Trying to Find Perspective

Welcome back to the Standing Strong Podcast today. We're talking about perspective and it's going to be perspective-y. That's right, it keeps getting better. My name is Shannon. And I'm Little Shannon. That's right, the power couple with the same name. That's us. Yeah, it is. Today we're going to be talking about perspective. It's going to be a great little podcast. However, my wife has lots of great notes, but it may, it may take a little twist and a turn. I'll try to stick to the notes though, I promise. We were interrupted by an air filter. So back to regularly scheduled programming. We're on it. On it today.

Yeah, so we just wanted to, you know, we always want to be real and what we're dealing with or focusing on in our own lives. We believe that this podcast brings something to someone throughout their week. And hopefully this speaks to you today and we can help you guys stay on track. We are not perfect at this, but we try really hard. So we just want to bring you guys a little bit of information about perspective. That's a big word in my world. I use it a lot. I try to really live by that. I think perspective is needed in every situation and every day to save you from going down rabbit holes. That's true. Oh, that's a good rabbit hole. I have a rabbit hole. Let's go. I have a rabbit hole.

Talking about perspective, I have some perspective. And that is when you try to do great things, the devil, not God, the devil notices and tries to derail you and makes things way more difficult. Yes, like this podcast? Yeah, well, the podcast, just life in general, I can tell. It's nuts when we sit down and we plan on doing great things that are going to make an impact in people's lives or an impact in our business. When we're planning and doing and moving in the right direction and trying to do it in a way that is biblical and in a way that is God-inspired, all of a sudden, it seems like the attack comes.

And I'm not trying to turn this into a whole biblical Christian thing, but I just got to say, it feels like everything's good when you're like, whatever, God. I got this and I can go about my merry way. And it's not difficult. And that's because you're on the devil's side. And he's like, well, don't need to mess with you because you're right here. But then you want to do something great like this podcast. And all of a sudden, he's like, oh, wait a second. We need to put that obstacle up. We need to do this. We need to bring this anxiety back. We need to put this in your head. We need to let you know about this.

And we need to let you know about that because we can't have you going in this positive direction when I'm way more comfortable when you're over here with me not doing the right things. No, I totally agree. And the one way we do get attacked is with time. The podcast is something that we enjoy doing together. We like helping people. We like to just enjoy this little bit of time that we get together. We go back and listen to our own podcasts and laugh at each other as we are driving in the car, whatever, and go back seasons and listen and think, oh, man, that was a good one. But we are attacked by time because there's only so much time in a day.

And that's kind of like what we're going to talk about today is learning to believe and focus on yourself without it turning into a me situation. And that's hard to do as well. So we're going to kind of talk about those directions and how when you are good to you, you can be great to other people. Well, I mean, that's very true because you can't be the best version of yourself if you're neglecting yourself. And what a lot of people don't understand and what a lot of people don't realize is in order to be the best version of yourself, that requires you to put time and effort into yourself because a lot of people will sacrifice. A lot of people will do unhealthy things.

A lot of people will put way too much time into work and they'll do it because they say they're doing it for their family when in reality what they're doing is they're taking away from their family because they're not presenting their best self to their family. So they're not taking time for themselves to make them happy, which then translates into not the best relationships that you can give to other people. Right. One of the ways that I do that for myself is I have to plan out my week. The calendar, you know, Shannon just talked about this this week in our own conversation of, you know, when you just look at a day at a time, you're just like, oh, that's a really busy day.

And then when he opens up the entire week, like how it sits on my computer and all the different color coding for the different people that live underneath this roof and who's going where and doing what and now, you know, we're even adding our son into soccer and divvying up who's going to be at soccer games and who's going to be at cheerleading practice and who's, whatever the case is, you know, it's a lot that goes into our week and still have to do everything else. And we know you're doing the same thing. You know, I'm not complaining about it. It's a very great thing to be doing. We got those first world problems. Right. But, you know, it becomes overwhelming.

And one of the ways that I avoid being overwhelmed for me is Shannon likes everything electronically. But for me, I write it out. I have a paper, weekly paper, like a planner that sits on my desk or wherever I'm at. I just take it and I just write day by day things that need to get done. It could be as simple as, you know, whether it's a work project that has to get done or cheerleading practice that has to get done, mailing something, cleaning a bathroom, washing the sheets. What day am I doing those on so I can be very focused when I enter that day of what I'm doing. Without that, I get very lost and sidetracked. I feel like I'm not accomplishing.

The day's running me instead of me running the day. And with that, you know, there's things that arise. There's things that, you know, you'll call me last minute and be like, hey, I need you to stop what you're doing and get in front of the computer and handle this for a client. Or, you know, the kids call. They're sick and I have to go pick them up from school. Whatever it is, things can happen and I know that. But that just means that whatever's in that column that is the least important, I can move it to the next day. And I'm not beating myself up over it because that's what I needed to focus on in that moment. But being a planner, I'm not. That is not who I am.

I'm not a plan out everything and organize. It isn't who I am. But for just writing it down on a list weekly of everything that needs to be done that week and crossing it off, it does something for me. Yeah, and I think it's hilarious when you're like, I'm not a planner when you literally plan every, like almost every minute of my day, which I'm thankful for because I was actually talking about that on my Facebook story. I was kind of showing out a blurred out version of what my day looks like. And I'm like, hey, listen, I know that you think it's weird that I won't talk to you on the phone. I know that it's weird that you think that I make everything go through my wife.

And that's simply because everything is actually planned out and it has to go that way or everything wouldn't get done. I just simply do not have time. I have gatekeepers. I just don't have time to sit around and talk on the phone to people and text. And it's not because I don't want to. It's because I can't because of how much is done. And that's only accomplished because of what she does for me. But her mentality is in her. What is the word I'm thinking of? You're much better off mentally if we sit down and plan out our weeks. And she does it herself, which helps her, but it helps her even more if I sit down and plan out my week with her. Right, because we have so much going on.

And whether that's I need you to pick Jordan up here so I can take Mackenzie here or this client, when you leave this client to go to this client, this is information I need you to know. Or if it's a project, just a reminder, this project is due. He knows it's due. But then we tell all of our clients. Because it's on my digital to-do list. Right, and I'm not a digital person. She puts all of, I'm not a digital person, I just put all of my written to-dos onto your digital to-do list. Yeah, but I don't follow that. To look at it on a screen doesn't do that for me. I need to physically have a pen and cross it off. There's something about writing.

It bothers him so much that he bought me the iPad with the pencil so I can write like I'm writing on paper and I don't use it. It's not the same for me. There's something in my mind where an actual pen and paper make me happy. It's almost like a paper book. I don't want to read the book on a screen. I want to hold the book in my hand and turn the page physically. Listen, you want to know how crazy she is? I'm going to tell you how crazy she is. I am obsessed with digital note taking and things like that. I'm a blessed person. I have like four iPads. I just grabbed a different iPad. This is my podcasting iPad.

But I'm always like, write it on the iPad, write it on the iPad, write it on the iPad. You don't need paper. You don't need paper. You don't need paper. Then I'm stuck one day in the bathroom and I need some toilet paper. I'm like, babe, bring me some toilet paper. You know what she brings me? The iPad. She's like, use this paper. That's not going to work. He's like, yeah, just like that doesn't work for me when I was writing things down. That's my story. Moving on. Everyone wants to hear about toilet paper stories. This past year we went through a toilet paper shortage. Everybody knows about toilet paper. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole.

I told you I got a bunch of them for you today. Moving on. I'm going to let you quote the failure to plan. A quote I heard from Zig Ziglar. Actually, it's very popular in the Army as well. If you fail to plan, then you're planning to fail. Especially in the military. Because that's just not falling on your face or not getting a project done. That's actually lives in stake. Planning and forethought into what you're actually going to do and how you're going to do it is extremely important. But it's even in regular life, it's extremely important. We've found this over and over and over again.

I am super bad at it where I will just go at it with no plan and figure it out as I wade through the weeds. But that also has led me down paths where I've wasted a lot of time. I've wasted a lot of resources. I've wasted other people's time. I've wasted money. And I've fallen flat on my face simply because I didn't have the forethought to sit down and put together a plan of action and what I was actually going to do and how I was going to do it. Today's actually a great example. We were out testing some bullets. And we wasted 30 minutes because guess what? The batteries died in the chronograph and we had to go get batteries. So there's 30 minutes wasted that we could be doing something else.

But since we didn't plan, we didn't check our equipment, we ended up wasting time. Yeah, I think, you know, and I look at those moments too where I go, okay, well, it's something that you didn't think about, but it was still meant to happen. Because at the same point, like those 30 minutes was a detour that maybe saved you from something else. It's a blessing along the way. So in those moments we can get frustrated, especially you, because you know you only have so much time in a day. And you want to get everything done so it doesn't roll to the next day for you. Because a lot of your things are work projects.

Well, I got a great conversation about a .338 Lapua that a guy was shooting, which was pretty awesome. So I appreciated it. Rick was running crazy because he went to get the batteries. I was just hanging out with people shooting guns. Right. So, I mean, there are moments, you know, where you're going to stop in your tracks. Whether you're stuck in traffic, you know, there's times, especially in your day, if you're driving from location to location and you get stuck and you're running behind, you get very frustrated in that moment because you know this is just backing me up and backing me up.

But one of the things, and I know we refer to Zig Ziglar a lot, is understanding in those moments that that's okay. It's okay to be detoured. There's some things in this life that we cannot help. Obviously, if you're detoured due to an accident, thank God you weren't the reason for the accident. That's how I look at things now. Like, there's a reason why I'm sitting here because, or, you know, oh man, I got to run back inside. I've already gone back inside three times and I forgot. I need this too before I left the house. And then I get up the road and two minutes before there was an accident at the intersection. Yeah, that's true.

And gone, oh gosh, if I would have left on time, that would have been me. I would have been that person. Like, that would have been awful. So I look at those moments and think, you're being saved from something as well. Well, and right now we're talking about perspective, right? So what you're referring back to is, for instance, in the time crunch situation, if you were on time, you would have possibly been into an accident. So the perspective is, hey, things happen for a reason. And, you know, you may not know that reason, but looking back on it, you can see the perspective. I'm just trying to follow along as well. Yeah, no, I'm just finding perspective in everything we do in a day.

You know, right now we're just on how to be organized in our day, not let our day run ourselves, so that getting your mind right. Because when you are running rampant, you are not going to have perspective. You're going to be focused on you inside your craziness, and nothing is going to stop you in that moment. Like, it's hard to have perspective in moments when you are out of control in your own mind. Gotcha. Okay, I just wanted to wrap up how this is all working out into perspective, because I think for me, we were getting a little bit not off of it. What you were saying was right. We just were wrapping it back up into there. So what you just said made sense.

Right, and so we're going to go... Don't, me. We're going to go a little bit further in fixing ourselves. This is all about... Perspective. Don't tell your wife to hmm at you because it's not a good idea. So one of the things with planning and taking care of ourselves is we all know we need the proper exercise, sleep, nutrition. However, we don't do it. The reality is if we did, the effects would be better. Right? Like if we get up and we have a plan, whether you work out in the mornings or nights, and we've talked about that before, you know, you've got to do what's good for your schedule and your time and what you're allowed for in that day. Each day might look different.

You might get 30 minutes. You might get an hour. The whole point is that you do it and you get to release those endorphins. You get to get the fresh air or, you know, release the whatever, the tension or whatever you have. Like exercising makes you feel better. If you're eating well, it makes you feel better. And I think so many people, and we talk about this just because of the journey we just went on, that so many of you guys listening even, you don't even know what it is like to feel good because you have felt bad for so long, you think that's normal. And that's not. Like it's not. If you're eating fast food every meal, it's not good. If you're only eating one meal a day, not good.

If you're not exercising or getting the proper sleep, you're only, you know, none of that is good. You have to figure that out to be the best version of yourself. Like you have to make yourself the priority. Yeah, that's the truth. And in reality is what a lot of people don't know is working out sucks until you start doing it. And then it's pretty awesome. And I've never worked out and got to the end of it and thought, well, that was stupid. I feel horrible for doing that. You don't want to do it because you think it's going to suck.

And it might suck in the moment, but when it's done, the feeling of accomplishment and those endorphins and everything else you just talked about are worth every single second of it. Well, and I think we also, we make excuses. We say, oh, I can't. I don't have the time. I know that's a discussion we have in our own house. You will say like, I do not have the time. But you do, you have that 30 minutes. If you're, you know, sitting on your iPhone, I'm not saying that you do this because you do maximize your time throughout your day. But I'm just saying there's times in people's day. I do it myself.

I will find myself sitting on the couch just because I'm like, I need to take a break and just sit there and scroll through Facebook or scroll through Instagram or TikTok, get lost in it. I refuse to get on TikTok unless I'm going to sleep because it is the off track moment of my day. And I have to discipline myself there. You know, so it's something I've realized I can't get on it because it's so addictive. It makes me laugh and I just follow it and follow it and follow it. And it's not good for me. So I think recognizing those moments as well. Yeah, I mean, I put, the problem is I will put work in front of almost everything.

And I will make the excuse that I cannot work out because I have to do this. And to be completely honest with you is studies have shown it. When you put in more than eight hours of work, when you start getting into nine, 10, 11, 12 hours of work, your productivity and your quality of work diminishes. And the longer you work, the more it diminishes. So we put in these long hours thinking that we're doing the best we and working now and things like that is the excuses generally are bad excuses, especially when the excuses, I have too much work and that I can't actually focus on myself because in reality, not focusing on myself, it affects my work and it doesn't affect my work positively.

So why not take the time when in reality it's actually gonna allow you to work better and produce more quality work. Yeah, no, I think to understand perspective really that you just have to start making it a constant practice in your life. Like when you're in moments throughout your day, like today I want you to evaluate a situation. That's what perspective is. You're gonna evaluate what's happening in the moment and how you can react or respond to something, how you can be the best version of yourself in that moment. And we, you know, again, if it is a me, what did you call that the other day? Me-centric person? Is that a word? Yeah, that's what I said.

Yeah, like when you are all about you, which is being all about me, and it's about what I want in my day and there's no other way, like that's, it's never gonna work. Like it's not going, you might get away with it for a little bit, but then you're gonna realize you're gonna be in a lot of trouble whether it's in a relationship or business or anywhere that you're trying to go, like being all about me is not going to work. You can't do it. It's not healthy. And I think if we start evaluating our day and our moments and looking at that perspective, how can this be better? What can I do to be better at this? And this is something that I preach every year on my mat when I'm coaching.

I talk about it in my parent meeting at the beginning of the season. I talk about it with the girls constantly. And because you hear it. Because what's the easiest thing to do in a moment when things aren't going your way? If things aren't working out, blame somebody else. It's very easy to be like, well, I can't do that because you're not doing this. Well, I can't do that because now I have to do this, this, and this. Where if you would just take a moment and look inward and see what you can do to be better, it will be better. Right? If you take that moment and evaluate yourself in that moment, whether you're working in a group setting, our marriage, we do this a lot.

There's times in our marriage where I have to stop and go, is he mad at me right now? Or is he mad at a situation or something that's affected him personally? Because I would say 90% of the time has nothing to do with me. Right? Yeah, I'm mad at the stupid people. Or a stupid situation. It could be a situation, like there was a time period where after your dad died, I would have to look and be like, okay, what time of year is it? Are we coming up around that time? That's still even to this day. It's getting better, I would say. Or we're just more aware of it, maybe.

But especially in the beginning, it was just like you would be so angered inside your heart over not having your father and knowing that this was the day he went into the hospital or this is the day that this happened with this doctor, whatever. And me, I would have to figure that out because at the end of the day, it really came down to, well, wait a minute, we're arguing right now, this has nothing to do with me. This has nothing to do with me. And so I've had to gain perspective on things. I have to, you know, again, we're going back to Zig Ziglar's React and Respond, right? Zig Ziglar, well, Zig Ziglar was the foundation of our personal development. Yes, I agree.

That's why we talk so much about him and why we regard him in such, you know, why he stands at such high esteem with us. But one of his talks, he talks about reacting versus responding. And he talks about his flight being canceled and he goes up to the desk and he's standing there and he hears the person in front of him yelling at the flight attendant or the flight stewardess or whatever they're called, the customer service about their flight and screaming and yelling and getting all mad and huffing and puffing and going away. And he walks up to the flight and, or to the desk and the lady says, I'm sorry, sir, but your flight has been canceled.

It's been delayed and you're gonna have to catch another flight that's four hours away. And he goes, fantastic. And with a big old smile on his face and she's like, how is that fantastic? And he goes on and he's like, you know, in those situations, we have two options. We can either react or we can respond. And most of us, and this is, and my big struggle is I'm a reactor, is we can go and we can get huffy and puffy and get mad about that. And this is what he talks about. I'm not making this up. This is what he talked about that. And Shannon was just talking about this earlier, is I can react and get all mad.

However, if I stop and think about it, the only reason that plane is delayed is number one, the weather's not right. And I don't wanna be flying in weather that's not right. Number two, the pilot's not right or the pilot's sick or the pilot's not able to fly. And I don't wanna be flying in a plane when the pilot isn't at his best or there's something wrong with the plane. And I don't wanna be flying in a plane that has something wrong with it. So even though it's annoying that the flight is canceled, there's a reason that flight is canceled. So all I can do is say fantastic with a smile on my face and move on with my day. That's how I can respond.

I can't react to the situation in anger when in reality there is something that is keeping me from that plane and that something is going to keep me safe or going to be better for me. So I'll just wait for the next one. Right, and I think there's just so many moments in our day if you just, sometimes this is gonna sound bad, but there's a lot of times where I watch people in their moments and I go, if you would just shut up, if you just shut your mouth for five minutes, things will be a lot better. Like I watched it at a school where I coach at this week, girls getting arrested, you know what I mean? And she's just yelling, yelling and yelling and yelling.

And I know things can be bad sometimes. I get it. Like I know I've been in bad moments and I want to scream from the rooftop. But in that moment, I just knew, I just wanted to go hold that girl and just be like, I want to help you, but I need you to help yourself right now. I need you to help me help you. What is that from? It's like, there's a movie that that's a line from, but like help me help you. I think it's Jerry Maguire. That's what I was thinking. But it is it because he's telling him like, shut up because the guy, Cuba Junior, whatever it was. Cuba Gooding Junior. Yeah, like he just, he was a mouthy person. And he's like, just shut up. Just be quiet.

And there's a lot of times in our day, if you can just take that moment. Shut up. There's nothing wrong. I do this to my family. I've done this to my kids on the mat. I do it a lot. I do practices. This isn't just me saying, but there are times where I have to say, I need you to give me a minute so I can process what's happening. And that's communication. Can I just process this for a minute before I just talk? Because I feel like what's going to come out of my mouth next is not going to be healthy. And I don't know that that needs to come out right now. Let me just process this. That's bad advice. I think you just should blurt out the thoughts that are in your head. Yeah, we'll see.

I think a lot of you are already doing that. And that's why you're listening today. She's like, I practice being responsible and responding. And I'm like, well, I just react and blurt. Right, he does. But we've just had this whole moment in our own marriage just two weeks ago where we have to stop and just go, I gotta understand you and you gotta understand me. Right? We gotta have perspective. You did. You did. You took a moment. And that was big for you because you don't practice perspective. I'm the one that does that the most. I know. Let's not give me too much credit because I made it horrible up until about the last five minutes of it. No, but I have my faults just as bad.

But in that moment, you were able to say, I'm mad at you because I wanted you to react this way or say this way, and it's just not who you are. And there are a lot of things I struggle with. I struggle with a lot of things. I saw a TikTok the other day. It was like, you know, here I am. I hate physical touch, and my husband's love language is physical touch. My kid's love language is physical touch. People love physical touch, and they all want to be surrounded by me who does not like physical touch. And it's not that I don't love my husband or love my kids or I don't want to hold his hand. It's suffocating at times for me, and that sounds bad as I'm saying it in this moment.

But it's something that he knows. It goes back to that me-centric conversation. It is, but he also knows my love language. And, you know, if you can ever pick up that book, there's a love language for kids. There's a love language for teenagers. There's love languages for... Acts of services happens to be hers. If you're listening to this and want to impress her, do something for her. Mow my grass. It's different for everybody, and I think if you can just understand what's happening in a moment and how that perspective for yourself, you're going to have so much peace in your world. I feel like it's something we have to talk about. Like, that's why we're here today. That's right.

You know, so I just want to wrap up with a couple of things because I don't want to just... Obviously, we're just telling you all the bad things that go on and what you got to look at. We've had some good things in there as well. Yeah. I just want to... Just things that kind of carry with you as you finish out your week and just start applying it and just do one thing. Just do one thing to make it better this week and then add something the next week, and then you're going to just figure out that you're going to become the best version of yourself. And there's going to be days where you're going to fall short, and we all do.

And sidebar, before we get into this, just know as you're moving forward, if you start having hurdles, just like when we first started, if you start seeing those hurdles, most of the time, that means you're moving in the right direction. Right. So approach those hurdles with joy and realize, hey, these hurdles are in my way because I'm going in the right direction. Something wants me to go another direction. So now, I'm not saying blindly go into things and never look back, but hurdles are often a good thing. So don't get discouraged when those hurdles come. Let's move back onto your notes.

So I think there's a couple of steps that if you apply them within the next 30 days, if you just take them and apply them within the next 30 days, and some of them are going to be easy and some of them aren't. I just think you're going to start seeing a difference in the people around you, the situations. You're just going to see how much better things get for you. And number one is making the choice to be better. Be better. Look at yourself and be like, hey, you're an idiot. Be better. Well, I mean, I wouldn't call yourself an idiot because I don't think you're an idiot. No, I wouldn't say that to yourself. I would say that to you. Don't listen to my steps. Listen to her steps.

That was not on the notes. Follow the notes. You know, make the choice to be better. So when you wake up, say, today is the day I am going to be a better me. I am going to do something to better myself today. If that means you take a 10-minute walk, you get out, get fresh air, if that's what bettered your day, that's it. That's it. And we sit around our dinner table. It's very important to our family that we sit and talk about our day. And we ask each person. And you come and visit our dinner table, you're going to be asked. So you better be prepared. But it doesn't matter if they're a relative or a friend or a friend of my kids. They're coming around the table.

And they're not even embarrassed because it's the way of life in our family. So when they sit around the table, we talk and say, okay, Mackenzie, what was good about your day? And they're not allowed to say, it was good. No. They're not allowed to say nothing either. Nothing. There's always something good. There's something good in your day. Find it. Find the good in the day. And keep your eyes open for that good. And start implementing that. Ask your own kids or ask your spouse, hey, what was good about your day? Because we talk about so many things that are bad. I mean, we've even made that a point of like, I don't want to talk about the bad anymore. I'm moving past the bad.

I've got a bubble around me, healthy or not. I don't need a psychologist telling me that's not healthy. But for me, I've got to put this bubble up because I can't let all that other negativity in to my path because it will ruin your day. You've got to start eliminating that. So whether it's the people you're hanging out with or the books in front of you or the TV in front of you. The people, the books or anything. The worst is if you're a 40-some-year-old and you're on Facebook, put that crap away. That place is a cesspool of negativity and bull crap. I will tell you this too. I think, and this is for a whole other podcast because I'm not a people pleaser.

Anyone that knows me knows like I'm never going to make a choice to please an outsider. It's just not. Oh, I want you to come and I want you to do this or speak here or do this. If it isn't good for me, and that is a me moment, and that's okay to be that way, to say no. It's okay to say no. So even on Facebook, some of you might be listening, but I've unfollowed you. I've unfollowed you because I can't watch what you're posting all the time. I can't do it. And so for me, I like Facebook because I like to keep up with people. I like Instagram, things like that to keep up with cheerleading and those events. But I have to remove what's in my path because you've got to think about that.

The friends that you're friends with on social media, are they friends? No. Right. They're acquaintances. Acquaintances that you knew from third grade. Yeah. There's people we're friends with. It doesn't mean I don't like them. It doesn't mean, you know, or. But I don't care about your opinion. Right. If you're, and that's another podcast. We won't go there. That's a rabbit hole. We won't go there. Rabbit hole. But. Stick to the notes. Make a better, make a choice to be better and set goals and make a plan. Do you know what a goal is without a plan? A dream. A dream. And there's nothing wrong with dreaming. However, dreams stay dreams unless they become a goal.

And the only way they can be accomplished is if a plan is set beside that goal because a goal with no plan is just a dream. Right. You got to put action. You got to have action to make it happen. I want to walk across the, I want to walk across the room. You can dream about that all day, but until you get up and take the first step, you're not walking across the room. That's a good one. Yeah. Evaluate what you're approaching prior to approaching it. You know, there's situations that we already know are going to be in front of us. We already know the people that are in charge of that situation, how that's going to look. Give us an example.

My example would be, you know, if I'm going into a moment with my kid where, you know, she's made a poor choice. When I approach that, I know she's going to be defensive. I know she's going to come at me with every excuse of how this is not her fault or it's someone else's fault. Do you know what excuses are like? Belly buttons and everyone's got one. That's right. So there's a lot of situations. I mean, you have your own examples. I mean, I use my kids a lot because those are a lot of the situations that I'm in. I've been blindsided by situations and lost, honestly. Walked into a meeting and thought, well, this is not at all what I expected to even be happening right now, but here we are.

And really, I've had to sit and just say, you got to give me a second to process what's happening so I can make a better plan for a better outcome. Because if I just react in this moment, it's not going to be good for anybody. I've been in those situations. So sometimes that's hard. But I think, and I think most of you guys would agree, if someone's communicating that to you, I would respect it. I'd be like, okay, this person is going to come with logic, not fear, you know, and have a solution and really be able to help the situation instead of hinder it. Yeah, but I'm telling you, when someone's Tasmanian deviling on you, they're not thinking, oh, look how responsible this person is.

They're like, you're a moron. You have to say what you have to say. You have the opportunity to walk away from that. You have the opportunity to say, hey, this isn't the right time. I think we got to take five minutes. I got to come back. Or just excuse. If you can't and you stupid way most of the time. My point is this, is there's going to be times where you're trying to do the right thing and the person who is reacting to the situation isn't going to see that. So you need to be able to maintain your composure in that situation and say, hey listen, it's not that I don't want to discuss this with you. It's not that I don't want to resolve this.

However, I need to process this so that we can resolve this in the proper way. So there's going to be times where the person isn't going to see it. However, you need to stay with your, stick to your guns. Well, and I think, and that goes with my next point is communication. Is if you're evaluating that moment, and I'm going to use us for an example just to make it easy. Do it girl. If you, if you are clearly upset about something, and I've walked in to it, I think the communication at that point of, I want to handle this and I want to give it my full attention in communicating it in a positive way.

Because if you come at that person in that moment, and you're like, hey, you're clearly out of control. What is that going to do to the other person? Oh man, it makes them even more pissed off. Like they say, like psychologically, like if somebody, you know, if you're talking with another parent as a teacher or coach or something, and you look at them and you're like, you need to calm down. They're going to not calm down. They're going to do the exact opposite of calming down. Calm down. I do not need to calm down. They just turned their radio.

You know, I just, I think communicating properly, you know, we're taught as coaches at the school, you know, if a parent or a student approaches us in a heated moment, they're not happy about something. Because, you know, that happens. Like it's all about them. It's like, why isn't my kid starting? Why isn't my kid on the mat? Why did my kid get pulled from the routine? Or, you know, whatever the case, if in that moment, as coaches, we're taught, hey, I want to discuss this with you. I do have commitments that I have to handle right now, but I'm going to call you tomorrow and we're going to set up a time that we can talk about this. And at that point, you're now back in control.

The person that's out of control is not in control. So I think that's important. Is that why you're trying to set up a phone call with me the other day? Yeah, I'm like, hey, listen, we're going to talk about this. So you're going to call me back at 1.30. We're going to get that done. And then I think you have to just remember to not be hard on yourself, too, because we're going to fall short. We're going to, you know, not be the best version of ourselves every day. There's times where I don't have perspective. I feel like 90% of the time I'm pretty good at it. You're just good at everything, aren't you? I am. I'm pretty confident. Those are jokes, by the way. No, I'm pretty confident.

No, I mean, I do know that. You are actually confident. I tell her all the time. This is what I love about my wife, and this is another rabbit hole. But a strong-minded man is the only type of man that could be married to my wife because my wife is a leader. My wife is a winner. My wife is a confident, confident person. And a weak-minded man would crumble underneath the weight of her amazingness. And I'm not saying that in a, like, condescending way. I'm saying that in a very positive way. And I look at it all the time, and I'm like, man, there's so many people that just would not be able to be married to you, not because you're a bad person, but because you're such a powerful person.

You have to be pretty, I don't want to say powerful yourself, but you have to be pretty strong-minded to be able to allow that. Am I making sense with that? Well, I think what you're trying to say is you have to have perspective. Right, you have to have perspective. Because you know I'm not taking control of something that you're in charge of or I'm trying to overpower you and lead our household or do those things. Right, because I wear the pants. But I'm also not the person that's going to just be the yes person. Right. It's not. I'm going to tell you how I feel. She is going to give your opinion. I'm not going to. Whether she thinks, you know, you're going to like it or not.

If she thinks you're going to like it, she's going to give it to you. If you think you're not going to like it, she's still going to give you that opinion. And she's going to be confident in her opinion. Listen, and I'm not saying that because I go around just loving to hurt people's feelings. That's not the case. But this is the problem, especially right now. Nobody wants to hurt anyone's feelings. So they're just like, oh, yeah, you're a great singer, man. Go up there and sing. No, I think it's like a double-edged sword because the confidence can overtake. And this is a rabbit hole. This is a way big rabbit hole. I told you I have rabbit holes today.

This is just one of those moments, though, like the perspective of who I am, you get. And my perspective of you, I get. And so, yeah, there's a lot of people that couldn't be married to either one of us. And that doesn't mean we're bad people. It doesn't mean that we make horrible choices in our marriage. No, we're just real people. I don't take to heart everything that comes out of your mouth. I don't take everything as you hate me. You're saying I talk to you like I say bad things to you. No, I'm saying. Let's reel this rabbit hole back in real quick. What she's trying to say is I get kind of moody. You think you're a reactor. Right, I'm a reactor. You are a reactor.

But I don't say mean things to you. No. I do not say mean things. Let's clarify that. I wanted to ask. I just say things in a mean tone. Yes, that's what I'm saying, tone. I don't say mean things. If it does come out some way where I'm like, please, then you'll say please. Because I understand that I'm giving you perspective in that moment. But those are why certain people are with certain people because they have perspective. Right. They understand that. There's a reason actually I went down that rabbit hole, and it comes back to what you were saying is that people do fall short. And the reason is nobody's perfect.

And even though I talk about Shannon in a way that would make a lot of people think that she's pretty perfect, the fact of the matter is she's not. I'm not perfect. Our son's not perfect. Our daughter's not perfect. And that's what we're trying to actually teach our son right now is we do not expect perfection from you. However, we do expect you to do your best. Right. And there's a big, big difference between perfection and doing your best. And I think this final point comes to what you expect your kids to be doing. Now, there's people that do not have expectations for their kids in this world, and that might be part of our problems.

However, for the parents that I know, there is an expectation in their house, whether it's morals, values, grades, however it goes, you've got to follow the same thing because we set the bar for our family. My daughter is going to look at me and know what a woman should be like in this world because I'm going to act it out every day for her. She is going to see what I do in a day and either desire to be like that or change. Well, if you ask her, it's sit in bed on your computer. She does think I work in our bed every day, if you ask her. Far from the truth. However, she was homesick from school and I was working in my bed typing out probably these notes just because it was peace and quiet.

But, you know, you have to show action. You have to show what you want. Be the example. Be the good. You've seen that before on shirts and everything. Be the good that you want to see in the world. Be that person. And when you feel like you just can't do it anymore, just think to yourself, I can do it. I can do one more thing to be a better person. And you've got to forget all of the bad and all the other things that people aren't doing in this world. So those are my tips. Communicate. Make that choice to be better. Set your goals. Make a plan. Start implementing those. Eat better. Exercise. I know it's a lot of things to implement in 30 days, but I believe in you. I know you can do it.

I've done it myself. I'm not just telling you to go and do it. We've done it. We do it. And we're getting off here to go do it right now. Do what? Plan. Oh, gotcha. Okay. Well, hey, listen. If you haven't, go to standingsharmer.com. Standingsharmer.com. Sign up for the list. Go to the podcasting service of your choice. Like us. Follow us. Subscribe. Whatever your podcasting service offers. Leave a review as well. That helps people find us. It would be very helpful for us, and we really would appreciate it. And once we start getting some more reviews, we used to do this, we'll start reading some of those reviews on the podcast to say thank you to your guys as well. So it's been fantastic.

Listen, don't give up. Keep doing great things. We believe in you. We're not perfect at all. We actually have lots of unperfections. But you just got to keep getting better, trying to get better each and every day. So thank you. Have a fantastic day. And as always, hopefully we'll see you on the beaches of the world. That's right.