing the Christian community together. The best way to do that is for you all to rate it. share it with your friends. So please go ahead and do that. I hope this has been helpful to you. But before I get in to the hierarchy of attention, as always, let me read you a chat GPT Christian joke. Here we go. How many church folks does it take to change a light bulb? 10, one to change the bulb and nine to say how much they like the old one better. I don't even know what that means. ChatGPD must think that all Christians are just old and grouchy, which, you know. Maybe they got a point there. That was a terrible joke. All right, so let's get into the hierarchy of attention. So this is a concept that was taught to me, not a concept I created on my own. Don't give me any credit for it. But my speaking coach, so I travel sometimes and get paid to speak. My speaking coach taught me this, this idea, this concept of the hierarchy of attention. So she was saying that we often have organizational charts or we've got something that is drawn out to decide who does what in our business and a lot of times for agents, right? We're all of the things. But what she said was, but we don't often have what she calls the hierarchy of attention. Where should our attention actually go? We tend to allow our attention to go anywhere and everywhere and we're not actually really specific where we think it's supposed to go. And so this concept has been really valuable to me. and has been valuable to a lot of people. So let me start it off like this. In our coaching group, there's an incredible woman named Vicki and she's phenomenally good at real estate, so much fun, you would love being around her, but she does a lot of stuff like most of us, right? They're very busy in her work and in meeting people and doing all the things. And she said, I think it's because I have FOMO. And I said, well, I don't think it's because you have FOMO, right? The fear of missing out. I think you have FOLO, the fear of letting others down. And I think so much of what we're driven to do as agents is because we don't want to quote let others down. So anyone and everyone can get our attention. Anyone and everyone can. call us and we'll answer right away. Anyone and everyone can send us a text and it doesn't matter if it's Saturday, Sunday, Monday night, doesn't matter, we will get back to them or we will respond to their email or hey you want to go see a house at 830 at night, sure I'll be there. Anyone can get our attention whenever they want it and it's as if we just don't want to let anyone down ever and I get that and I understand that and it's difficult and I'm not saying as Christians we should get in the habit of letting our clients down, right? would not be a good witness to them. But I am saying this, the reality is there are some people that should get more of your attention and there's some people that should get less, right? Some people should intentionally get less attention. One of the challenges that we have is we think, oh, I've got all these things going on that I'm trying to pay attention to. Well, this person also needs my attention. I'm just gonna also give it to them, right? As if we can just keep stacking on and stacking on and our attention is an unlimited amount. All I can give all my family all this attention and all my clients all this attention and guess what? I'm gonna be fine and somewhere along the way. I'm gonna read my Bible. That's just not how it works We're not machines. We shouldn't try to be a machine, right? So we've got to understand biblically where should we put our attention? So here's what I mean and here's what I would encourage you to do you draw out a hierarchy of attention So it's literally just circles right a top circle then one below it then one below it then one below that right until however down you need to go and then you start to write in who should get the most attention from you okay so I'm gonna say this here is mine God of course right the Lord excuse me The Lord is at the top. Number two, my wife Rachel. Number three, my kids. Those are the top three. And if you're married, if you have kids, that should be your order. The biblical order, the Lord, your spouse, your kids. And then from there, it's really wherever the Lord has placed you. Maybe that's your work, probably is. That's your job, that's your real estate business. From there, what should be next? So for me, it's from my kids to my real. real estate team, to my coaching group, to the faithful agent. Just being honest with you, now the faithful agent is a huge passion of mine. So it doesn't mean that it doesn't get an outsized amount of attention because I love this community. However, it does mean that if the faithful agent is trying to jump up and come level with my wife, I need to stop that from happening or I need people in my life who will make sure that that doesn't happen. Right, because when it comes to who should get my attention, that's the biblical structure, the Lord, my wife, my kids, right? They should get my attention. One of the struggles that I personally have, that we all have, is that my family, for example, if I've got an active client that I'm working with, Excuse me, and they call and they need something or they text me I feel like I need to get back to them quickly even if that means it's during or after work hours and I am gonna have to pull my attention away from my family I do it anyways, right? Even if it's not actually something that is necessary for me to get back to them for whatever reason I feel like I gotta get back to them right away and sometimes that's true and a lot of times it isn't right my wife's gotten really good at asking me Hey, is this something that is actually urgent or is it not urgent? You're just doing it, right? Right and that's helped me try to figure that out. I've also gotten better at telling my wife Hey, I want you to know that we're actively whatever we're actively negotiating a deal or this home just went on the market So I am gonna have to have my work phone. I have two phones I am gonna have to have my work phone around more often because I need to make sure I'm responsive She's like great. I appreciate the heads up, right? Just having those conversations and working that out together But because the hierarchy of attention it should be the Lord. It should be my wife It should be my kids my problem is in my personal struggle and I'm honest I bet yours is too is that my clients my business so often scooch up to a higher rung above my kids above my even above the Lord sometimes right because oh I didn't have time to get in the word today didn't have time to pray didn't have time to talk to the Lord whatever but I plenty of time to get on Facebook and respond to Facebook messages right I mean just being totally honest with y 'all the challenge when we don't have clarity on who should get our attention Right is that it goes to so many places that it shouldn't I think if I'm completely honest with y 'all I? What I told you the Lord my wife my kids my real estate business my coaching faithful agent I think I'm honest with you what my actual hierarchy looks like so I'd encourage you draw out what it should be and then maybe write out what it currently is mine would honestly probably be my phone the faithful agent my real estate business Maybe the Lord in there somewhere right other people who want my attention it can make me feel good about myself my wife my kids right It's just not in the right order my attention gets all out of whack and we've got to pay attention to what we're paying attention to. So as you work through this hierarchy of attention, just give yourself some clarity on who should get more of me, who should get less of me, right? Just be intentional on that. And last thing I'm going to leave you with is what my old pastor said to me. My wife and I were newly married at the time and I was leading worship at this church. That was a church plan. I mean, it was, I don't know, 80 people, but we were doing church in a box every Sunday. If you've ever been part of that, we were setting up, tearing down, meeting in a, in a school. And it took a lot. I mean, it took a lot. to lead worship and to prep and do all those things. And I remember Rachel, my wife, coming up to me and saying, hey, I love that you love worship, but I really would like you to take a step back because we just got married and I want to spend more time with you, right? And all those things totally within our rights to do that. And absolutely, I said, of course, I would love to honor you in that. But I was struggling with it because I just want to do worship. I felt like that's what I was called to do and I should do X, Y, and Z, right? Well, so I remember going and talking to my pastor, Pastor Kevin at the time, and I asked him, man, Rachel's asked me to step down or step back on worship team. What do you think? So I can focus more on marriage, what do you think? And I always will remember his response. He looked at me and said, Garrett, the church can get another worship team leader, but your wife's not gonna get another husband, right? The point was this, the church could replace me. My wife couldn't. Right now, my kids can't just replace me, but my client could replace me. They could get somebody else. Right. My coaching group, they could get a different coach. The faithful agent, there could be someone else that is serving and helping lead this community. But my family, that's who I am most attached and committed to from a biblical perspective. And so as you think through this, right, there are only a few relationships in your life where they just can't get another one of you. That's where those should be at the top of your hierarchy, right? Those are the eternal things not the temporal things So I hope that's an encouragement to you to go figure out where should my attention go pay attention? To what you're paying attention to and it honors the Lord. I love you faithful agents. We will see you on Thursday
