Work vs. Prayer
Hey everybody. So, it is Friday night. Is it September yet? Good grief, I don’t even know if it’s September yet or not, that’s pretty sad. Let me see. When is it? It is, it’s September first. Wow. Pretty smart I guess, huh? So, today I was blocking up wood. It got me thinking a little bit. Eight quart of wood will do that for you. But it got me thinking a little bit about when people hear that I burned 15 to 16 quart of wood a year to keep the shop or the ‘man cave’ heated and the house heated, we have an outdoor wood boiler, I get anything from, “Wow, that’s cool,” to, “Oh man, you’re nuts.” Why would I spend time doing that? But it got me thinking about your journey and how that relates to just life in general, either your life with your partner or your wife, with your kids, with your business, all that stuff, that’s your journey.
Just like with people not necessarily understanding how much wood that I cut through the year and why I would spend time doing that, not everyone’s going to understand your journey. That’s okay. Here’s the thing. Our journey, your journey, my journey, it’s not anybody else’s responsibility to make sense of, but I guess that’s what it boils down to. Thanks, Daniel. You know? Yeah, I do have a hair tie somewhere, but I’m going to go back and out and probably get in the hot tub after this so I can soak for a little while. Anyway, that was a squirrel moment there. But that’s the thing I got to think about today, is our specific journey is our journey. Mine is mine, it’s nobody else’s. It’s nobody else’s to make sense of. I think we start to look at … I think an important thing to look at it input versus influence, because we all have, and I talk a lot in the book about how having mentors, having someone that can speak into your life that isn’t going to blow smoke up your skirt, that’s going to speak honestly to you and give you the hard truth that you need to hear, not what you want to hear. That’s important.
So, don’t get me wrong, but there is that input versus influence. I think we need to be careful looking at who we’re letting … so, what is the difference? Input is ideas that come in, and it’s you make that decision whether or not to do it, to use that information, to change something because of that information. That’s input. Input is something we think about, we rationalize on and then we decide whether or not it’s good for us or good for our situation. Influence, and in business, influencers are key. Eric Worre talks about that a lot, and shout out to Eric for everything he’s done and taught me on that as far as influencers. But when you look at someone who is an influencer in your life, that’s someone whose opinion weights heavily, and who has the ability to influence you to change your direction and your frame of thought not without, but with probably less deep thought about what they say because of who they are and because they’re willing and you’re willing to let them influence you. There’s less time spent going over what they said, and trying to determine whether or not it’s valid, because they’re an influencer, they’re influencing you in that way.
So, what do you do? How do we focus on our journey? How do we know what journey is ours and is right, I guess is the big question I’ve had asked of me. I think the first thing you have to do is you have to get grounded in who you are. You have to be … the only way to do this really is to stop and to take an assessment in who you are and what you’ve become. I think that’s the big thing. Here’s something. You can think about what you want others to say about you, and in what respect, there was a … one of our coaches that we had in our first, when I started the business, they gave us a challenge or a task. The task was to write our own eulogy. When they first said it I’m like, “Are you cracked? I’m not dying. I’m not dead. I’m good.” They said, “No, we want you to write your own eulogy. We want you to sit and think about when you’re dead and gone, what do you want people to say about you at your funeral? What kind of a legacy do you want to leave behind? What do you want to be remembered for?” I think that’s the piece that grounds us, that piece of really what do you want to be remembered for?
Sorry, sawdust today. So, I think it’s a good thing to do. It did a lot for me, and it was tough. Brenda did it too. It really made me think. It takes some time to do it. Don’t just sit down and write it in an hour. Write for a little bit and then come back to it. Write for a little bit and come back to it. Write from a perspective of if you’re a parent. Write from a perspective … look at all these areas of your life that I talk about in the book, whether it’s with your spouse, whether it’s with your kids, whether it’s in your faith, whether it’s with your friendships, whether it’s in your business, those types of things, and look at what you would want those people to say, what you would want those people to think of you and what you’ve left behind. Write it as if they’re all still here and you’re gone.
Kurt said, “I often think about what my children will remember.” You know what, Kurt? That really got me thinking. That got me thinking as far as with my kids, and here’s a little bit of a rabbit trail. As a dad, as a man, am I there for my kids? Not just physically, but am I there? Because you can be present physically, but are you present emotionally? I’ve got three boys, and we did a man myth the other day where men don’t have emotions. That was one of the myths that we hear or see sometimes as propagated. I think it’s a load of crap. Strong men have emotions, and they know how to deal with those emotions. Children throw tantrums, so they don’t necessarily know how to deal with those emotions, and/or children stuff their emotions and don’t show their emotions. When you grow up and you become an adult and you start adulting, you learn to control and to show the emotions properly, and that’s what an adult is. Nobody is changing our diaper anymore or tying our shoes for crying out loud. Some of the strongest men I know show emotion.
But I think that really got me thinking as far as with the kids when I wrote this eulogy. Am I going to be remembered? I’ll tell you what, I’m going to do it too, since I never ask anybody to do anything that I’m not willing to do myself. I’m going to do it with you guys. I’m going to challenge everyone on here that’s watching to do it. I’m going to do it too again because it’s been awhile since I did it and my boys are older. What I wrote then, they were all under six years old at that point, things that they would remember me for might have been a little different than where they’re at now. So, that is a good reminder for me to do it. So, there you go. There’s one thing that you can do to kind of ground yourself in who you are and what you’re doing. The other thing I want you to think about it is especially on this journey, because our journeys tends to change based on other people’s influence and input, right? Whether that is a parent, a friend, a clergy, whatever that looks like, whoever had that position of authority over you that could speak into your life as you grew up. Sometimes we let them affect our journey. Sometimes it’s for the good, sometimes it’s not so good.
So, I want you to think of what was it that you dreamt of as a kid? What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be a rodeo guy until I really figured out I like motorcycles better than horses. That was my own change in my own journey. It wasn’t anything anybody said I could or couldn’t do. That was the thing about dad, and still to this day, I never heard once that you can’t do that or you shouldn’t do that, or you’d fail if you tried that. So, for those of us as dads and even spouses, and if you’re leading any kind of a team in any kind of leadership and in business, watch what you’re saying. Watch what you’re … are you encouraging and lifting up and building to move forward, or are you dashing hopes and dreams? So, think about what it was when you were a kid that you wanted to be when you grew up, whether that’s in business, whether that’s related to a family, whether it’s related to kids, your friendships, all those things. Think about what that is, and then the next question you ask yourself is why aren’t you getting it?
Now, this self reflection piece and this being honest piece sometimes isn’t any fun. It can be tough, but be honest with yourself. Why aren’t you getting it? What’s your excuse? Here, I’ll give you the same thing that Gary Cox told me when he challenged me to write the book. He said, “Now, be very careful. Choose your next words wisely because the next words that come out of your mouth are going to most likely be excuses.” So, when you ask yourself why you’re not getting and accomplishing those dreams that you had when you were a little kid, what kind of excuses are you telling yourself?
All right, guys. So, man, appreciated everything. Again, Sunday night. Okay, so tonight Verick Burchfield, I was supposed to interview him. Some of you might have heard that. I was supposed to do that at eight o’clock tonight. You know what? Here’s the thing. He’s in my book for the chapter on marriage. He’s one of the men that I admire in what he does and how he does that. There’s a reason. He just proved it again tonight because we had it tentatively scheduled for eight o’clock depending on whether or not his wife was going to be coming back home after being gone for two weeks, and she was able to come home tonight. So, he had to cancel, which is perfectly fine, and quite honestly it just made me actually prove my point that I picked the very right person for that chapter to have. There is a dude that’s killing it in that area.
So, anyway, but Sunday night if you guys have seen, we’re going to be doing an announcement for next week what’s coming up, so I hope so see you guys all Sunday night. I probably won’t do anything more ’til then, because it is Labor Day weekend, but y’all have a great rest of the evening and a safe weekend. Watch out for the crazy ones on the road everybody. Y’all take care. See ya.