Episode summary introduction:

Join TC & Maddog during this episode as we explore the multifaceted nature of success. We illuminate the notion that success is a subjective experience, differing profoundly from person to person, akin to the diverse paths one might take on a journey. Throughout our travels, we offer valuable insights and strategies that can assist listeners in navigating their unique routes toward achieving success. We further explore vital qualities such as self-awareness, resilience, and the importance of relationships, which collectively contribute to a fulfilling life. We challenge our audience to reflect on their definitions of success and to engage with the concepts presented as they embark on their personal endeavors.

Topics discussed in this episode:

Success is a theme that resonates throughout the dialogue, characterized by its subjective nature and the personal journeys that accompany it. We begin by asserting that success is not a universal standard but rather a distinctive experience shaped by individual circumstances and values. For many, including themselves, the measure of success is intrinsically linked to family and personal development. The heartfelt reflections shared regarding their children illustrate how nurturing their growth serves as a profound source of fulfillment, thus redefining traditional notions of success.

TC & Maddog further explore the qualities that underpin a successful life, such as self-awareness, resilience, and the ability to confront challenges with courage. The speakers advocate for the importance of developing self-confidence as a foundational attribute, suggesting that success is often the result of incremental progress rather than monumental achievements. They encourage listeners to adopt a proactive stance, setting manageable goals that allow for personal growth and the cultivation of a positive mindset. This approach is framed within the context of maintaining emotional health and fostering supportive relationships, which are posited as critical components of a successful life.

As the conversation unfolds, we touch upon the nuances of vulnerability and the necessity of embracing one’s true self as part of the journey toward success. Listeners are challenged to reflect on their definitions of success, emphasizing that it is a personal and evolving construct that should align with one’s values and aspirations. The episode concludes with a call to action, inviting listeners to take ownership of their journeys, remain adaptable in the face of adversity, and consistently strive for personal betterment. Through this thoughtful exchange, the speakers provide a rich tapestry of insights, poised to inspire listeners on their own paths to success

Walkabout takeaways:

• The podcast emphasizes the importance of defining personal success in one's own terms.
• Listeners are encouraged to develop self-confidence as a vital component of success.
• The necessity of perseverance is highlighted, especially in the face of adversity and resistance.
• Vulnerability is discussed as an essential quality that can lead to personal growth and resilience.
• Building supportive relationships is crucial for navigating the complexities of life and achieving success.
• Financial resources can aid in achieving success but should not be its sole measure or focus.

More about E-Walkabout:

To learn more about Electronic Walkabout visit us at www.ewalkabout.ca.

If you want to read more “Thoughts of the Day” check out TC’s Book at Amazon:

“St. Mike's Fortunes”

A special thanks to Steven Kelly, our technical advisor, who keeps trying to teach these old dogs new tricks when it comes to sounds and recording!!

“Remember to take advantage of the moment before the moment takes advantage of you!”

Mentions in this episode:

• Google
• Harley's
• "Tim the Toolman Taylor"
• Mr. Greg Fawcett
• Mark Twain
• E-Walkabout.ca

Electronic Walkabout. No one should have to walk through life alone. We share the good times, the bad times, and the best times.

Everyone needs a little direction now and again. And TC and Maddog are here to show you the way.

A podcast where we talk about the important things in life. Come journey with us. The Electronic Walkabout Mad Dog.

Let's welcome our listeners to this episode of Electronic Walkabout. This episode, we travel down the road to look at what can help us reach success in our lives.

Success is a funny thing, as it means different things to different people, or if I can put it in a traveling context, different paths for different people. Regardless of your path, we're going to share some pointers to reach your destination of success with perhaps a couple of laughs along the way.

Yeah, we're going to laugh. We're going to do some laughing too.

We tend to do that. I'm good with laughing all the time, so.

So how are you doing this fine day, Maddog?

Everything is good. I have little to no complaints. Not that anyone's listening, but yeah, it's life is good funny.

You don't seem like the type that would complain much anyhow.

No, it's just wasted energy, to be honest. It's, you got something to complain about, do something to fix it or move on.

Yeah, I think that's comes from a song because there's some lyrics there. I can't remember what the name of the song is, but it's been around for a while.

One or two.

Yeah. But before we get into it, always a thought for the day.

If your goal was to learn one thing and do one good deed every day, that's what compound interest is all about. Based on the power of one.

I like this karma bank is getting added to on a daily basis.

There you go. It's funny because they, they say, and you hear it all the time, how do you eat an elephant? Well, one bite at a time and it. And it doesn't matter.

You just put things in, like in, in little goals, little steps, and before you know it, you've climbed a mountain.

Yeah, they don't need to be like monumental victories. To your point, little things, as long as you look at it as a positive improvement, it's a win.

Okay, Maddog, are you ready?

I am.

It's like you're on a game show right now. And if you don't have the right answer, I'm just kidding. But what qualities do you think you have that have helped you with your very own success?

Well, I think the first Thing to do is define what I think success is.

Perfect, perfect, perfect. What is. What is it? It's going to be different for sure. So what is success to you?

To me, it all boils around my children, to be honest. That's my indicator of what I deem to be success. You know, we.

We put 30 years into the four boys, and, you know, looking at them now, they're extremely intelligent individuals. They're. They can adapt to social situations. They're courteous, they're polite. They can kick ass when they need to.

But that, to me, was my personal measure of success, is how those. BO Was really the only thing you can work all your life and collect billions of dollars and stuff like that. But to me, it's.

The family is more important. So how I found success was obviously collaboration with my wife.

She definitely has a different skill set of emotions that I don't have and which I have kind of listened and learned over the years, which has benefited the. The boys being where they're at now. But just. You have to be a communicator. You have to be able to balance emotion and.

And direction and discipline and all those things.

But.

But y. That's my measure of success, is how my children turned out.

I. I love that measure of success. And. And it doesn't matter what you. You think your success is. What we're going to talk about is going to help you reach that success.

But if we can simply put in the terms of family, that. That's. That's success for sure. And I would just guess. But your ROI is probably quite high.

It is. And they better be taking care of their parents get older. That's the true return.

Right now we get it. We know why we.

That is the running joke. It's, you know, when they do something, it's like, oh, I'll just remember your parents when they get old, you know, but it's.

That would never be a doubt to me. Just. I know what they're like and. But it's. It's always fun to jab them once.

I can certainly see that. Especially with. With Tyler. For sure. For sure.

Oh, man. They're all like. It's so funny how they're so different, the four of them, but they're. They're all of the same caliber, if that makes any sense.

So it's. Yeah, it's nice. I like to beat my chest and brag about my kids all the time.

Well, don't ever stop doing that. But I will share something with you. My mom used to say she Kept a little black book to keep track.

So I think those books have gotten bigger over the years.

Okay, so we're just going to talk about some of these things, and I think there's about eight that I learned from my friend Google. But developing self confidence, it's going to help you with your success. And I say developing because.

And you know, everybody's different, but there are some people that literally land on this planet and they have nothing but self confidence and something to aspire for. Sure. I was not one of those people. But I would suggest right now I have a high level of self confidence.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's practice makes perfect, like we've said a bunch of times. But I pride myself now on my speaking ability to large groups.

But it was not always like that. I was terrified at the beginning.

But, you know, if it's something that's either a part of your job or something that you aspire to do, if you're doing it regularly and you're practicing and working on it, you will get better at it. So. But it, to your point, it does not come naturally for everybody. It didn't for me, that's for sure.

Yeah. And I often wonder how, how we actually put those roadblocks.

Roadblocks up to, let's say that self confidence because literally when we do land on the planet, we. We all have the same abilities for some reason or other. There's a lot of us that basically limit ourselves and find ourselves. Wait a second.

I don't need to limit myself and actually taking that self confidence and then letting it grow within you. Mm. Self awareness. We've talked about that before. You have to like.

And I boil that down to being your own best friend and being honest with yourself about what, what you need to do to. To better yourself as a person on a whole bunch of different levels.

And you don't have to be perfect at everything. Like one of the examples, I. I love riding Harleys. I am the worst mechanic in the world.

And I'm okay to admit that, like, I'm, like, I'm a hell of a salesman, but I would never ride anything that I fixed. So, you know, but that's knowing me, and I'm not asham that at all.

But I do know because we, we don't have. I don't have this on the, on the list in the plan. But knowing your limitations I think is very important as well. And I think it's more of a.

Know what you know and know what you don't know.

Yes. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Can you repeat that again, please?

So it's know what you know, but also know what you don't know.

Yes.

And, and, and the only thing I think I was going to add on that, that doesn't mean you can't overcome those limitations, but you have to know that first.

Correct. Yeah. If I, If I really wanted I should take a motorcycle mechanics course, I should learn, but it's not high on my priority list.

But I just have a network of people that I work through to get these things done. So.

Yeah, and I'll kind of echo you, but in a different context, because I'm far from Tim the Toolman Taylor. I can do your basic repairs and thank God for duct tape because it's, it's.

It forgives all sins.

Resistance, the ability to deal with resistance. Now, do you know what I mean when I, when I say that, though, Mad Doc? Because when I first read it, I said, what does that mean? Resist.

Does that mean you're going to resist change? Does that mean you're going to resist doing this, resist doing that?

I interpret that as resistance that you encounter when you're trying to better yourself. So, you know, just because you try something, it's not always going to work out perfect.

Something will push back and either, you know, not fall into line, and you have to persevere and kind of keep, you know, if, Keep hitting it and hitting it and hitting it until you get some headway or, or some learnings. But, but yeah, you have to. If it's. It's basically being able to adapt to adversity. Right.

It's no different than what we previously talked about, the ability to be able to pivot. If you can't maneuver around it or find a different way, sometimes you. You will get stuck.

So, yeah, I think that's a strong trade, just to be able to, you know, push through some resistance to get to the other side now.

And again, I'll talk about the extreme, because there are people that actually have been successful, never had an ounce of resistance.

And not that I like to say I hate those people, but I'll just say I envy those people because it's nice to have it easy at one point or another just to say, okay, well, thank God finally there wasn't much resistance to get to where I needed to go. But in between that resistance, it's so valuable. There's some failure that you're going to learn from.

There's different ways of looking at things again, too.

Yeah. And and, you know, the whole idea is to, to take a learning out of whatever situation, be it good, bad, or indifferent.

Like, I've had some big losses over the course of my life, you know, from claiming bankruptcy a couple times. And I, if I just would have sat there and lived in that, I would have truly limited myself and my family and all that sort of stuff.

So I was like, ah, nope, I'm just going to take it as a very expensive learning lesson and pivot and find another way to do it.

And you've already mentioned this one perseverance.

And when I start thinking about this, the, the, the picture that comes to my mind is an elite athletes, and you think of how many repetitions, how many hours in the gym, how many hours on the ice, how many hours on the court just to get to the point where they're at that level.

And, you know, all of our kids have gone through that through sports with, you know, weight rooms and, you know, furthering their education and repping things out. To your point. So, yeah, that. I think sports helps youth kind of navigate some of that or, or face that.

You know, if you're a team that's 10 and 0, but you're going up against the, the unbeatable other team, that's the resistance that you have to push through.

So, and you know, what if you don't, if you don't win, you just really got to analyze the tapes, figure out where it could have possibly been victorious. And that's how you grow.

And it certainly builds character, for sure.

Absolutely, it does.

And, and yeah, and I know I look at my grandsons when they, they lose a hockey game or a soccer game and, and I watch them play and they're, they've, they've done so many positive things that the result isn't there, what they want, but you want to make sure that, hey, they keep pumping and they persevere, so they keep playing the game and get better at it. And really it's, it's that mindset that there is no limit and the only option is to say no.

But if it leaves out, the one option, which is success is what you're looking for for sure.

And, you know, sometimes people are fortunate. Like, I'll, I'll call him out.

Mr. Greg Fawcett was a head coach for our sons for numerous years, and he just had a way about them where, you know, I didn't, you know, aside from when the coaches got together, everybody vents and stuff like that. But the message to the kids was always that one of Perseverance and, you know, being adaptable and changing and learning from a loss if there was.

So the kids benefit from being opposed to. To coaches in sports that are like that.

Just a bit of a shout out to Mr. Greg Faucet, because I don't know whether listeners know or even, you know, mad dog, but he is our number one list.

Is he really?

Yes.

I did not know that. I take it back. I mean, Greg, that guy, I swear. No, he deserves it because it's.

And you can just see in the kids, like, you know, coaching is a fairly selfless thing, and. But when kids remember you for years and years and years and years, you make an impact on their life. And I know Greg was one of those for.

I know all the kids that he coached during our time there, so good job, Mr. Fawcett.

Thanks. We truly appreciate him in more ways than one. This one's really interesting. Vulnerability.

These guys are really comfortable with that one.

I. I don't know what to say about that because I'm still trying to get in touch with my vulnerable side. And if you have the ability to do that, it almost makes you bulletproof, if you can imagine.

Yeah, it's. I don't know how you would.

That's.

Yeah. And again, I know sometimes gentlemen have challenges with emotions and navigating through those. So vulnerability is a pretty touchy one.

And it almost, you know, we're raised as men with, oh, yeah, you're the. The provider, you're the champion, you're the defender. And being vulnerable is almost counterintuitive to those things. So.

So when you see someone wearing their hurdle asleep, what do you think?

I appreciate honesty when people like that.

Yeah.

They don't dance around. They're just. Whether they're right or wrong, that's what they're. They believe.

And I, I would much rather deal with people like that than, you know, people that tell you what you want.

To hear and literally you can go up to them and say, well, how do you do that? And they wouldn't think anything of it because they do it just like breathing. Yeah.

We put that somehow roadblock in our mind saying that I shouldn't do that. That's risky for me.

Yeah. But the nature of entrepreneurs is risk taking.

Right.

You're going to roll the dice. You got an idea and you're going to float it financially. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

But you have to have that ability to be vulnerable because it's. You're rolling the dice, you're trying, and it might work and it might not. And that's sometimes hard for people to, to expose themselves to.

It's the little wins, I think that make the difference for sure. This we've talked about many times. Both physical and mental health are always important for success. There's no question about it.

Not to mention that if you don't have your health and let's say you've done all that hard work, what's the point? You've, you've got nothing to enjoy at that point.

Yeah, it's, I hear or use the word balance a lot where you know, you have to be able to work hard and relax and play hard, enjoy the fruits of your labor and because otherwise I think it gets to a point of you can become self destructive if you're, you know, too buried in a lot of things that you're involved in.

You need to listen to your body for sure. And what the other, the other thing you have to listen to is.

And hopefully you will have a couple of good friends or mentors and say, you better slow down, buddy. I'm okay, I'm okay, Don't worry about me.

So yeah, it's, that's not an easy one. Vulnerability.

Vulnerability. Relationships.

Yep. Are we talking about vulnerability in relationship or just relationships?

Well, there has, there has to be and that's that. But I think you have to learn to be vulnerable with yourself and then engage in a relationship. I don't mean like a partner relationship.

I mean simply engage in a relationship where you can not be afraid to show your true self, show your emotions and be comfortable doing that because there's.

Only one of you and you need to be okay with you. And if other people aren't, then that's a they problem, not you.

And usually when you hear relationships, at least in the business world, you think in networking.

But I took this to mean something a lot deeper than this when we talk about success because I can know a lot of people and they can help me get from A to Z. But at the end of the day, if I'm in the trenches with someone and we have a great relationship and we become friends, that's what it's all about.

Absolutely. Yeah, I'm with you 100% on that one.

And the last one to keep in mind is money to help you with.

Root of all evil.

Yes, that's, that's exactly what I think it is, the root of all evil.

But let's take money from a different perspective because you know how some people say, well, I got to make a million dollars and then I'll be successful. What did you say? What. What your measure of success was when we started this podcast, Family.

Family and the. The quality of children. That. That was my.

And I. And I didn't hear the word money come out of your mouth whatsoever. But I will tell you this along with.

They say that quality of family life, sometimes that takes a little bit of money to do that. So it's. It's your ability to impart that money and use as a tool to. To actually reach your success goal, which is family.

Yeah. And. And the family itself is an investment. Right. Whether it's kids in sports or schools or camps or. Trav. It is. There's.

There's still a monetary connection to that, but it shouldn't be the. The driver of your success as dollar bills in the bank.

Because I would say if you focus too heavily on that, you'll be in the grave by yourself with no one looking over. But, oh, man, do you have a fat bank account. I'd rather be poor with, you know, a really strong family and. And love and connection.

That's more important to me.

That sounds like fantastic success to me. I. I just want the listeners. Just keep in mind, I. What. What we've talked about in this short period of time.

If there's anything that kind of clicks with them and they want to get better one way or another, go ahead, take that chance. Get better at doing it. But unfortunately, that music is telling us that this episode's come to an end. And you can.

You can go ahead and use my friend Google, too, if you want to figure out how you can get successful and by looking. How can I be a better communicator? How can I get to know myself better? What's the best way to achieve good mental health and physical health?

And this whole vulnerability thing, it doesn't mean you're weak. You use that word vulnerability. It sounds weak, doesn't it?

It does, it does. It's like, yeah, you're. You're not all man or whatever it is that. Yeah, there's something to you that's not. Yeah, no, no, that's not it at all.

Just keep in mind, it's almost. If you can figure that out, you will become bulletproof. If you do, please let us know, because I.

Exactly. There's a magic serum or something. You know, let's get on board with that.

So one of the most important things you can do to be successful is define what success means to you. Once you have etched this into stone with a pinch of flexibility, you can build your own foundation for success with the following in mind.

Learn yourself inside and out and build a strong trust in yourself outside of this. Find like minded people. You can both help define your success.

Yeah, if you're in the right community and you're surrounded by people that you are either aspiring to be or that you like the qualities or values that they have, then you will end up learning those just by being around them.

Finally, learn the importance of money on.

Your road to success and where it plays a part. It's a part. It's not the success, just the part.

And I would even go as far as saying it's not a vital part. Maybe necessary at one point or another, but certainly not. Not the focus of your success.

No, not at all.

And I just want to end this episode with a quote to get your wheels turning. Don't let schooling get in the way of your education.

I like that a lot actually.

Mark Twain oh, really? Interesting. So remember to take advantage of the moment before the moment takes advantage of you.

To learn more about E Walkabout, please Visit us at eWalkabout. Cat.