It’s a Tuesday therapy session. Dan is working through some things, most notably how to be more flexible and open to change. Think you can relate? Give a listen and offer any suggestions you have! Check out the website for more content www.bcbousa.com
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Full Recap:
Hello, and welcome to BCBO daily. It is Tuesday, May 18th and I’m your host, Dan Murch. Back for a little, let’s call it a therapy Tuesday. So first let’s touch base on yesterday, Monday, man, we are just so busy. It is amazing how much stuff is going on right now. And next thing you know, I look up it is four o’clock and I have not gotten done even nearly as much stuff as I thought I was going to get done. I got done a lot, but somehow the plate is still pretty full, but overall I did pretty well. I’m satisfied with the work I got done yesterday. Got a lot of stuff done. A lot of communication. A lot of emails came through yesterday that I wasn’t expecting to have to deal with, but it’s okay. I figured it out. I got through it. Took care of the priorities, shuffled the things to today that needed to be shuffled to today and it’s all gonna be okie dokie.
I did have some time last night and I was able to do a little bit more reading and something in my reading kind of just hit me. Ever watch a movie or read something and you feel like they’re just talking directly to you. That’s exactly what happened to me last night. So first of all, I was reading the book, Atomic Habits. Every time I mention this thing in the podcast, I give it a different name. For whatever reason I just have a mental block against it. The name of the book is Atomic Habits. It’s written by a gentleman named James Clear, which is why in yesterday’s podcast I referenced it as clear habits instead, regardless it’s Atomic Habits.
One of the chapters was about being flexible with yourself, not identifying yourself as one particular type of person or attached to one particular thing. Because then if that crumbles, you can be left to feel like you don’t have an identity. Your whole world can go in the shambles. And I just felt like it kind of hit me because I’m going to go into a couple of different reasons why. First though, I want to read, there was a great, I guess, quote in it, in the book that came from something else, that goes like this:
Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.
The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and soft supple will prevail.
That’s from Lao Tzu, if I’m pronouncing that correctly.
It really hit for me because you want to try to be structured and organized and have a routine and create good habits and kind of be known as somebody who’s dependable, but you don’t want to be so rigid and so stiff that you’re not willing to make changes where you need to make changes or adjust and adapt to life where you need to.
The reason it hit for me is because for anybody that knows me, one of the things that I’m kind of known for is I’m on time. Always. To the point where it drives me crazy and it drives the other people in my life crazy. It’s like, if I’m supposed to be someplace at 10:00 AM and it’s 15 minutes away, I’m leaving at 9:15. And I’ll go sit out in the parking lot. And if God forbid, I’m still in the car at 9:45 for a 10:00 AM appointment because I had traffic or red lights or something like that, even if I’m a mile away from the place and there’s no more traffic, I’m like sweating, you know, like I’m going nuts. I’m just giving myself all sorts of anxiety and stress that I don’t need to be giving.
And for people that invite me over to their house it causes stress. I had somebody who started lying to me and giving me fake times because they’d tell me to show up at four o’clock, for a barbecue or whatever and I show up at 3:45 and for some people that’s not okay, they expected people to show up at four o’clock. That’s when they’re prepared to have guests, they don’t want somebody showing up 15, 20 minutes early, maybe five minutes I guess is okay. But, I started getting given fake times because they knew I’d show up earlier than what they gave me. So they gave me a time so that I actually show up on time.
How does that tie into kind of being flexible and pliant and not being so stiff and brittle and how it goes to my identity? I think for me, we talk about negative self-talk, but for me, I believe that I have some really great strengths, but I also am aware of some of the weaknesses that I have, and I can be hard on myself sometimes about them. But no matter what anybody could say about me, they can never say I wasn’t dependable. I’m always there when I say I’m going to be there. If you need something, I’m there. And I’m there on time. Even if I drive myself crazy to get there. And so it became kind of part of my identity. If nothing else, this is what people can count on me for.
This is something that they can say is a good thing about me is that I’m on time. I’m dependable and I will not let them down. And the thought of showing up late, it’s not only an inconvenience. It’s now taking a chunk out of my armor. I’m no longer going to be that dependable person. Now every negative thing that they may think about me or every negative quality that I may have now, I don’t even have that going for me now. I’m not reliable. Now I don’t show up on time. That’s kind of the thoughts that I think subconsciously are going through my brain when I drive myself crazy about showing up on time. And it’s really not, it’s not healthy. I don’t think it’s healthy for me to be that way. And I’m not sure how to fix it.
That is why I am talking about this today. I hope somebody listening can share some tips or ideas or something along those lines. I’d appreciate it because I’m not sure what the easy, simple answer to it is. Now in this particular instance, I think showing up on time is extremely important. It’s not like I’m saying I want to just be a person that shows up, you know, five, 10 minutes late for every appointment or Willy nilly or something like that, because I think it’s respectful to show up on time for an appointment or an interview, whatever the case may be. I’m trying to understand that if it happens, if I showed up late, it doesn’t change who I am as a person. Doesn’t change how somebody thinks about me. Especially people that I already have relationships with and a background with, and they know me, they know how I am.
I need to figure out how to be a little bit more pliant and flexible in terms of some of the beliefs that I hold, not be so OCD, for lack of a better word, about the way I do some things, and I’m working on it in certain areas of my life. But for whatever reason, this one just really hit home for me. I don’t want that controlling me to the point where I’m letting it determine whether I’m a good person or not, because I really don’t think it should go that far.
So again, why, why am I talking about all this? Honestly, I don’t know. I have a good answer. Like I said, this is a therapy session. You guys get to hear it all. It was just something that hit me last night and has been on my brain as I went to bed last night, as I got up this morning, just always looking for opportunities to kind of reflect on myself and acknowledge some things that I can do better. I talk about limiting the negative self-talk that is important, but you also need to be realistic with yourself and if there’s areas in your life that you can make changes. You want to make sure that you’re trying to do it. I guess where I’m at in this session this morning with you guys is that it is something I’m struggling with. Not having myself be tied to one particular characteristic trait and then if it failed now what? Now I’m not that person.
The idea is instead of being a person that says I show up on time, no matter what, instead, you kind of change the way I think about myself to being like, I’m the type of person that’s dependable, reliable. That’s the vision that I want to have for myself, you know?
Instead of saying I’m an athlete – you know what happens with professional athletes, or not even professional athletes, somebody that goes through high school and they think they’re going to be a professional football player or basketball player or whatever, maybe they go through college and then all of a sudden that doesn’t work out. They don’t make it to the pro leagues. They don’t make that money. And now all of a sudden they don’t know who they are because for 10 years, that’s how they envisioned themselves. They just thought that they were going to be a professional athlete. That’s how they viewed themselves and now they’re not. So now what? Maybe you try to reframe that and instead become somebody who says, I’m the type of person who is athletic and I like to be challenged and I like to exercise, whatever, whatever the answer is, but you want to try to limit labeling yourself as one particular thing, because if that one thing goes away, then what?
I apologize if anybody’s just felt completely bored by this whole thing, but sometimes as I promised you guys, sometimes there’s going to be whatever’s floating around in my brain and today that’s, what’s floating around in my brain. I want to make sure that I’m still considered a reliable, good, dependable person, even if every once in a while I show up at 10:02 instead of 10 o’clock, but don’t count on it happening.
So that’s it guys. That’s really all I wanted to get into today. I’m sure as the week goes on, maybe it’ll come up again or something else. It for whatever reason, it’s really just grabbed my brain and held my attention, but I wanted to get it out there into the world today. Get it out to the universe and let the good positive vibes come back.
Let’s go have a great Tuesday. Let’s jump out there with both feet. Let’s get into the grind. Let’s get stuff done. Let’s keep paying the rent on our success. Let’s keep asking ourselves that question – how would the person I want to be handle the thing I’m about to do? Keep putting ourselves in that forward thinking mindset. Keep pushing ourselves towards our goals. One step at a time. Let’s put some good out into the universe. I promise you’re going to get good back.
And it happened yesterday, happened today again, and it’s been a topic of conversation through the whole podcast. Let’s be kind to ourselves. Let’s limit that negative self-talk. Everything’s not going to go as we plan today a hundred percent of the time, but it’s going to be okay. We’re going to figure it out. It’s going to be fine. And at the end of the day, let’s sit down, let’s review everything that happened. Let’s make adjustments where we need to make adjustments, but let’s seek out our successes and celebrate them. We are good people. We’re working hard. We deserve to be happy. We deserve the good things in life. So let’s celebrate ourselves for it. We certainly deserve it.
And lastly, as always go check out the website bcbousa.com. That’s where you can get all the good, good.
This one is a little bit longer than my normal daily podcasts, but that’s all right. I had a lot on my brain, a lot to say. So hopefully you guys enjoyed it. Maybe you get a little bit out of it. Maybe it kind of hit something in your brain, the way it hit something in mind, and you realize there’s a certain part of your personality or routine that has just become too structured and you got to be willing to be a little bit flexible with it. If you have any suggestions or comments, I would love to hear them. Please reach out to me, Facebook, email, phone, call, whatever, and let’s go have a great Tuesday and we’ll be back tomorrow. Thank you for your time, guys. Have a great day. Bye.