Transcripts
Well, welcome to the Potential Leader Lab, and I'm your host, Perry Maughmer. So today well, a couple things before we get into today. Today, we're gonna talk about how we can stop hiding behind comfort. So, one of my favorite topics, both personally and professionally. And before we get into it, just a couple things, a couple notes. If you like what you hear, please whatever, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 stars you wanna give it, whatever it rates for you, that's awesome. If there's anything we can do better, comments and, and ideas and insights are always welcome. And, also, then, most importantly, share with somebody if you do like it to get them to listen because if you build this community of people that you can talk to about the concepts, because the greatest way to retain these things, these concepts, and use them and leverage them and and get them to have legs instead of just good ideas, is to share them with somebody within, you know, 24 hours of hearing it because it's gonna aid in your retention of the concept in the application, which is ultimately the the most important thing is that we use it.
Perry Maughmer [:We don't just hear it. We don't just say we quote, unquote learn it. We actually use it, and it changes our behavior. And I also wanna I I I wanna speak to the group I call the relentless view because I realize this isn't for everyone. And I wanna build that that community of kind of unapologetically driven individuals who are known for 2 things for certain, that we are beautifully broken and that we do not have the answer, so we have just stopped looking for them. And instead, we embrace that existential truth that we have to act our way into being and forge our identities through that relentless action and confronting the what the existentialist would call the absurd world head on. And we live by the belief that it's not about finding clarity, but about asking the right questions that push us beyond our own self limiting thoughts. And that failure is not a setback, it's the fuel that drives our growth.
Perry Maughmer [:And this is not a place for those who seek comfort. It's for those who dare to create their essence through struggle, rebellion, and constant evolution of their own. And quite honestly, if you're not willing to bleed for your evolution, you probably won't last long here. So those are the folks that I'm speaking to, and I hope you go out and find others like it and build that community for yourself because evolution is not a solitary effort, and we'll talk about that actually a little bit more today. So let's get into it. We're gonna talk about stop hiding behind comfort.
Perry Maughmer [:So why are we here, and what do you really want out
Perry Maughmer [:of life? I think that oftentimes most of us are just passing time, and we avoid these questions. We avoid them because we don't wanna seek the answers because the answers can be challenging. We don't even wanna ask ourselves the real questions, but we can't escape them forever. Right? We we always have that, let's call it an existential itch that we're trying to scratch when we get which is one of the reasons, quite honestly, we don't get quiet. We don't we don't do well sitting with ourselves in the quiet, and we like to distract ourselves with technology. We like to distract ourselves with work. We like to distract ourselves with lots of activity, but it doesn't always take us where we wanna go. We don't always sit back and think about, am I becoming the person I wanna be, or am I just drifting, letting things happen to me as they might? Now what we're gonna talk about is kinda taking ownership of that, taking ownership of who we're becoming and understanding that no one's coming to save you.
Perry Maughmer [:No one's gonna do this for you, and we're gonna really talk about what shapes our future self and how to make choices that align with that that true essence of what we're trying to become. Because it's really is time to stop being passive in in our existence and start acting our way into being. That's where the real change begins. Now I will tell you, I just spent some time at a at a retreat with a group of leaders, and and one of the things we talked about is really having kind of absolute clarity about what we do want, because this isn't a if we wanna figure out what we want, then we have to take a step back and figure out who we need to become for that to happen. Because it isn't about the what, it's about the who. Right? Goals are awesome. You know? If if you like that kind of thing, I think it's important to have a vision of your future. And for those that are around you and and the people that are really important to you, it's important to have a shared vision of the future.
Perry Maughmer [:You wanna know that you and the people that you care most about are in alignment around what that shared vision is, and then you can ask yourself, who do I need to be to achieve that? Who do I need to be for those people that I care most about? Because as Maslow you know, as we know, we've talked about before, the top of that pyramid was not self, self realization. Self it was self transcendence. Right? It wasn't self actualization, which everybody likes to talk about. Again, Maslow came back later and said, no. No. No. It's not about you. It's about it's about getting outside of yourself.
Perry Maughmer [:It's about who do you need to become in service of others. That's what matters. That's what gives us purpose in the world. And oftentimes, you find that we, you know, we set personal goals for ourselves, and we struggle to achieve them. And I think at the root of that, it's because they're just for us. I think we're we're far more motivated and driven to achieve for other people when it's meaningful for others we care deeply about, when it will make other people's lives better as well as our own. As long as there's connection there, as long as there's overlap with what we're trying to accomplish, that it makes the world better for us, but it also makes the world better for those we care about.
Perry Maughmer [:I think that's when we hit that sweet spot of motivation. So let's number 1, let's talk about the lie you've been sold. And,
Perry Maughmer [:what what I call the lie you've been sold is culture. You know, listening to everybody else. Social conditioning, if you wanna call it that. You know, from the moment you're born, you're handed roles and expectations and my and identities and and what success looks like, how to behave, and who you're supposed to be. But we know that's not the way to do this. Right? None of this defines you. You define yourself through your actions. But I will tell you, all that noise that we get bombarded with every day, if we don't have clarity, if we don't have direction, if we don't have discernment, if we don't have discipline, it will decide for you.
Perry Maughmer [:So in nature hates a vacuum. So if there's any kind of vacuum around what you think you need to be and and where you're going and what matters to you, then we listen to the noise and the world tells us, and then we just start accepting that thinking that that's our own belief. And it isn't, nor should it be. We have to be able to drown that noise out and and understand that in a vacuum, that's what fills it. So we're either purposely filling it or it's being filled for us.
Perry Maughmer [:Now we have
Perry Maughmer [:to be very careful. There's a fine line in living for other people. Right? I think we have to live with other people, and we have to live for ourselves and for them as well, those that we care most about. But if we're abdicating that responsibility, then we're living in bad faith, as Jean Paul Sartre said. And that's we we kinda lie to ourselves to avoid that burden of freedom. If you think about that term, you know, just underlining it here on my sheet, the burden of freedom, because it is a burden. Because then you end up feeling trapped in a role you didn't choose. Here's the cool thing.
Perry Maughmer [:You're you can always choose differently. Always. Today, this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow, it's never too late to choose differently, and it isn't a one time thing. You have to keep choosing differently every day, depending on how it's going. And you there is sort of a wake up call right here. It's you're free, and that freedom can be absolutely terrifying. But you can either embrace it or you let somebody else write the story. So you have to figure out who are the people on that
Perry Maughmer [:list you're living for besides yourself, you and
Perry Maughmer [:who else? And and then what do they need from you to make the world a better place?
Perry Maughmer [:But you have to be central to that story. I mean, it this is we are absolutely free in an absurd world. And what I mean is, if you've ever stood on a a precipice, if
Perry Maughmer [:you stood on the edge of something and looked over and got that queasy feeling in your stomach and thought that was your fear of falling, that wasn't your fear of falling. That was your recognition that you're free to jump. That is the feeling you have. That is the nausea, which is what existentialists call it, the nausea of freedom. It's that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you know you're free to choose, and that is at some point the ultimate choice. Now second point of this is you're the storyteller. You have to continually rewrite your own narrative. You are and all you and so just remember this phrase.
Perry Maughmer [:You are the author of your own existence. You write the story. Now the the real cool thing about this is, and, I guess, the cool thing and and kind of the most challenging thing is, you're writing it as you're living it. You're kind of you know, you're building the plane as you're flying it. We can't take time out and go over here and do it and then come back and and go back and forth and try and come back and try. We're trying it all the time. You're living in that moment. But there are lots of people out there that are living in a narrative that created was created by somebody else.
Perry Maughmer [:So just stop and think about, are you living in a narrative? Are you living in your story, or did somebody else create the narrative for you? There's no there's nothing wrong here. I want you to understand there's no judgment or anything like that. I just want you to it's easy for us. It's easy for
Perry Maughmer [:us as humans to fall into this. To fall into these accepted norms of society and
Perry Maughmer [:live the the narrative that is given to us by our parents, our education, our friends, our our church, our community, the marketing that we watch. I mean, just think about that. Think about all the time, all of the things every day. I want you to I want you to do a test. Over the next 24 hours, just think of how many things you are exposed to in the terms of messaging from everywhere, work, home, leisure time, whatever, where somebody is putting something in front of you, showing you or implying that if you do x then you will get y. If you drive this car, if you wear these clothes, if you go if you if you buy a house in this neighborhood, on and on and on, that's a narrative being told to you. Now you're free to make choices, so it doesn't mean you shouldn't do any of those things. It just means you wanna make sure you're doing it because it fits your narrative, that it moves you closer to where you wanna go.
Perry Maughmer [:Because every decision you make all day long is moving you either closer to or further away from what you want most in the world. But the number one thing you have to do is figure out what you want most. You have to answer that question. Now as far as the story goes, just a a last thought on that. Hermann Hess, there's this quote that I love, by him. And he said, my story isn't pleasant. It's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories. It tastes the folly and bewilderment of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.
Perry Maughmer [:We're not talking about a curated life here. We're not talking about the life you see on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook or whatever whatever whatever other social platform you wanna talk about. We're talking about the life filled with folly and bewilderment and madness and dream like all those who no longer wish to lie to themselves. We're talking about a fully integrated life. There's no good or bad. There's no up or down. It's just life, and the purpose of life is to live it. And there can be no bad without good.
Perry Maughmer [:There's no there's no light without dark. There's no wet and dry. You look at all these things, yin and yang. You need all it's it's all of it. We need all of it to make it work. So when you change the story, you change the outcome. That's what Viktor Frankl was telling us in a man's, a man's search for meaning. It's not what happens to us.
Perry Maughmer [:It's how we respond to it. And your narrative is not set in stone, much like your personality. The these things, you can we can't change the past, but we can change what the past means. We can reinterpret the past to shape our future. I mean, think about that. You can reinterpret what has happened to you and reshape what's going to happen. You decide today if your story is one of growth or stagnation. That's up to you.
Perry Maughmer [:You but you have to choose it every day. You're you are always at that moment of choice. And I understand. It's exhausting. It's not a set it and forget it. Because so much is coming at us, we have to constantly reevaluate. We have to constantly reset to where we're going. We have to make sure that our compass is in the going in the right direction.
Perry Maughmer [:We have to have it all the all the time, we have to look at that compass and make sure we're pointed north.
Perry Maughmer [:But what is your north? What is your true north?
Perry Maughmer [:Because that's what we're talking about. It can't be true north as identified by somebody else. Life is defined by choices, not circumstances. And you can choose at any moment to change the story. You have, for those of you watching, a pen in your hand. You just have to ask yourself, are you gonna take the cap off and write? Are you gonna take choice back? Not control, because we're not in control, but we can make a choice. That's the only thing we're actually in control of,
Perry Maughmer [:are our choices. We get to choose. Now
Perry Maughmer [:here's the thing too. Reflection is the key because we have to know what drives us. And Thomas Dewey said, we don't learn from our experiences, we learn from reflecting on our experiences. So when I talk about, you know, reinterpreting the past, that means we have to have time built in to go back and look at what happened. Something as simple as just spending a couple minutes each day answering 3 questions. Basically, what what went well? What didn't go well? What would I do differently? You know, it's not complex. It's not hard to do, but we have to go back and and I will argue I I told a group this over the weekend. If it's not written down,
Perry Maughmer [:it doesn't count. Not
Perry Maughmer [:only does it not count to you, it doesn't count to anybody else. Nobody gives any credence to something you just talk about. If you've never taken the time to write down what your plan is, to write down what matters to you, that's what you can share with people. People don't put any credence behind just what you say. They wanna know you put thought into it. And to be quite honest with you, a lot of times what we think doesn't make any sense when we try to write it down. When we try to explain it to somebody else, we get caught in the echo chamber in our minds thinking, this makes perfect sense. I don't know if it's ever happened to you, but it happens to me quite frequently where I've been thinking, quote, unquote, about something for a long time.
Perry Maughmer [:I think I have clarity, and then I try to write it down succinctly to share it with somebody else, and I find it takes me 45 minutes to make sense of it. That's when you know you've actually thought about something, when you can say it simply, with fewer words. As Kevin from The Office said in one episode, why use many words when few will do? If you have to keep explaining because people don't get it, you don't understand it well enough, and this is something you better damn well understand because it matters. Not only does it matter to you, but it matters to everybody else that you care about. And reflect this is not optional. Like, reflection is not optional. And we we talk a lot, but reflection forces you to face that uncomfortable truth of existence. That's why it's necessary.
Perry Maughmer [:Reflection forces you to look at the answer to say, did I do it? And if I didn't do it, am I willing to do it? And you need to dig deep. You need to sit with the discomfort. Sit with the questions. Because we learn through reflection. And that's where we we uncover our real motivations and desires. Without it, we're just kinda we're skipping along the surface. We're just kinda drifting. Because, and I forget who said it, but if you don't have any destination, any port will do.
Perry Maughmer [:I mean, nobody sets out on a trip and just says, I'm just gonna get my car and drive. We're going somewhere. We're not gonna get on a ship, and and you get on the ship and you ask the captain, where are we going?
Perry Maughmer [:And they go, I don't know. We're just gonna go. We'll know when we get there. I'm I guess
Perry Maughmer [:you could do that sometimes for fun, but I don't think you wanna do that with your life. You are the captain. Like, you're the conductor. If you're getting on the train, you better damn well know where
Perry Maughmer [:the train's going. Because guess what? Other people are gonna get on
Perry Maughmer [:the train too. Other people are hitching hitching up to your wagon, so they wanna know where you're going. That's why they join, because you create a compelling vision for them. So revisit this often, and this isn't, again, this isn't something you just do every now and then. This is something you have to build into some type of cadence for you to know when do I need to revisit this. And at certain points in your life, it may be weekly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly. Certainly, you don't wanna wait until annually. Lot of stuff changes in 12 months.
Perry Maughmer [:I got let's see. It's, September 23rd. Anybody remember what they were doing last year on September 23rd? I sure as hell don't. I don't even remember what I was planning to do last September. Going into q 4, what are the big initiatives? Nobody knows.
Perry Maughmer [:Go back and check your notes. You probably laugh. When you if you actually wrote down if I can go back
Perry Maughmer [:and look in my journal because I have one, and I sometimes I do go back a year and I look and I
Perry Maughmer [:think to myself, wow. That was stupid.
Perry Maughmer [:If you're not embarrassed by who you were 12 months ago, you're probably not playing paying close enough attention.
Perry Maughmer [:But you have
Perry Maughmer [:to practice self inquiry. Don't just question other people. Question yourself, question your own motives, question your own values, question your own choices. It's so easy to do that for other people. It's so easy so easy to sit in judgment of other people. Well, think about it for yourself. Practice on you. Now I'm gonna share a brutal truth about evolving.
Perry Maughmer [:We we are Sartre said, we are our choices. And so what happens is when you look back at how things are going, it is a result of a myriad of choices that you've made. If you don't like the way things are going or like where you are currently, then you have to make different choices today to get a different result in the future. If you want things to be different, you must do different. Then you will think different. We we get into this trap where we're gonna we're gonna think about it. We're gonna research it. We're gonna we're gonna do all this other stuff that is no action tied to it.
Perry Maughmer [:And then once I have all of this stuff, then I'll do something. That's not the way it works. You act your way into being. You act your you don't think your way into a new way of acting. You act your way into a new way of thinking. Take action and reflect and let that change your thinking. Because what changes thinking is results. What changes thinking is feedback.
Perry Maughmer [:You can't get feedback from thought experiments. I'm a big I will tell you I'm a big fan of thought experiments for some things, but not when it comes to this. Because we can think our way around a cardboard box all day long, but we'll never get out of it. You have to figure out what you're going to do, then purposely take that action, and then figure out if it worked, it didn't work, and then then move on to the next thing, and then iterate. That's why experiments that's why it's explore, experiment, evolve. You might have to run a number of experiments before you pick out something that's working where they're gonna it's gonna lead into evolution for you. But it has that has to come first. The action has to come.
Perry Maughmer [:We have to have some result to talk about. If not, then we're just talking about hypotheticals, and that gets us nowhere. And I'm a I'm a huge fan of starting small. It's a process, not an event. That's why that's why explore, experiment, evolve is a process. It's circular in nature. Every small action you take is a declaration of who you are, and they add up over time. The the future is not built on transformation and grand gestures.
Perry Maughmer [:The future is built on the culmination of many, many small acts. Choose differently, and you'll become different. But, again, I I understand it's it's exhausting. That's why we go back to the relentless few. Right? I this isn't for everyone. And by the way, I didn't say it. It's okay. You don't have to choose this.
Perry Maughmer [:This this whole thing is red pill, blue pill from the from the matrix. You wanna stay in the matrix? That's fine, metaphorically. Right? If you don't want this responsibility, there is no shortage of ways that you can get this story authored for you. You can just literally take your hands off the wheel, sit back, and enjoy the ride. You just can't argue about when you where you end up. But just remember, this is a process, an ongoing process, and you have to choose over and over and over again to stay on course.
Perry Maughmer [:You set the course, you set the destination, you make the choices. There's no other way around it.
Perry Maughmer [:And you have to you do have to break what's holding you back. Those stories that you created in your head about you. You are the only one that breaks the cycle. I don't it doesn't matter where you are today, it doesn't matter how long it took you to get there, it none of this just the way I am bullshit. Right? At any time. I mean, we were we were talking, I was with my wife at a at an art gallery at an opening, and we were talking
Perry Maughmer [:to the artist and and his next door neighbor's mom at 92 had just started taking piano lessons. At 92, that is amazing. And the
Perry Maughmer [:the guy, the artist that was there, he didn't start painting till he was 81. He wasn't a painter by trade. He just decided to start, and he would he had he had paintings in an opening. 81 is when he decided to start painting. He created a new narrative for himself.
Perry Maughmer [:Because it there this is painful. I get it. Right? That is growth is pain. Evolution is pain. There is a
Perry Maughmer [:I have a I have a shirt I wear sometimes, and on the back, I always have the stuff on the back because then when I've got my back turned writing on the flip charts in some of my meetings, everybody can see it. And on the back, it says, comfort once you dead. Comfort once you dead. And comfort does kill us. It our meaning the the the meaning in our life is found in the discomfort. Where your fear is, there is your task. I think that's, Jung. I think Carl Jung said that.
Perry Maughmer [:But if biology tells us if you're not growing, you're dying. I mean, I'm again, I just referenced what I was doing this weekend. I was with a retreat, and it came up the conversation about, you know, learning and reading and all those things. And and I reframed when I told them. I'm like, look. You don't have to do this to be a leader. Do you wanna be do you wanna fully you wanna have wellness and health into your seventies, eighties, nineties? Because it is proven that if you keep learning new things like a language or if you pick up a musical instrument or you do anything like that and keep challenging yourself, it staves off dementia. So how do you wanna live the last years of your life? This is not just about being successful.
Perry Maughmer [:This is about being a a
Perry Maughmer [:fully functioning human as we age. So if
Perry Maughmer [:you need more motivation, it isn't about more profit. It isn't about being rich. It isn't about any of that stuff. It's about having the ability to be a fully engaged human being later in life. Because if if we don't take these steps, we won't be. If you're not growing, you're dying. Biology tells us that. The minute we stop growing, we start dying.
Perry Maughmer [:And in it I don't know how
Perry Maughmer [:else to say it. Get over it. It hurts. I I don't Nietzsche and I love Nietzsche. Right? To live is to suffer. To survive is to find meaning in the suffering. To live is to suffer. To survive is to find meaning in the suffering.
Perry Maughmer [:Our entire life is about suffering. I don't view that as morose. I don't view that as a negative. We suffer for our craft. If it was easy, everybody would do it. No. I you tell me. Have you ever is anything easy ever been meaningful? Anything that came to you easy ever been meaningful? I challenge you
Perry Maughmer [:to say yes to that. I was watching, and I, maybe I'll be able to put
Perry Maughmer [:it in the show notes. I can't remember her name, but she's the head coach of the Duke basketball team, and there's this fantastic video of her. It's like 2 minutes and 50 seconds. She's talking to her team, and, essentially, the message is successful people do hard better. It never gets easier. Oh, well, if we just get through this, then it'll be easier. Oh, if I just get through this 6 months, it'll be easier. Oh, if it no.
Perry Maughmer [:No. That's not don't wish for that. Because by the way, those are the people that died quickest according to, admiral Stockdale in the Hanoi Hilton or people that thought like that. Oh, we'll be out by Christmas. Oh, we'll be out by New Year's. Oh, well, they'll rescue us by spring. No. Do hard better.
Perry Maughmer [:It's always gonna be hard because that's what's meaningful. And and you're gonna be afraid, and you should be afraid, and fear is fine. There's nothing wrong
Perry Maughmer [:with fear. We shouldn't avoid fear. Fear
Perry Maughmer [:isn't your enemy. It's a signal that you're on the edge of something meaningful. Fear you shouldn't avoid fear. You should find it, because it's an indicator. When you are afraid, when you have anxiety, you're on the edge of something meaningful. So lean into it, not away from it. People that do these things, it's not that they don't experience fear, it's that they act in spite of fear. They go ahead and take that step.
Perry Maughmer [:The the only way the only way out is through. I forget who it was, but it says, if you're going through hell, don't stop going. Right? But the only the only way out is through or over or around or under. It doesn't matter. But if but if whatever is meaningful to you, you've identified clearly for yourself, nothing stops you. If you have something you want to achieve, if you have I've I asked a group of people the other day. I said, if you have kids and you were standing in the driveway and your child ran out into the street and a car was coming, would you stop and think about what you were gonna do next?
Perry Maughmer [:No. You wouldn't. You would act. Find something that meaningful. Find something that heartfelt that matters to you, and then you erase all of these challenges. Because now you don't have
Perry Maughmer [:to think about it. You just get up in the morning and do. But you have to design your future self and stop waiting for it
Perry Maughmer [:to happen. You're not a victim of circumstance. You're
Perry Maughmer [:not you can't be passive in life.
Perry Maughmer [:There's no room for it. Let me rephrase. I feel getting a little judgy, so let me back up. I don't mean this
Perry Maughmer [:in a way that I'm casting aspersions or judging. I don't mean that at all. This is the choice part of it. I don't have any issue if people choose not to do this. I absolutely don't. The only issue I have is when they're not willing to make it intentional and own their decision. That's what I have an issue with because to me, that's bad faith.
Perry Maughmer [:That's bad faith. If you choose to do this, if
Perry Maughmer [:you choose to take the red pill or the blue pill, that's the choice. As long as you're willing to, you know, cipher in the movie, the matrix said, I wanna go back. I don't care anymore. I think it's the blue pill. I don't remember. I think he took the blue pill, and he went back in the matrix. That's what he wanted. That I have no issue with that.
Perry Maughmer [:What I have is people who wanna put that responsibility off of themselves. You just have to own it. There is no bad decision here. There's just indecision is a bad decision or or releasing the power of your decision to society. That's abhorrent.
Perry Maughmer [:But, you know, Nietzsche also believed in the eternal recurrence. You you live, though you would have
Perry Maughmer [:to live that moment for eternity. That that think about your choices. So the eternal recurrence that you should live as though you would have to relive each moment eternally. So if you were to think about choices you make and talk about talk about a motivator to make the choices correctly for yourself, not correctly as in universal, not in the categorical imperative that Immanuel Kant said, but just for yourself, that you're gonna choose in each moment to live in a way that you'd like to relive that moment over and over and over again.
Perry Maughmer [:So, again,
Perry Maughmer [:visualize your future, whatever that true north is, and then figure out for yourself, who do I need to become to be that? Just to realize that for those for for myself and those that I care deeply about. But every choice you make reflects who you wanna become. That's so when you look back at your day, when you ask yourself, what went well, what didn't go well, what could I do differently, and you look back at decisions you made,
Perry Maughmer [:you'd ask yourself, did all of those decisions that had meaning attached to them reflect who in my mind I wanna become? Is it moving me toward is it is it assisting me in my evolution
Perry Maughmer [:to become that person, or is it moving me away from it? There's, again, no judgment here, and you're not gonna do it a 100% of the time, but you do wanna do it more than 50% of the time.
Perry Maughmer [:But just start small and start with intention. Start small, start with intention. It's it's not complex. Right? It's it is
Perry Maughmer [:simple, but far from easy. And consistency, not motivation, will get you there. So last point.
Perry Maughmer [:This is a big one. You have to curate your environment. Right? It it's
Perry Maughmer [:important. Sartre famously said, hell is other people. He wrote a play called no exit. It's an awesome play. I read it in college. I've read it over and over again. But the truth is the people that you surround yourself with influence who you're gonna become, and and your environment pushes you towards or away from mediocrity. You just have to decide which one of those.
Perry Maughmer [:Now there's a whole thing, and I might do another discussion later on on, Martin Heidegger because he had this whole piece of being with others. It was a German, but it was being with others that we are who we are in context with of people around us. So that's how we actually define ourselves because we can't define ourselves in a vacuum. We can only define ourselves in relation to other people, but that's a that's a topic for another day. But the reality is you have to choose. You have to you have to curate your environment, and curating is essentially and I wanna be clear on something. Curating is more about what you decide to leave out than what you decide to include. So you start with a bunch of stuff, and great curators get rid of most of it so that what let what's left speaks.
Perry Maughmer [:So you wanna build that, which I love this term, you wanna build this ecosystem that pushes you. That hold you wanna get rid of stuff that's holding you back. Surround surround yourself with people that challenge you positively. Not those who will accept your excuses and and comfort you when you say, you know, I didn't do x, I didn't do y, and they'll be like, oh, that's okay. Maybe next time. No. That's not what you want. Again, your environment is a reflection of the person you wanna become.
Perry Maughmer [:So when you look at the people around you, the the actual physical environment, the things that you do, the way you set up your day, your week, your month, is this a reflection of
Perry Maughmer [:the person you wanna become? That's the question. When you're reflecting, that's what you should ask yourself. Then you're actually challenged with the the hard changes because then you have to choose. You are essentially choosing how you will exist every day. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
Perry Maughmer [:You have to look around and say, is everything that I've created, my environment, the people I'm around, the things that I do, are all of those things a reflection of who I want to become? And if they're not, you can choose differently. And again, let's go back. Start small, be intentional. Not boiling the ocean, not changing everything in a day, We're we're reacting in a sustainable and scalable manner.
Perry Maughmer [:It is a marathon, not a sprint. You choose so we'll we'll kind of
Perry Maughmer [:bring this we'll land this we'll land this plane because it's starting to shake a little bit. Right? So we've covered a
Perry Maughmer [:lot of ground, but you are who you choose to be moment by moment. You're not a victim. You're not defined by your past, but you will
Perry Maughmer [:have to take responsibility for your existence. No one else will.
Perry Maughmer [:That's the ultimate choice. There is life will mean what we imbue it with. We have the opportunity to make those decisions. So what are you gonna do with that freedom? My recommendation, stop waiting. 2 things. Stop waiting. Stop blaming. Don't do either one of those things.
Perry Maughmer [:Right? This there's this great,
Perry Maughmer [:I guess it's a story. You could say it's a joke or whatever, but this guy, it was a there was and I'm gonna get off topic, I realized, but it's just funny. It kind of fits in here. So this, this person was, there was a there was a flood, and they the it was flooding in their house, so they climbed up on the roof. And, and they were they were praying, to to God to rescue them. So, pretty soon a boat comes up. It's like, hey. You know, you you need rescue? Nope.
Perry Maughmer [:Nope. God's gonna take care of it. Then a then a helicopter comes, same thing. No. No. God's gonna take care of it. And then eventually, the person, drowns and ends up at, ends up at the pearly gates and and the person's like, god, I thought you know I I prayed you would rescue me. He goes, I sent you a boat.
Perry Maughmer [:I sent you a plane. I sent you a helicopter. So sometimes we have to be clear that the opportunities are there, and it's not about somebody else doing something. It's about us. It's about taking that action. Stop waiting, stop blaming, and start acting. Start doing.
Perry Maughmer [:The rest of the stuff will come. You'll figure it out. So
Perry Maughmer [:what will you choose today?
Perry Maughmer [:One action, one step, then
Perry Maughmer [:it all starts to clarify. Your whoever you wanna be in that future is waiting, but you have to show up. Like, you have to show up and do the work. And, yes, it's hard, and, yes, it's tiring, and, yes, it's relentless.
Perry Maughmer [:But that's the challenge, I guess. No wrong answer. No right answer. Just one that you're willing to own.
Perry Maughmer [:So I hope you enjoyed it. I did. I thought it was kinda fun. And to be honest with you, I told somebody this in a meeting I was in the other day. I really feel like sometimes I just invite people into my own therapy session. Like, the I got news for you. I I write this shit and investigate stuff that means something to me that I'm using today. Like, that's why I get I get excited about this stuff because I'm actually it's helping me.
Perry Maughmer [:I'm just hoping it helps at least one other person when I'm sitting in here yapping about it. So, I appreciate your time, energy, and attention. I appreciate you tuning in. Again, share it with somebody. Talk to somebody about the principles that you've heard. Make them your own. Make them something that matters to you, and just please, please, please figure out who you need to be for those people you care most about in your life and make sure you identify where you're headed so
Perry Maughmer [:that you eventually get there. Thanks a lot, and we'll talk to you soon.
