Podcast number two, Start with the why. Let’s go ahead and dive into this idea of personal growth. Again many, many of us want to grow, we want to have the benefits of growth, but do we understand the responsibility of growth? Do we understand what’s going to have to go into this process of growth? Again, that’s why it’s so important to have somebody in your life that’s helping you navigate because it’s one thing to have the desire. It all begins with desire, but from there, we actually have to begin taking steps.
What are those steps and what are the hurdles that we’re going to have to overcome, the struggles that we’re going to have to go through? If we’re not careful, we’ll enter into a very natural, a very natural struggle along the path of growth. But because we don’t recognize this as a natural step, we will interpret struggle as wrong. We will interpret struggle as failure. We will interpret struggle as this isn’t working. We will misinterpret life events and out of that misinterpretation, we unfortunately, will draw conclusions. We’ll say this is true. It’s like, “No, it’s just the situation, it’s just the season that we’re in.” Business Speaker Tulsa
To prepare us for that, we have to ask the question, “Why?” This is where we have to begin. Simon Sinek talks about this. If you have never heard of Simon Sinek, S-I-N-E-K, great conversations that he has on this question of ‘why,’ starting with the why. I encourage you to Google him, go to the Google and check out Simon Sinek, Start with the Why. Listen to that video, it is great. I remember when I first heard this. It’s probably been about 10 years ago now when I first heard this and I mean it shook my world. It was like, “Holy cow, that answers so many questions for me.”
I want to encourage you to do that. This question of, this statement for you “starting with the why,” it has to begin there because if you’re why is not bigger than your struggles, then you will stop, I promise you. Another way to say it is, if your why is not bigger than your wine, then you will stop, because this is not an easy path. Personal growth is not easy and there will be struggles along the way. If all you do is grind, complain and point the finger and whine then you will eventually stop. Business Speaker Tulsa
You’ll blame everybody. You’ll have all kinds of excuses. We have to start with this question of, what is your why? Why do you want to grow? The why is your anchor. The why is what keeps you move if — the why is what anchors you to truth. It’s what keeps you stable in times of storms. It keeps you stable in times of frustration. It keeps you stable in times of desperation. When I say it keeps you stable, what I mean is it keeps you focused on the truth.
There’s a reason, there’s a purpose for why I am doing this. It’s not just to be comfortable. It’s got to be bigger than just my comfort, although being comfortable is important. I don’t want to invalidate that. But if comfort, if joy is my only goal, then I promise you on day two, it’s not going to be joyful. It’s not going to be comfortable and you will stop. Question for you is, why? Why do you want to grow? What is personal development mean to you? What does business Speaker Tulsa acumen mean to you? Why do you want to grow in leadership?
Why do you want to grow in your relationship with your wife, with your husband? Why do you want to grow in your relationship with your children? Why do you want to be promoted at work? Why do you go to work every day? Why do you want to start a new business speaker Tulsa? You got to get into the whys and what I found over and over is, with this whole why thing, is that the why if not understood, it’ll be a cage that limits your freedom. If you have not answered this thing, it’s so common for people to live in a cage.
We look out through the bars at other people, seemingly living lives that they love and we wonder how do we get there. How do we get there? I want to be there. I wish I was there is not fair. Oh there’s a good one. It’s not fair that I’m there. How come — they’re no better than me, how come they are there? Guys, I’ve asked my question, myself this question so many times and I have again misinterpreted my circumstances and then I’ve drawn conclusions about life based on my interpretations.
So why do we do what we do right now? Why are we stuck where we are? The reason why you’re stuck where you are, the reason why you are where you are is because you think how you think. I have a phrase that I talk quite a bit about, TEBAR, T-E-B-A-R. Thoughts will always lead to your emotions. It is your thoughts that drive your emotions. If you don’t believe me on that, then just think about the last time that some scene of drama entered into your life. Just go back into that and realize how you’re thinking cause the drama to increase and increase and increase.
As you begin to roll that around in your brain over and over and think about, “Oh, well they did that because of this. Well, that person did this and I know what they’re doing. You know what I bet they’re doing right now, I bet they’re doing this and I can’t –,” and you just get more and more emotional, because your thoughts are running wild on you. You guys, your thoughts will generate your emotions. Your emotions on the other hand over time, when thoughts and emotions combined together over a long period of time, they will develop your belief system. That’s the B, T-E-B, belief.
You will begin to develop your conclusions. What is truth? What you begin to believe is true, will come out of what you think about and what you feel about. Your thoughts will drive your emotions and your feelings. Those feelings then will develop into belief systems. Before long, if you’re like me, before long, you can begin to believe that a certain future that you long for is never going to be available to you. You will begin to believe that you are not good enough, even though you want certain things. Well it’s not going happen for you, because you’re not smart enough, you’re not good enough, you’re not tall enough, you’re not this enough, you’re not that enough.
You begin to believe that. People won’t respond to you because of this. You begin to believe that. It’s not just a thought you had, but now it has gone into the belief system. That’s the B and then finally as you continue, you’ll find that these thoughts and these emotions and the beliefs, your beliefs will be confirmed by your thoughts. Your thoughts will become evident in your feelings and your feelings will develop into beliefs. It will just be this consistent cycle over and over.
Before long, you were living in a reality that you call truth. This is what truth is when really, it is just been developed or created because of your thoughts, your feelings and your beliefs. Out of your beliefs, you will act. There’s the A. Unfortunately, how I used to always think is, “You know man, I just need to learn more. “If I just learned more things, then I would no longer do this. I just need to know how to do it. It is like knowing would be is the key. That’s what I’m missing. If I knew better, than I would act better. Business Speaker Tulsa
You guys, that is wrong, that is not true. Yes, I definitely don’t want to say it’s not important to learn, but your actions will always come out of your belief system. When was the last time you heard someone say or you said yourself, “I know better than that. Why do I keep doing that? I know better than that”? You see, our actions don’t come out of our knowledge. Our actions come out of our belief system. Business Speaker Tulsa
How many times have you been to a workshop? How many times have you been to a seminar? Have you read a book? Have you listened to a podcast? Have you been to church? Have you been to a summer camp, where you heard things and it’s stirred excitement in you and you begin to go, “Oh my gosh, this is going to be awesome. It’s going to be awesome.” Yet when you went back to your daily life, the things that you had heard do not last. But it doesn’t take long at all.
Usually about seven to eleven days, sounds official doesn’t it? Seven to eleven days and those feelings, those new feelings begin to fade, those new thoughts. You begin to forget those new thoughts as the old thoughts flood back in. Now here I am again, once locked into my belief system. You act according to your beliefs and then obviously you’re results in your life are simply a conglomeration. Hey, there’s a word for it. Your results in your life are simply the conglomeration of all of your actions.
If you want to change your actions, if you want to change the things that you were doing in your life, if were wanting to change the results in your life and what’s going on, the fruit in your life, you can’t just one day stand up and say, “I’m going to do things different.” That won’t be enough. I promise you that won’t be enough. Because in the struggle, in the storm, what will happen is all of your beliefs, all of your feelings and all of your thoughts will come to bear in the midst of a storm, in the midst of struggle, in the midst of difficulty.
You will act according to your beliefs that are driven by your emotion, that are ignited by your thoughts. This whole thing begins, this whole journey of transformation. We’re not just talking about memorizing some stuff, we’re talking about transformation. The whole journey of transformation and growth begins with changing the way you think. We have to change the way we think.
I promise you, it’s impossible for you to change the way you think. It’s impossible for you to think anything other than you think. If you ever try to think something different than you already think, it will be impossible for you to do. You cannot do it on your own. You will have to begin to adopt outside thinking. If not, how many times have you been in that place where you have been in bed thinking about a problem and you continue to come back to the same conclusion over and over and over. I just need to think about it hard and you think about it more but you continue to come back to the same conclusion.
Your thoughts are limited by your thoughts. You’ll never be able to think out of the box on your own. At some point, you have to be willing to allow new thoughts to come in. Here’s the key thing, here’s the key equation here. New thoughts must replace old thoughts, they can’t be in addition. Again, this goes back to this mindset that we have here in America and maybe worldwide, where I need to learn more, I need to know more. That might have worked when we were in high school, when we needed to know more so we could pass the test. But in life, that’s not how it works.
In life, you have to — what’s the word I’m thinking of. In life, you have to replace thinking, not just add on thinking. Chances are very good if you’re in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and up. Chances are very good that if you did a strong evaluation of your thoughts right now, you would have multiple ways of thinking that are in direct contrast to one another. They are totally opposites. If the conversation you’re having at one point is in one area, “You are completely onboard, yes that’s what I think. That’s what I believe, yes you’re right,” and then somebody else comes in goes, “well what about this?” You go, “Hey, you’re right too, that’s right. I’m what you think, I think what you think and I agree with you.”
We agree all over the place because we have all of these different opinions in our minds. I don’t know if it’s — again, I’ll make this statement, I don’t know if this is true or not, but it sure seems like never before have we lived in a society that has had so many differing opinions in a single mind. Where we say we believe in this, but we allow that. It happens so often in today’s world, in today’s mindsets.
As we begin this path in our personal growth, as we begin this journey of growth in our life, we have to understand that it truly begins when we take a look at how we think, how we are interpreting life. If we look at the shallow place and just try to change our actions, it won’t work, and it will continue to lead to more and more frustration because you’re going, “How come it’s not working,” because it doesn’t work fast enough.
We try to change our actions for a week but things don’t change. We go, “What’s the big deal? How comes it’s not working? I’ve been doing the low-carb diet for a week how comes it’s not working? I’ve been exercising, how come I’m not changing? I don’t get it.” We’ve got to get all the way down. We’ve got to drill-down. We have to mine into the way that we think, the way that we interpret life events.
I want to encourage you to do that, to begin. Again, you won’t be able to do this by yourself. You’ll have to have somebody that has been there, someone that has been down in that mind, someone that has drilled down themselves and learned what that was like. If you can find that person, get close to that person and ask them to help you, as you begin to mine, mine down into your thinking.
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