2551: At What Cost?

We all understand the Time Value of Money — that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow because it can compound. But what if the same principle applies to your Time, Attention, Energy, and habits? In this episode, we explore how compounding shapes your body, your career, your relationships, and your peace of mind. Comfort has an interest rate. Indulgence compounds. Avoidance compounds. So does discipline. The real question isn’t “Do I want this?”It’s: At what cost — over time — am I willing to pay? If you care about personal responsibility, alignment, excellence, and building a life that compounds instead of decays, this episode is for you. Get the Compounding Audit here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f8MZNFVZCE4C5o7v33bFzaGYOWHth99EMjaubTBukyY/edit?usp=sharingGeorge’s newest book is available! Get your copy of The Meaningful Few here: https://amzn.to/4qA26X9 Feeling busy but unfulfilled? The Meaningful Few helps you identify what truly matters, eliminate distractions, and live with intention and clarity. Learn more here: MyMeaningfulFew.comWant to say “Thanks!” You can buy us a cup of coffee.https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifebloodThanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review here:​​https://ratethispodcast.com/lifebloodpodcastCopyright LifeBlood 2026.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 01

  Ladies and gentlemen, I've got great news. I think you're gonna like it. You have more time than you think, more energy than you can ever use, more potential than you'll ever need. And if you believe that, I've got some oceanfront property right here in Arizona that I would love for you to purchase. I would love to sell it to you. I think that you intellectually understand the concept of time value of money. The whole notion that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. Why is that? Well, that's because money can certainly grow. You can earn more money. You can multiply it while you're sleeping through compound interest.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  But the uncomfortable part of it is, so can your habits, so can your discipline, so can your indulgence, so can your avoidance. Compounding, it doesn't care about how you feel about anything. We treat money like it compounds, and we treat everything else as though it resets daily. But the, I don't know if it's an uncomfortable truth... The Uncomfortable Truth, is that the name of Elgor's book? An Inconvenient Truth. This is also potentially a very inconvenient truth that that's not how it goes. Your energy, your attention, your time, it doesn't necessarily reset daily because

• 2:13Speaker 01

  you're never going to be any younger than you are right now. You're never going to be more biologically capable than you are right now. You're never going to be less encumbered, encumbered than you are right now, today. You, right now, are holding your prime capital. And most of us are spending it as though we won the lottery. Like, we have some kind of ill-gotten gains that we can just blow through. But the reality is, the reality of our most valuable resources, time, energy, attention, and money, is that those, again, are all compounding.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  I talk to my clients about compound interest, about, you know, just money growing without being taxed. Oh, year and year again, you're getting a rate of return on a bigger sum of money. And that's a beautiful thing, but that also applies to time. Think about if you spent five years lifting weights, if you spent five years reading every day, if you spent five years doing the things that it took to have a successful marriage, if you spent five years building a new skill. And you've done all of these things, potentially, in some form or fashion. It's not five new units of effort. There is an absolute exponential shift that will have taken place.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Think about energy. You can't, unfortunately, out-hack your biology forever because, maybe you've experienced this as well, that we just don't recover the way that we used to. We need more sleep, need more rest. Our hormones are always changing. And of course, our obligations are certainly, you know, always changing and evolving and probably getting more.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  So when you are, when you are wasting your prime energy today, it is absolutely irreplaceable. This is an irreplaceable form of capital. And so it goes for attention as well. Because what you repeatedly show up to, what you repeatedly attend or observe, that becomes who you are internally. The whole idea of you are what you eat. Well, if you're just constantly, if the inputs that you're giving, let me put that a better way. You become the summary of the inputs that you are putting into your head. Which is super obvious, but I don't know that we think about it enough.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  So you think about if you're constantly putting outrage into your head, well, that's going to compound. If you're just constantly distracting yourself and sort of numbing yourself, well, that's going to compound. Just as mastery does. Just as mastery would. I think that we understand the money one, you know, I think that we understand that it's better to start saving early than it is to start saving later. Because when we start early, it's going to give us leverage. And if we start late, that's going to equate to more pressure for us. The whole thing is, you know, the longer we wait to pursue our most important financial goals and objectives, the harder they become.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  So instead of starting when we were 20 or zero, like would have been perfect. If we're waiting until we're 45, it's obviously just going to be harder than when we are 25. It's not a reason to not do it. It's just a cautionary tale that we need to remind ourselves of. And certainly comfort. We're talking about comfort that has an interest rate, that has a form of a yield on it, because it sure does feel good right now, but it costs, it extracts later.

• 6:09Speaker 02

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• 6:35Speaker 03

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• 7:04Speaker 01

  Overeating, overspending, over-scrolling, over-resting, over-avoidance. Each of those feel, you know, kind of benign or harmless when we look at them just in isolation. But when we compound those, oof, it has a devastating, absolutely devastating impact on us, on our lives, on our situation. So, I know that I'm awesome at avoiding things, and I bet you're awesome at avoiding things too. Yeah, you want to eat delicious food. Yeah, you want to relax. Yeah, you want to buy cool stuff. Yeah, you want comfort. But the real question is not, do I want this?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  The real question is, at what cost am I willing to pay? At what cost over time am I actually, am I going to be paying? And am I willing to pay that? Because every decision has an interest rate that is attached to it. You might not see it on the receipt as you are buying that thing, but it's on there. Potential is perishable.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  I like to talk about potential. I admire it. I praise it. But if we don't use it, it decays. It's like a muscle in anything else. It'll atrophy. It will eventually go away. We will not have any, any potential. It'll all fall through our, fall, fall through our fingers. And regret has the highest compounding rate of all of them.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  That I think that we know. Certainly. If you live long enough, you're going to recognize where it is you squandered. You're going to recognize where it is you misallocated resources. The a well-lived life. It's not supposed to be some form of of, of, of misery. It's not supposed to be a life of just abstaining from, from joy. It's not some form of asceticism where I'm just beating myself up every day and inflicting pain on myself for the purpose of inflicting pain on myself. It's not

• 9:23Speaker 01

  monk-like denial where I take some kind of a vow of poverty because I've certainly not done that. What we're really driving at and getting at is alignment because the starting point is this is what matters to me. So lame, so boring.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  But so foundational. This is what matters. And I know what it is that matters. I understand what must be done to get or get more of, to start getting those things that really do matter. And then it's making good decisions on how I'm allocating my, my, my most valuable resources, time, energy, attention, and money. Everything else? Well, it's kind of a form of tax. We're taxing all of those things. There's no neutrality. You're either compounding strength or you're compounding weakness. You're either building the future you claim that you want or you're financing the future that you really are afraid of and that you don't want.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  The market's always open.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Stock market's not always open, but the market of life is always open and it does in fact settle every day. The only question that really matters is when your future self reviews the trades that you've made today, will he or she thank you or will he or she charge you interest on that? Because once again, everything costs. Nothing is free. As Thomas Sowell said, there are no trade off, there's no solutions, there are only trade offs.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  And if I've not already done it, I'm interested in yucking your yum a little bit further. One of the ultimate trade offs that we're looking at right now are these GLP-1 drugs. If you are somebody who struggled with your weight and all of a sudden you have the opportunity to apparently in a pill form, pop a pill and you're going to lose weight. Well, that's probably too good to pass up for many people and as it works out, it is.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  And I just wonder, do we not care about the side effects? Do we not worry about the adverse consequences, the unintended consequences that are coming along with it? Are you aware of them? Are you taking GLP-1s? And do you not, are you not aware that there are consequences to them? It's an honest question because of course there are, of course there are. I mean, sarcopenia is such a real thing. And if you're going to go ahead and throw that into your AI and tell me what it tells you. And I can go ahead and tell you what it told me because I did that earlier today.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  And I remember when GLP-1s came out for the first time and they've probably been out for a really long time, but the actual commercial application where so many human beings are stabbing themselves with it or whatever, however they're consuming them. I've been aware of sarcopenia for a really long time. Because as soon as these things came out, I'm like, oh, well, there's no panacea. There never has been, there never will be. So what's this? So.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Sarkopenia, what AI said was that, I'll just read it to you.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Is that sarcopenia, muscle loss are actually growing among experts, though they're often overshadowed by the drug's massive success in fat reduction and metabolic benefits. While significant muscle mass, sometimes 15 to 40% of total weight loss can occur. It's often viewed as a manageable side effect rather than a reason to stop treatment because da, da, da, da, da. You can lose 40% of your muscle mass and bone density. And then fortunate part about that is what sarcopenia is, it's a condition that affects older people. Like really old people, senior citizens. Where because they're not getting enough nutrients, because they're not getting enough exercise, they start to lose muscle mass, connective tissue, but bone density.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  And here's the bad news is you can't get that back. You can't get bone density back. So if you're a young person and you're giving yourself sarcopenia, which you're doing. You're essentially just creating the conditions for you to become an elderly human being at whatever age you're all, that you're at. So let me take this one step further, just to really round this home. If you're giving this to a child. Shame on you. Absolutely shame on you because you are turning that child into an old person. That they'll never be able to recover from. So. You make the decision.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  This is, this is a value based decision and it could be that you are a person who is so overweight that. That the cost of that sarcopenia could be a good trade off. Because maybe you're going down a path where you're going to actually die. Because the extra weight that you're carrying around is taking too big of a tax or putting too big of a strain on your body. So, not a solution, it's a trade-off. So, you're making a trade-off, which is the whole purpose of this entire chat or conversation today. Everything costs. And I encourage you to ask yourself, at what cost am I making this decision?

• 15:06Speaker 01

  And then to look and see across the different elements of your life, of the six different areas that I talk about, family, community, career and your finances, wellbeing, personal development, and peace of mind. I created something called the compounding audit for you to go through and say, okay, where am I, where am I making trade-offs that aren't benefiting me? Where am I making mistakes in trade-offs? And where could I be doing better? Again, I want you to be making decisions about these things. Just because I think it's wrong doesn't mean that you think it's wrong. I totally get and appreciate that. There's a cost. Everything costs.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  And the last thing I want is to wake up and be like, oh, my gosh, I didn't realize that I was doing this. I didn't realize that the cost was so great to these decisions that I'm making. I want your eyes to be wide open, be super clear. Choices you're making, how are you going to feel about that a year from now, five years from now, 20, 30 years from now? And the whole idea here is, we want to do our part by doing our best.

• 16:15Speaker 04

  GLP-1s are changing weight loss.

• 16:19Speaker 05

  My sister had amazing.

• 16:20Speaker 04

  The ideal treatment is.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Seems like everyone's a GLP-1 expert these days, but when it comes to your health, it pays to listen to someone who actually is. Orderly Meds makes it easy to get started with personalized support along the way. And with your first month's order, we're giving you the second month free. Visit OrderlyMeds.com.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Bringing orders to the chaos of GLP-1s. Individual results may vary. Eligibility and prescription required. Not medical advice. Visit orderlymeds.com for details. Compound and medications are not FDA approved.

• 16:48Speaker 06

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