The Jason Sullivan: Recent Episodes
Jason Sullivan
Relentlessly chasing new experiences, places and knowledge. All while growing a family, a business, a relationship and myself. Sharing my learnings along the way in the form of short form content every weekday! Let's go! Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jason-sullivan/support
Happy Hump Day, everyone! I hope you guys are having an amazing week to this point. Today I was looking at what to talk about around #roadto40 stuff, and I realized that the video last week didn’t dive much into the types of goals to create, so I wanted to get complete with that topic and dive a bit deeper.
I showed you the document for managing your goals on your way to the next version of yourself. But where do you come up with the goals and how they relate to your end game? It starts by looking at your end state, part of my end state was to be running my own company, not necessarily full time, but I want to have an LLC, that I run properly. In order to do that, I looked at what it takes to run a business to Finance, HR, Business Plans and legal topics, just to name a handful.
I wanted to be a better Partner for Amy and a better Dad for my kiddos, so I looked at where I struggle in those two areas. Organization is a big issue in both areas, whether it’s schedule or home project or honey-do type stuff, I am all over the place. I am not like that in business or these projects. So I started looking at books on organization, communicating better, setting goals as a family, coming up with a scheduling strategy that works for all of us.
Those are just a couple examples, but the key is to look at the end state, decide what it will take to get there and just start listing out things that could help you get there. You may not use everything you list out, you may use ALL of it. The key is to start trying to learn and grow, if you go down the wrong path and realize the plan you had isn’t right, pivot. Choose something else and try again.
There is no set path or predetermined path forward for anyone, especially if you are trying to do amazing things. Be persistent, flexible and open to change. You won’t regret it, I hope this helps!
Take care of yourself, take care of those around you and remember to be you, because you are truly one of a kind and that is the purest beauty that exists in this world.
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Happy Monday everyone!! Is everyone ready to go out and crush this week and enjoyed their weekend. I had an amazing weekend had some of our amazing friends in for the weekend...Cards Win, Blues are moving on to the next round. Great weekend!!
Today’s topic is a fun one and sure to conjure strong feelings on either side of the debate...today we are talking about Working From Home or Working Remotely.
As an individual contributor, be honest with yourself, if you aren’t as effective as you are when you are in the office, no matter how much you might enjoy WFH, you should avoid it where possible. When you are working remotely, you should be twice as responsive when people reach out...if you respond at the same pace at home as you do in the office, it can make your coworkers question if you are at your laptop, because they can’t see where you are.
As a leader it’s important to support your people and hold them to the same standards as your “in office” employees. Not everyone will want to WFH or Remote, it’s all about knowing your people. If you aren’t getting the responsiveness or throughput from a contributor...it’s time to set boundaries and expectations. If those aren’t met, then you should be having a conversation about how to move forward. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary. Lastly, make sure to bring your new remote employee into the office as early as possible, being able to connect with their team and you in person is key to them connecting.
Everyone can win in this scenario, flexibility for the individual contributor and unlocking a talent pool across the globe can help a company make it to the next level. Go for it! Take care of yourselves and everyone around you!
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Happy Friday Everyone! I hope everyone has had an amazing week. Today we are going to dive deep into gratitude. This concept is so simple, but it’s insanely powerful.
The practice of showing gratitude brings nearly endless benefits from better sleep to stronger immune system to expressing more compassion and kindness, to name just a few benefits. We aren’t talking about feigning being thankful, it’s truly looking at your life and finding things to be thankful for. Not just big things like promotions and major life events, but for things like great weather or a smooth commute into work.
If you begin your day with gratitude, whether it’s waking up another day, the weather, your health, a great nights sleep, waking up next to the love of your life, or anything else...you will start your day in an incredible mindset. You will be happier, feel more alive and ultimately be more effective in your interactions and work.
Acting with gratitude is really important, did someone hold the door for you? Did your peer or direct report go above and beyond? did someone compliment you? can you compliment someone? If you started your day with gratitude, it will be easier to see what’s infront of you. What can you be grateful for in your everyday life and interactions at work and life? Find it and be grateful for it and your days will not only feel easier, you will get more done.
Ending your day with gratitude is a great way to close out your day. You will sleep better, have better dreams and ultimately be happier.
Whether it’s a journal, a quiet moment when you reflect on what you are grateful for or a conversation with a friend, loved one or passerby. The important part is that you are putting those gratitudes into the universe. That is the key, if you are thankful for everything, even the small things, in times of hardship, you will still be able to find the things to be thankful for and those are the things that help you overcome.
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What is up everyone!? Happy Wednesday! I hope you are all having a fantastic week to this point! Today we start to get into the fun stuff, actually creating goals and then the milestones along the way based on our core motivations.
If you haven’t gotten to your core motivations, do not worry about it at all. They will come, continue to push on them, push yourself to be real with yourself, but most importantly, stop worrying about what others will think. Your core motivations are just that...YOURS!
Now that you have your core motivations, it’s time to look at where you need to be in order to fully embrace and live those motivations daily. What are yours? Mine are Family, Freedom and Impact. In order for me to live those to the fullest, I need to prepare myself mentally, by learning more about business and finance. Physically, by not only losing weight but by getting stronger. And lastly, emotionally, to be able to be the best man, father and love to my family.
Those are the key areas need to be improved so I can make the greatest impact, have the best time with my family and have the freedom to engage all interests and ideas I have. Those areas might be different for you, they could possibly be the same. The important things is that you select areas of growth to support where you are going.
Now that we have those areas of growth, select a timeframe. Could be a month, a year a half a decade. Anything. I selected 4 years. Whatever your time frame is, take that and plot it out on a spreadsheet. I tend to target 5 main areas and a task in each per quarter for my goals. Depending on your time frame and areas of growth, customize your spreadsheet. Check out my example template in the description of this video on Youtube.
Now you go to work. Start learning and growing as quickly as you can. Taking the time to be in the moment while you are learning but you now have the path, you just have to walk it!
Take care of yourselves and don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and your beliefs on a daily basis.
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Welcome to Monday everyone! I hope you had a great weekend. Today’s topic was based on a post I read on LinkedIn on Friday. It talked about owning something that no one is owning is the fastest way to accelerate your career growth in a startup.
This is an interesting topic, in a startup, anything someone else isn’t owning can accelerate your career growth...but at a larger organization isn’t not that black and white.
As a leader it’s important to balance the needs of the company to get things done and your people’s goals and strengths. It’s easy to find things to do and own outside of typical job responsibilities for anyone. The key is putting them in a space where they can be successful, not that it will be easy, not they won’t have to grow and push themselves. More that the extra effort will pay off in their career growth and development.
Too many leaders just pick random things that need done and throw them at people looking to push themselves. A leaders job is to find the opportunities that align to a direct reports wants, goals and path they are on. It’s also important to make sure that you are monitoring how this opportunity could and does impact their actual job. If someone picks up extra opportunities but ends up dropping the ball in their job, then you put them in a bad spot.
If it doesn’t help their career growth, then you shouldn’t ask them to do it. If they are asking to do it, explain to them why it won’t help their career in the way they think it would. If they insist, sometimes, you need to tell them no, sometimes the growth they need lies in understanding why that opportunity isn’t right, and that growth lies in going through the process of struggling through.
This isn’t an easy conversation and it’s hard to see the right path all the time. Do your best, admit your mistakes and don’t be afraid to pivot. Just own when you made a mistake.
Hope this helps! Have a great week! Take care of yourselves and your people.
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Today's topic is getting to know your people and leading them in the way that works for them. How do you get to know your people? Where are they going? What brought them to this point in their career? What do they want to do with their life? And ultimately, how can you utilize all that information to help them grow.
Getting to know your people is the basis for helping to create a successful business...if your people feel supported and motivated, your business will feel the positive impact of that. So take the time to really connect with your people. Find out how to unlock them and help them find the next best version of themselves. It will pay off for them and for your company in the long run.
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Happy Monday everyone! I hope you had a great weekend! Today’s topic covers a quote by Napoleon Bonaparte, “a leader is a dealer in hope”.
It’s easy for leaders to get caught up in the numbers, but at the end of the day, leaders, especially those that get closer to the top of the organizational chart need to be the emotional leader. No matter what situation you face, your first job as a leader is to inspire people to hope for something better. To create a vision that spurs them to want to do what needs to be done.
Why hope? Hope is an incredibly powerful force when harnessed the right way. Giving them hope in a vision or mission gives them the strength and confidence to take risks, to push harder than they ever have, to lay it all on the line.
It could also be giving them hope for the next level in their career. Laying out an employees path is the best hope you can give. If they don’t know where they are going, it’s impossible for them to hope for the next level. When they are hopeless, they lose drive or interest in their work, they start looking elsewhere or they just leave.
Leaders, before you put on your cape or pull out your soapbox, there are no heroes in this story. This is part of your job and if you go into this trying to “inspire” people, your message will get lost. Your job is to inspire by knowing your people, what motivates them, what unlocks them. By creating a rock solid vision for the future, where you are going and more importantly, why. And finally by being vulnerable and admitting when you set the wrong course or the company has veered off course.
This isn’t easy work, but it’s necessary work. If you can harness hope and inspire your people, you can do tremendous things together, but it all starts with you.
I hope everyone has an incredible week! Take care of yourselves and remember that you have the power to build people up or tear people down, always build people up.
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Friday!!!!! Hope you have had an incredible week! Chill weekend for me ahead, getting some work done and getting the office put back together. Excited to finally have proper lighting and be able to be in the space.
Today I wanted to talk about stress and success. I have had the privilege to work along side or know people that have started some pretty incredible businesses. One thing that I have noticed that not enough people call out...success doesn’t equal coasting or chilling. In fact, I think there is more stress in success than 99% of people realize.
People tend to think of “making it” as the point in the life/career where they have hit the money they want, the freedom they want, basically the ability to do what they want. The problem with that line of thinking is they put off things like health, fitness, bills, relationships and so on until the “make it”.
The reality is much different. Success adds a new, different kind of stress, now your company has employees or creates an income you need to keep making it. That pressure of staying successful can be a lot. It’s a ton of work to create a successful business and just as difficult to maintain a successful business. Especially one that will create real financial and time freedom.
Am I saying that you are going to be miserable whether you are successful or not? No. I am saying that you need to figure out what you need right now. Is it family time, fitness time, saving for retirement, educating yourself, it could be anything...figure it out now, because it won’t get any easier once you are successful.
Trust me, I fell into this trap for the last decade of my life. I have always been 2 years away from “Freedom”. So I put off the important things, family, kids, love, health, passions for too damn long. Don’t do that, find a way to fit it in now. Your wants and desires are worth it.
Take care of yourselves and those around you. Have a great weekend.
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What is up everyone!? Hope everyone is enjoying their hump day! Today we are going to chat about how I got to the goals I set out for my road to 40 plan.
The goals are easy, the issue is finding out what is the most important to you, what is your core wants and desires. Is it money, impact, happiness, contentment, power or a million other things with a billion different combinations of stuff.
For instance, my core motivations are family, freedom and impact. Which outlines what drives me at my core. Take away the money, the travel, the stuff...what do I really want. Family. Freedom and Impact.
It sounds simple, but it took me 5 years to really understand my motivations. I am not saying it will take you 5 years, I fought the process more than I should have, to keep my “goals” the way they were before.
How do you get to those, start with what you want. Something physical, emotional or in between. From there start outlining what about that makes you want it. Once you have 10-15 reasons, look for patterns...what sticks out? What theme is repetitive. Now take a few days (or months) and think through those reasons, calling BS on yourself anytime you are showboating (thinking it because it’s the “proper” thing to think). This is about what you really want, be honest with yourself, be selfish and just get to the core of what you want and why.
I can’t stress this enough, do not take anyone else’s opinion into account when you are evaluating your motivations. This is about you and what you think, not your spouse, your friends, your coworkers or your mom. This is about what you want.
None of this is easy and this is only the first step. You will lose focus. You will get frustrated. You will think you are there and then not actually be there. That is ok. Keep reflecting and keep questioning yourself and your motivations.
You will get there, just take the time to evaluate. It can take A GREAT DEAL OF TIME. That is ok, your life, your future is worth it.
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Happy Monday! What is up everyone, what is going on? Today I am flipping the script on you...Last week we covered why your best employee leaves...today we are talking about why you should make them leave.
This is a touchy subject because it’s dealing in very a subjective topic. You are talking about the impact your best employee has on the rest of your employees. There isn’t a number or range to determine what the right level of negative impact an employee can bring...you have to be in the trenches to really know, see my video on firing losing players for context on what that means.
The reality is, no matter how amazing your employee is, if they are leaving people with a negative view of their interactions on the regular, then you are hurting your culture, which directly impacts your companies ability to be successful.
If you have an employee that crushes day in and day out, but is tearing down teams and culture, they have to go. Now. I don’t care how big your deadline or how important they are to the success of the business to this point...cancer always spreads if it goes untreated. The further it spreads the more difficult it is to remove.
You action or non-action sends a very clear message to the rest of your company. It also sends a clear message to younger talent you are trying to mature in your organization. They see someone can act like that and still go far in your company. Don’t let this behavior linger, handle it and let the rest of your company grow to fill the void.
I promise, no matter who the person is in your company, Janitor all the way to Co-Founder, if you allow them to spread negativity and ruin your culture, you may get to the point of no return. Stand up for your people, your culture and your companies future.
I hope everyone has a fantastic week! Let’s go out and crush this week!
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What is up everybody!? What is going on! Happy Monday! This week is a huge week for me and I cannot describe how pumped I am to get to it! More to come later in the week on that, but today we are talking about motivations.
What. Do. You. Want? Honestly, I used to think what I wanted was a lot of money. Money would allow me to take trips, pay my bills, have a nice house, make sure my kids are taken care of and so on and so forth.
Now that I have had time to really evaluate my wants, my desires and my goals...I want freedom. I have a lot of ideas, I have a lot of different interests and If have the drive to engage in those things. Think deep and look at what you are doing every day, what you are driving for, maybe it’s money (and that is totally fine, your prerogative), maybe it’s happiness, or maybe it’s purpose. I could be anything, the important part is to go deep on your hopes, dreams, fears and loves.
It’s rarely as surface as money or jewelry or nice cars...it almost always goes to something much deeper. Getting to the core can actually help you find your core purpose, what you want to do, where you want to be and who you want to be. Go out and do it!
Being able to get to my core reasoning for being, allowed me to start the series I am launching this week. I turn 40 years old in 4 years and I now know where I want to be when I get to that age. Without diving into my motivations, I could have never gotten there.
Take the time and just go for it! Be honest with yourself, be gentle with yourself. It took me 5 years to get to this point, it might not happen overnight. Just keep trying.
Have a fantastic week! Let’s go out and own this week! Take care of yourselves.
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Today is the day. A plan I have been working on for the last 2 months, comes to fruition. I heard a podcast by Tom Bilyeu and his wife talking about balancing work/ambition with family/love.
That started me on the path of evaluating where I am, where I am going, what I can do better and what I still need to learn. When things are going well, it’s easy to coast and bask in the succcess/happiness/simplicity of life.
I was happy. I was content. I was feeling like I had accomplished something. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. But the reality is, the times when I was the unhappiest was when I wasn’t pushing myself to pursue something.
With that, I decided to stop looking at the immediate, short term stuff I was doing. I have a lot of things on my plate, but none of it is long term forward looking. Which makes it easier to feel like you have done something, that is why most people preach setting quick hitting achievable goals.
Today I am drawing a line in the sand. It’s big, it’s hairy, it’s audacious. I set a goal for where I want to be when I turn the big 40. How much I want to make, what my work looks like, how much debt I will have, how much I will have saved, what my health level will be at, what I will weigh.
While all those exact details are deeply personal, I will talk you guys through every step I took to get there, examples of goals and ultimately what it will take to get there. Every concept I learn, every tutorial I follow, every book I read and every new thing I try.
With all this being said I am announcing a new cadence for videos, podcasts and general content. Monday’s will be designated to motivational, personal videos. Wednesdays will be dedicated to this path. Fridays will be dedicated to Leadership topics.
That’s it, three videos a week. That will be the majority of my content outside of my website and photography stuff. There will probably travel videos mixed in, fun challenges and just general random videos.
Today is the start of a 4 year journey to 40 years old and the next version of myself. Who is with me!?
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Happy Monday everyone! I hope everyone has enjoyed their holiday weekend! Today is the first video in the leadership vibes series! I am excited to have a new cadence for my content and I am happy to try and cover leadership topics every. Single. Week.
Today is discussing why the best people quit your company. I believe it boils down to these 5 core requirements to a solid job.
The first is a lack of respect and/or trust. Respect and Trust are the basis of any successful working relationship. Whether it’s executive leadership or your direct manager, if you don’t trust or respect or feel trusted or respected, it is almost impossible to stay. Without this, the next 4 topics don’t mean anything.
The second is poor integrity among your leadership team. If you don’t believe someone to have integrity, it’s tough to push hard for those people, it’s even more difficult to stick your neck out for leaders that could throw you under the bus.
The third topic is an opportunity for growth, without this, you will lose your best talent. They want to crush everything you hand to them and grow as quickly as possible. Taking on more responsibilities, taking on difficult tasks, pushing people around them. Not having the room to climb in their role and pay grades will lead to resentment.
The fourth topic is Micromanagement, almost all of us can think of a job or a manager that drove us crazy. Hovering, second guessing, setting expectations without communicating them or just generally not giving you room to do your job and grow into your role. High valued people won’t tolerate this long, they are trusted, hardworking and successful contributors.
The last topic is feeling supported and appreciated, this is really everyone, if they don’t feel supported or appreciated, even the most impactful employee needs to know how good of a job they are doing. Without that, they will eventually feel unappreciated and competitors or other offices will be able to sway their allegiance.
Take care of all your employees, but keep a close eye on your top performers. Take care everyone!
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I hope everyone is having a tremendous Tuesday! Going into the last day of the conference, I have to say this conference is like none I have ever attended. It has more downtime than normal and I was able to use that downtime to connect with some people in a major way. One of those conversations had me thinking deeply about where I have been, what I have been through (good and bad) and what I have learned looking back now.
The thing that kept repeating itself was chaos or hardship. I got through some of it, but I think I made the situation worse by fighting what was happening. Not fighting to get through, but fighting what was happening. I didn’t think it was fair or deserved or I felt like I didn’t want to deal with it. There were a ton of emotions around difficult times that were exacerbated because I didn’t embrace those hardships for what they were…an opportunity to grow.
If you can look around in the middle of difficult times and realize that this is God or the Universe or whatever preparing you for whats next…it doesn’t get any easier, but the shift in mindset help you hyperfocus on pushing through the hardship and getting to the other side. It’s not easy, you aren’t always going to get it right…but every step that you take towards embracing the storms, the better your life will be and the more you will grow!
I hope you guys found this helpful, it’s not easy, but you are worth it. Take care of yourselves and embrace the storms, milk them for all the growth they can create and be better prepared for what is next!
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Happy Monday, Everyone. I hope you had a great Monday. I had a fantastic day, wandered around a conference all day, got to see @garyvee speak and ultimately got to meet him briefly. Literally not a single thing to complain about!
Today I wanted to talk briefly about transitioning from an individual contributor to a leader. It’s not an easy transition to make. There are preconceived notions of what a leader does, often they are over simplified, over complicated or dismissed entirely. The main thing to know is that leaders, managers, whatever are doing a lot of things, they just aren’t always tangible.
That is probably the biggest issue for someone transitioning from a solid individual contributor to a leader…output. More specifically the types of output. As an individual most of your work is fixed and you more often than not produce something. As a leader, your output can be less tangible, more strategic, more bigger picture which leaves those transitioning feeling like they are bad leaders. They simply aren’t producing as much as they used to.
With that, I have come up with three simple things to do in order to make your transition go smoothly. The first is to write down the things you have done today, this week or this month for others. Two is to go easy on yourself, it’s really easy to beat yourself up for not producing more, the reality is, you are doing a lot. The third and final is give it time, keep pushing for 3-4 months before you make up your mind, you will feel like you know what the role involves and will feel like you are contributing.
I hope everyone has a great week and remember that it’s always important to know yourself, if you take on a leadership role and it’s not for you, bring it up, talk through it with your boss…you can always change paths. Take care, everyone.
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Happy Friday Everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week!
Today I wanted to talk about something I am pretty excited about, not exactly about the thing, but more about how it came about and what I keep seeing in my life and the people around me.
I get to see @garyvee give a keynote speech in Vegas at a conference next week. Then I get to do a Master Class with him and 45 other people right after that speech. I cannot even begin to describe how incredibly lucky I feel and how pumped I am to just be in his presence.
What I find interesting about that is...I wasn't seeking that out. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see him live in person and hope I will get to meet him someday, but I haven't been looking for where he will be, or actively trying to travel to where he might be traveling to find him on the street.
I have been focused on my job, on my brand and on my passion projects. I have been heads down putting in work, trying to get to where I wanna go.
I am not trying to brag, I goof off and vacation a lot, I am not this incredible business person. My point is that over and over I see people reaching goals and milestones and dreams all while their head is down. They aren't worried about when and how, they are just putting in the work. Setting goals and relentlessly chasing them down. Then one day you look up and the things you dreamed of are surrounding you.
Focus on the grind, put your head down and DO. WORK. I promise if you do that for an extended period of time, you will be amazed at the results.
I hope everyone had a great week and has a great weekend. Next week I will be coming to you from Vegas!
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Happy Thursday everyone! I hope you are having an incredible week!
Today I wanted to talk about a leadership concept that makes companies, especially large ones, weak. When you don’t fire losing player, winning players leave. This is a tough topic, but a necessary one.
The stories I have heard from peers across my industry screams lack of context from leadership. They have no line of sight to how poor an employee is. Whether they aren’t putting in the effort to do skip levels or pinging teams and individuals or they improperly place their trust in the leader they are leading to do that job.
It sounds like a lot of work, especially at a massive faceless corporation…but taking the time to connect with your people will save you a lot of heartache and churn. Because the simple fact is, when you allow C and D players to stick around, the A players leave. So many companies don’t realize how bad it is until they look up and realize how much talent is lacking in their org.
A leader even at the top of an organization absolutely has to make time for people at EVERY SINGLE LEVEL OF THE ORG. I am not saying every person, not even close. I am saying every week, pick 5 people (a different 5 every week), one from each of the five levels below you in the org and talk with them. Make it informal, make it a safe space to speak freely and put your listening ears on. If they don’t think they can speak freely, then you might as well just let them deal with the shitty boss or peer you gave them until they eventually leave.
Taking the time to chat with those people on a weekly basis, if you are allowing them to speak with candor & you are truly listening, will give you priceless information on the pulse of your org. It’s a lot of work, but no where near the work it will take to pull yourself out of an org of C & D players.
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What is up everybody!? Hope your hump day is going well.
Today's topic is a really important one. It's something that I have struggled with for a very long time...I have been able to control it more in recent years, but comparing myself to others has caused more pain and heartache than I would like to remember.
You are walking a path, so is everyone else. Sometimes those paths have similarities, but no two are the same. By comparing yourself to others you are doing two things, first, you are putting yourself in a position to be let down. There is no shortcut on your path, no easy button, no secret path. There is hard work and time in.
Second, nothing worth doing is easy or fast. Finding success takes consistent daily action over a long period of time. If you are constantly comparing yourself to others that have already found success, then you begin to get frustrated and want things to hurry along. You lose patience. Once you have lost patience, you are less likely to follow through with consistent daily actions over an extended period of time.
You are either on your path and working towards success or you aren't. Both situations are fine, it's your path and everyone's path is different. Own your current situation and focus on what you need to do to create your path. Stay focused on what you are doing, where you are growing and where you are going.
And lastly, along the way, lift up the people around you, congratulate them on their success, support them in their failures and push them to be the next best version of themselves. Even if they are in a better life situation.
I hope this helps, remember comparing yourself to others will ALWAYS lead to unhappiness and discontentment. Do your self a favor and don't fall into the trap of comparison. Walk your own path the best you can.
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Cold Tuesday in St. Louis, I hope wherever you are, you are warm and cozy.
Today I wanted to build off of yesterdays conversation around being enough. I want to dive deeper into the concept of dealing with your highest priority weakness and making a daily practice of it.
It’s important to know your weaknesses, then to prioritize them…but like with any list of tasks or to-do’s, if you don’t execute it makes zero difference. The daily practice of learning and growing to turn a weakness into a strength is the difference between winners and losers. The winners continue to push through their weaknesses, losers use them as a crutch or an excuse.
The best analogy I can come up is you are building a staircase to your next level with bricks. Laying bricks is an art, if you go too fast and skip over the meticulous work of leveling and creating a firm base, you may grow faster early on, but in the long run, your stairs will crumble and you will end up crashing down in glorious fashion. However, if you take the time to do it right, treat each brick with focus and respect, you will build a solid base and stairway to your next level.
To bring it back, daily, consistent, relentless, focused, work on your most important weakness (prioritized by yourself) is required to truly take yourself to the next version of yourself. A job, a salary increase, a new car or a bigger house have absolutely zero to do with who you are at your core. They may mask the faulty foundation or lack of polish on “fixed” weaknesses, but your foundation will eventually crumble and all those things will mean nothing.
Lay a perfectly level and solid brick everyday and your core will be solid enough to weather life’s inevitable storms.
I hope you find this useful, there is no greater satisfaction than that of leveling yourself up.
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Monday is in full effect! I hope everyone's week jumps off to a solid start!
Today's topic is one I have struggled heavily with in my life. I was always trying to make myself better or more than in the eyes of everyone else. Not better than them, but better than I currently was. I was consistently chasing a "perfect version" of myself to be more attractive or more financially well off, or skinnier or smarter or anything. I was never content with who I was, I was never enough.
As I started learning about self awareness, personal growth, happiness, peace and priorities...I realized that I was going about it the wrong way. I was constantly trying to fix myself. I never once thought that I had a place to start off from, a baseline to grow from. It's impossible to set a goal, when you don't have a starting point.
Are you struggling with feeling like you are less than? Like you need to get better to be who you want to be? Let me tell you, right now, in this moment, you are enough. Whatever things you want to achieve, whatever past you are trying to run from, what ever future you are trying to run to...you are wholly and completely enough in this moment. Sit in that thought, take a moment and just breath it in. It's so important.
So what now? If I am enough in this moment. How do I improve myself. Knowing that this moment, right now is your baseline of being enough. Evaluate your current situation. Not what you hope to be or where you want to be...but where you are. Your strengths AND weaknesses. Then evaluate each weakness and figure out which ones would bring you the most value if you improved. Then...start improving on that single weakness.
As you go forward in your day to day, make sure to follow the 80/20 rule. Spend 80% of your day focused on the things you are doing well and 20% of you day focused on the things you need to improve on.
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Today's topic was triggered by a volunteer project my company participated in this morning. We all got together and volunteered at a dog rescue organization. We pulled weeds, hauled away fallen trees and moved mulch (of course we played with dogs).
Pulling weeds and laying mulch for hours on end was incredibly rewarding and a challenge for me physically. I felt good. Beyond those two things, it made me aware that there are people that have to haul mulch or cut grass or haul drywall or do any other kind of manual labor every single day. Today, I was reminded that I am truly grateful to have the job I have. You can also remind yourself of the abundance in your life by working at homeless shelters or animal shelters or other places that help people get back on their feet.
This isn't me bragging about volunteering or my current position in life. The point is that everyone has a lot of things going their way. It's easy to get down when things go wrong. It's hard to see the forest through the trees when you are stressed, overwhelmed or stressed. But a lot of us have way more than billions of people in this world.
If you take the time to volunteer at soup kitchens or homeless shelters or animal shelters, or pick a couple side jobs hauling cement or drywall for a contractor. Working your butt off or seeing how bad some are struggling is a great way to slap yourself in the face and try to see what you have to be grateful for. The bonus is you are helping people who are in need or you are making extra cash to help your own situation.
Being grateful for what you have right now allows you to one, find happiness and two, start finding your way to your next level. You can do a lot of good in your community and find more happiness and gratitude by putting yourself in situations that force you to see all the abundance that exists in your life.
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Happy Thanksgiving 2018
I hope everyone had a lovely day with friends or family or whoever/whatever you wanted to be around today. I am so blessed to have the community I have, the family I have, the kids and love I have. It's extremely humbling and heartwarming to know that I world already and everything I get to do on top of that is just icing.
I look forward to wrapping up the year together! It has been an amazing 2018 so far. I hope the holidays treat you well and I am excited to be back on the video train. More interesting topics to come!
Thanks for all the love and support from all of you. The comments and feedback I have gotten over the last two months of silence have been such an amazing boost for me. I am not perfect, but you all make me want to strive to get as close as possible.
Take care of yourselves and those around you.
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Happy Wednesday everyone (a day late ;P) I hope you all had a wonderful short week!.
I didn’t post a single video over the last two months and I am honestly frustrated that I didn’t. I feel like I didn’t try hard enough. Why do I feel this way? Where are these feelings coming from?
I have come to the conclusion that I have inauthentic fear around my past failures in this video space. In the past, I have gotten a good pace going, then something happened, work, health, whatever and I ended up waiting another 6 months or a year before I released another video. That fear was making me overreact to a very straightforward and simple decision. A conscious decision I made two months ago.
After looking at my schedule for the week and all the outstanding projects I had looming over my head, I made the choice to take a couple weeks to get that all together. I had made promises to others and to myself and wasn’t keeping those promises. As much as I enjoy these videos, it takes a few hours a day to pull it all today. If I could get 15+ hours back in my week, I had to do it. With that being said, I didn’t plan on it being two months.
There in lies the most important part of topic today. We all have tremendous goals and ideas we are trying to manifest. We are doing our best to help others, to grow our skills and our minds and we are striving to create the world we want to live in. Sometimes there will simply be too much on your list to get it all done.
That is ok. Don’t beat yourself up. Come up with a game plan to attack that to-do list and make it happen. You have to set the priorities in your life based on the information that you have in front of you. No one else can set that for you. In fact, no one else's opinion matters when setting your own priorities. Set them and stick to them in an unreasonable manner.
I hope everyone enjoys this upcoming holiday weekend!
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I spent a large part of my life believing in limits & that I was limited in life. I was limited in how quickly I could grow my career, how happy I could be or how much love I could feel. More importantly I was limited by thinking that this was the best my life could have.
Almost a decade later, I finally understand what limits are. Limits are set by people that aren’t willing to put in the work to overcome the limits they set. Look at me, I was in a bad place, unhappy, struggling & I set a limit on my happiness because I was scared to take a risk & start a new life. No one had gone before me & said this is as far as you can go. I did that to myself.
There are zero actual limits in this world. Every time someone sets a limit, someone crazy enough to believe they can surpass that limit shows up and dismantles that belief. Ignore the limits. No one, not even you, really knows what limits the universe holds. If you believe and put in the work, anything is possible.
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How often are you pushing towards a goal or finish line & you hit a speed bump that derails your momentum. How do you respond?
I used to cruise along at a good clip towards a goal, I would hit a speed bump, get derailed & just stop. It felt like failure was it, I messed up.
It took some really significant setbacks stacked on top of each other for me to see what I was doing to myself and my relationships. It also made me realize that I had zero professional resilience. I felt like in my life, I had overcome some big setback personally, my divorce or being asked to resign from a company I helped build.
What was the difference? It was confidence...or lack thereof. I was doing well in my job & things in my personal projects were more complex & bigger ideas. When your confidence is low, trying to do anything difficult seems almost impossible. That is where I was.
How did I overcome & rebuild my confidence? I started small, I started keeping promises to myself. Really small promises.
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There seems to be so much hate in the news these days, people utilizing religion, politics, race, gender…pretty much anything they can to advance their agenda. I believe that there are far more loving and caring people in this world than those that spread hate.
What makes me believe that? #hate is always a losing #strategy. No one ever wins in the long term utilizing hate as basis for their life, business, religion or fill in the blank here. Hate makes you weak, you cannot be strong and act with hate. You can boast, bluff and feign strength through words and #fear mongering, but when all the cards fall where they may…you lose.
In the meantime look around and find the love, compassion, equality and support that the rest of the world shows on a daily basis. There is way more of it than hate. It’s there and it’s a beautiful way to see your world. It all starts with us, if we don’t tolerate hate, it will continue to go away faster.
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So many people go through life putting on a front, telling people everything is fine, pretending that life is as advertised on social media or party talk conversations.
I am talking about the people that are struggling with issues and don’t think their problems are worthy of talking through with a friend of confidant. Too many people when asked how things are going or if they doing “OK”…will say, yeah everything is good, regardless of how life is going.
The key to remember is that most people that are struggling do it in silence. Perhaps it’s not wanting to burden others, or thinking their problems are too small. Your loved ones, trusted friends and partners are there for all problems. A large majority when they ask if you are OK, really want to know how you are doing. Utilize that time to let them know where you are, tell them how you feel, what you are struggling with and ultimately what makes you less than OK.
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This idea behind it works for literally everything that you expect of those in your charge. You shouldn't expect anything from your reports that you aren't willing to do yourself. If you don't respect, trust or appreciate your report, you cannot expect them to respect, trust or appreciate you. You can't expect them to own their failures if you don't own yours. Being a leader isn't about words, it's about action. People see right through shallow intentions.
The incredible thing that happens when the buck stops with you, when you take the heat for your team and pass the credit through to them, you show how important they are to you and to the company. That is when you have a great balance of work, respect and happiness. That is when you can do incredible things as a company.
Too many leaders are just talking heads, be the leader that leads through example. Expect the best of yourself before you expect the best of those around you. There is no better way to lead.
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The single most important thing that can cause you to be a terrible leader is your ability (or lack there of) to give proper #feedback. It's a hard concept for me, I love making people happy, not bringing them down. I am #optimistic and something about giving negative feedback doesn't feel right. It took time for me to step out of that mindset. The reality is that mindset is actually putting your team in a terrible situation. It is your job to give positive and negative feedback.
How can someone fix the issues they are dealing with, if they don't even know what they are doing wrong...or even worse, they think they are doing a fantastic job? Simply put, they can't. You have put them in a situation where they could ended up nose to nose with HR for a Performance Improvement Plan, getting written up, or worse getting fired...and they are completely blindsided because we as their leader didn't want to hurt their feelings or upset them. How do you think they feel now?
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What does the cost of leadership is self-interest mean when it all goes wrong? You and the team failed to meet your obligation. Who is at fault? Who should be the one to catch the heat? Johnny had a rough project and dropped the ball multiple times…is it his fault? What about Sally, she didn’t scope out the amount of work properly…surely she should be blamed?
If you guessed either one of them or both of them, you are wrong. Part of being the #leader, is taking the heat of a failed or missed obligation, you are to blame. A failed obligation weighs heavily on well built teams, letting the #drama and #emotions get to them only makes them less effective for a period of time. It’s on us as leaders to lead, people are going to make mistakes, how you respond will decide how they grow and ultimately how effective they are. Shit is always going to happen, always. Support your team, have their backs and when the time comes deflect the drama and heat away from them.
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Too many times leaders look to figure out who to #blame. I think knowing/finding what went wrong is important, especially in development, to learn and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Not as a point of blame, but as a point of respect and growth. If you don’t give an issue the respect it deserves, it will force you to respect it in the long run.
When all is said and done, if you are pushing to innovate and think outside the box (which I hope you are doing constantly in tech), you have to get comfortable with failure. That doesn’t stop at the people trying to innovate in their daily, this goes all the way to the top. As a leader, if you expect your team to innovate and push the envelope, then you need to be comfortable with failure and ready to fight for the people taking the risks.
Doing cool shit always has an inherent risk, do you embrace that risk? As a leader, you are always out in front, clearing obstacles, protecting the team from needless drama and BS. Happy Hump Day!
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As a leader it’s important to back your words up with action. Actions, not words, make a great leader. Action is more important than talk at pretty much every stage of life. While it’s important at most stages of life, it’s a requirement as a leader. You cannot be focused on the words and be a successful leader.
Leadership is a delicate balance of explaining, planning and postulating with your team, then going to work with/for them. Nothing kills the trust, respect and loyalty of a person more than having a productive 1 on 1 where we walk away with action items to move ideas or initiatives forward. Then everything falls flat on it’s face because we as leaders didn’t follow through with action.
It’s our job to not only push initiatives forward, it’s our job to push our team members forward in their career. Giving them opportunities for exposure, growth and calculated risk is how you do that. This is how we lead, by making sure we are not only their coach but their biggest cheerleader.
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I have already received a few questions since yesterdays video about walking your path, and most of those questions have been around how do you find your path.
The first is that if you are walking, i.e. growing, learning, trying things out, you are on a path. It may not be your ultimate path, but it’s one of self discovery or learning or growing or all of the above.
The second is the best way to find your path is by tasting and seeing. There is no better way to figure out what you want to do, where you want to go, than trying as much as you possibly can.
Lastly, sometimes stuff just falls in your lap. You didn’t plan on it being what you were gonna do, but here you are.
Be open, taste and see, work hard and do what feels right to you. That is the best way to find your path. I hope everyone has a great Sunday and goes out tomorrow and crushes the week!
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Got into an interesting debate last night around going all the way through school vs opting out and finding a way without going through school. I have heard this debated multiple times over. And I have two thoughts:
First everyone has to walk their own path, going through school or dropping out doesn’t make you any more or any less of a trailblazer.
Second, it has absolutely nothing to do with school vs no school and everything to do with the individual. A winner will work their ass off and win regardless of the path they take.
To make a long story short, do work. Every. Single. Day. That is how you find success, consistent daily action.
Have a great weekend.
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Today the focus is saying no. This is a difficult one for me to cover. I am TERRIBLE at saying no. I am getting better, but it has taken a lot of work and reflection to get to the point where I can say no more often.
I know where you are, you feel like you are letting people down. Friends, coworkers, loved ones, kids, whoever…you are letting them down by saying no. What I have learned over the years through painful failures is that I want to help so much that I tend to overcommit. Which means that I way over my bandwidth, which tends to lead to failure and there is no worse feeling than failing people you care about.
The best advice I can give is to remember the value you bring to the table, that value decreases when you overcommit because something is going to suffer whether it’s quality, timeline or relationships…or all of the above. Be honest, be upfront and offer other solutions outside of you doing it. It’s not easy, but it’s really important. To you and to your people.
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Don’t mistake my demeanor as confidence. It’s not that. It’s me relentlessly facing my fears and anxiety. I couldn’t be less confident in creating and posting is this content.
If that is affecting you, push through, screw what anyone else thinks. Do it for you, for your future.
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Enjoy your life. It’s easy to do when you are at the lake or on vacation. But the important part is being able to enjoy your life and to love your life no matter what is happening in your life.
If you can be happy, content and grateful for what you have when shit isn’t going your way...imagine what life would be like if you were living in abundance and things are going your way.
It’s a level few ever see because they are waiting to “arrive”. Don’t wait, find that happiness, contentment, love and gratitude now. You won’t regret it.
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I heard this saying the other day and it stopped me in my tracks. Life doesn’t get easier, you get stronger. Say it out loud and then let it sink in.
There is a lot of power in that. It gives you the power over your circumstances. It’s not something that is happening to you, it’s just the way things are and you have to rise to the challenge that life has set in front of you.
It creates accountability. It doesn’t let you off the hook when times get tough. It reminds you that you are in control and that if things go south, you have a solution…grow yourself. That is actually probably a heavy weight for some to carry in dark times. But the simplicity of it is what makes it more achievable in my mind. All it takes to overcome bad circumstances is baby steps forward. Progress. Not massive leaps and bounds, just consistent daily action towards being strong enough to overcome.
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Today the topic and quote revolve around passion. Finding it, using it and re-evaluating if that is truly still your passion. I have changed and added to passions for my entire life. I am like a atom, bouncing all over the place, trying all kinds of things finding new passions, finding new passions inside past passions.
I think finding your passion is extremely important. It helps you not only choose a goal, but also helps your drive towards that goal. Most of us, not all, but most of us have a passion and we work hard to bring that passion into our lives more and more.
The danger comes in failing to re-evaluate your passions, or re-invigorating them. Similar to the quote on motivations from yesterday, if your passion is no longer your passion, pushing really hard to live your passion will make life not so great. Your end game, what you are driving for is not something that lights that fire in your gut.
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Today I want to talk about time and more specifically, paid time off. Do you use your time off? Do you roll it over?
In 2015 55% of American Workers left vacation time unused in 2015. That equals 658 million unused vacation days. 222 million of those hours couldn't be rolled over and are gone forever. That is a scary amount of time, which also happens to be our most valuable asset.
Time is our most valuable asset that has an undetermined length. We have no idea how many days we have left in our lives, so we should spend that time living it. I hear you, you can't afford a vacation...that cool, don't take one. But take a Friday and a Monday. Play video games, go on long hikes in your area, volunteer, spend time with family, whatever you want to do, but you decide and you act on it.
Take your time back. You deserve the time, you earned it and it's due to you.
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Today I wanted to talk about motivations. What motivates you? I can bet it’s different than what motivates me. There will be similarities, sure, but overall, we will focus on different things, be motivated in different ways, use different tactics and see results in vastly different ways.
In relationships, we hope to motivate each other. Generally, this can be a really beneficial situation. People can push and grow a lot in a short amount of time when their motivations, tactics and focus are the same. The problem is what I was talking about earlier, what if what motivates you is vastly different than the person pushing you or vice versa? What if the tactics only work for one or the other?
Ultimately this comes down to empathy, understand that just because your goals may be aligned, it doesn’t mean that you will get to that goal the same way using the same motivations and tactics. They could be completely opposite. The important part is you are both striving to a goal and growing.
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Lots of questions around when the pitch is coming, when am I going to sell something. It’s not coming, I have no idea what this will be long term. Right now it’s just me, giving you all what I have learned over the last 5 years as I transitioned from an unhappy life of self hate, anxiety and fear into a life of self love, facing my fears and pushing through anxiety. I didn’t do it alone, through the help of my friends, of my new incredible love, they have helped pull me and taught me how to pull myself out of the darkness I was in.
That happens through focusing on empathy, gratitude and kindness. It happens through finding the things to be grateful for instead of focusing on what is wrong in your life. I don’t have all of the answers, what I do have is what has worked for me in the past and what is working (and not working) for helping me continue to grow. I have come a long way, I am so grateful for the life I have, Amy, the kids, my job…but I am just getting warmed up.
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Today I wanted to talk about how important it is to be kind. People tend to keep things close to the vest, even things that you would think people would share, they often don’t. With that, we have no idea what is truly going on. We get bits and pieces or even chunks, but we rarely get the whole picture. The key is to be kind, be empathetic and be loving.
I was picking up Sushi last night and as I was walking out, I noticed an old friend, it has been a while since we chatted, but I noticed him. He was focused and he was in a hurry, plus he was half a football field away so I just took notice. As I was getting into my car, I watched him walking into a place that helps combat Parkinson’s disease.It just drove home the point of never really knowing what a person is dealing with privately. It could be any number of things and we would have no idea it’s going on. So default to love, empathy and kindness, you never know when someone will need it.
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Todays topic is around being deliberate in the words you use. In the world today, too many people are on the internet use their words to tear people down. The reality is that there are people that thrive in drama, they are more comfortable in drama than they are in happiness and peace. The problem is most of us don’t live like that.
How do we do that? How do we avoid drama? I believe it’s in the words we choose. If you focus on building people up, being empathetic, caring and kind, it’s a great way to avoid drama. Focus on the positive, build people up and you will get more positivity than drama.
We can all choose to live on the positive side or the negative side of road. I have lived on both sides and I can tell you from experience, negative sucks…positive is such an amazing way to live. Positivity breed positivity, so start with your words. Change your brain to default to positive words, to building people up, to responding with empathy, love and kindness.
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Building off of yesterday’s post on missteps are opportunities wrapped in failure. I truly believe that, but you have to be working through that. You can’t fail and then stop. That opportunity will vanish without putting in the work. I kept pushing, kept getting my game ready, kept the dream of playing on a bigger level alive. I ultimately never made much of a dent in golf, but while I was playing golf at Webster, going to school, I was also teaching myself to code.
In my mind, I had failed multiple times over, so I wanted to have a backup plan. I knew a degree wouldn’t do much for me in tech, so I set out to learn as much as I possibly could about development and marketing. Being a part of my dads business for a long time, I felt I already had a good understanding of business. The reality was I had very tiny idea of what running a business meant.
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This is something that has happened to me once or twice in my life and each time, in the moment I was crushed…but looking back on how it made all the dots connect for the next few years, blew my mind. Like in my second year at Webster University, I was the co-captain of the first team to ever go to the NCAA Division III Championships at Webster.
I went through 5 years of what felt like hell between highschool and when I went back to college and I failed 99% of the time…but had I just went straight to Webster when I graduated from a high school two blocks away…I would have never played in an NCAA Championship. It may not feel like your failure is an opportunity, but there is a good chance it’s something you needed. Keep your head up and keep pushing, you will see the meaning eventually. Let’s get to work!
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I remember my brothers funeral, people from all over the world came to say their final goodbyes. Most of that time was pretty fuzzy, but standing in his front yard the night we buried him, I stood in awe of how much he connected with and affected people. He not only connected with all of these people, he truly made an impact on their lives.
I chose this topic because I am rather introverted, awkward and aloof, especially in new situations and around people I don’t know. I have pushed hard to get past that, but it isn’t easy. It is however necessary. For years I have heard the connection between loneliness and mental illness…but in 2017 they did a study on the physical affects of loneliness. The study found that being and feeling lonely was as bad a smoking 15 cigarettes a day! That is insane! Not only is there a link to mental health, now there is a link to physical health.
How do we fix it? Be brave. Be empathetic. Be caring.
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I wanted to cover something my brother taught me…much later in life. Sean moved back to St. Louis to be close to family, he did that by taking a recruiter position in the Navy here in St. Louis.
I watched him progress into the role and it clearly wasn’t for him. When we would get a beer he wouldn’t hold back on how much he didn’t care for the new job or how much he missed flying in the MH53. He seemed really unhappy, he seemed burnt out and overall not engaged or focused on what he was doing at all.
Fast forward a handful of years later, Sean passes away in a helicopter crash in Oman. I am helping Amy hang some stuff in the bar. I grab a plaque and read it. It was an award for being the best recruiter in the region.
That took me back. He hated it, he was miserable, longing for being back in a helicopter. But he still made sure he did it well. He was the best at the job he hated. He didn’t let his frustrations or hatred for the work derail him doing it well.
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Something I was lucky enough to learn fairly early on in my life was being myself. No matter what anyone thought of me, I was me.
That hasn’t changed. If anything I have become more hard headed when it comes to changing who I am. Don’t get it twisted, I am not saying that I am not willing to grow or change, it’s just that it’s on my terms. I don’t change because someone else thinks I should change or that I am doing something wrong. The only voice that really matters is mine.
That couldn’t ring more true now, the more you do, the more people have opinions. On my marriage, my divorce, my kids, my new relationship, my job, my passion projects…if I listened to all the noise, I would literally go crazy. The only opinion of you that matters is yours. With that, go easy on yourself, if you feel like something isn’t working, don’t dwell, fix it. Whatever that means. You are in control, don’t let anyone else have a say in who you should be.
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Respect is such an incredible action. Showing respect for others and showing respect for yourself is something that everyone should strive to do. Nothing is more difficult than feeling disrespected and responding in a manner that doesn’t disrespect the person that is disrespecting you. I know, that sounds crazy, but if you stoop to their level, then you ultimately disrespect yourself. Let me say that again, by disrespecting someone that disrespected you, you are actually disrespecting yourself.
I will say this a great deal as we get deeper into this series…rise above. People will do everything they can to pull you down to their level. The second you do, you have lost your way. Live your life, do what is right and let the people that have a problem with it stew. Their opinion is useless if they can’t show your respect. Respect yourself first. Then you can command it from others while also giving it to those that deserve it.
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I went through a time in my life where I thought loyalty was by far the most important part of a relationship. I still feel that way, but as I see friends and people around me going through situations that strain loyalties…I found myself thinking that loyalty is extremely important, but to a fault can be dangerous. That is why I think true loyalty requires honor. If a loyalty puts you in a situation where you need to be dishonorable…then that loyalty may have been placed in the wrong person or cause.
So go out today and be loyal, but don’t let your loyalty make you dishonorable. If a loyalty pushes you to to be dishonorable, odds are the basis of the relationship has changed and you need to revaluate where your loyalty lies. Be like the men and women this weekend, that show loyalty, honor, love and respect, even in death. That is rare and beautiful.
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The best way to get this feedback is radical candor. Be open and honest at all times about where you stand, what you think and being confident enough to push back, second guess and constructively criticize.
The important part in acting with radical candor is the second part of this quote…caring personally. I have worked and known people that are just mean and rude to people and use candor or “saying it like it is” as just how they are. The important part of radical candor is the trust it can build when done right and that trust must be exercised in a healthy manner. The only way to do that is to truly care about what you are talking about and who you are talking to. Without this piece, without care and empathy, radical candor becomes a unhealthy and intimidating tool that can destroy a team or company from the inside.
Bottom line, if you are going to use radical candor, exercise love and empathy along side it. Otherwise you could inadvertently create a bad situation.
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Today my authenticity is high on my mind. I want this to be real. To be what I am struggling with and what I am doing to deal with those struggles. Don’t get it twisted, in the macro, I am happy, my life is going well, I feel very content, I have nothing to complain about. The struggle is in the micro, in pushing myself to reach goals I set for myself, the struggle is me knowing that I am still emotionally and spiritually immature, the struggle is knowing that I am betraying my body with bad choices. Ultimately I have a ton of room to improve and I don’t want a day to go by that I don’t make even one baby step in the right direction.
What I want this to be is real. I am far from perfect, I make mistakes…a lot of them. I say stuff I wish I didn’t. I lose my temper, eat the wrong things, skip workouts, do just generally dumb things. I suck at a lot of stuff, I don’t have it figured out. What I am is honest with myself about my shortcomings. That is the fastest way to improve yourself.
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This is where it starts, today is day one and I am scared. Todays quote is what I am trying to embody in this process. I can’t put into words the anxiety, fear and absolution in knowing that I don’t have a choice but to do this. I spoke to it briefly in my post the other day, but I was taken aback by the response to me giving the love yourself book to 10 people. The number of people that reached out and asked and didn’t say a word, but followed up with the impact the book had on them as so impactful. I knew I want to do more of that. To create impact, to help people find what they want. Today is day one. I am excited. I am terrified. I am 100 other emotions in this moment.
I am not here to fix you or tell you that you need to be fixed. I am here to document the process I started 5 years ago, the process of finding me and pushing myself to grow. Every. Single. Day. Lets go! It’s time to go to work!
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