Personal Responsibility

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Welcome to Think It Be It the podcast. I'm Kelly Hatfield. And

I'm John Michell. So Kelly, here's the topic for us today. I think you're gonna like this. It's about personal responsibility, and controlling your attention. I bet you're a fan of both those things, right?

Yes, I am. I'm excited to hear I know you've got a clip for us. I'm excited to dig in.

Right? Why I gave this to the 18 head coaches at the University of Texas, because it's so valuable to teach young people the concept of personal responsibility. And so without further ado, let me play it and then then we'll unpack it a little. So here we go.

This morning, I'm gonna take another one of your questions and in the attempt to share something that can help us all become just a little bit better every day. So this question comes in from Edie who writes, How do you keep that burning desire? How do you do revolutionary work when the immediate environment around us is one of indifference which promotes nothing but small and mediocre life and expects you to do the same? Okay, and everybody else, I'm gonna start where we ended yesterday with the principle mindset, that personal philosophy of having complete 100% self responsibility. No one can make you feel a certain way without your approval. Only you decide how you feel. Your action is your responsibility. And your reaction is also your responsibility. And if you are waiting for the world, and the environment around you to fire you up, you're in big trouble, big time. Likewise, their indifference are small and mediocre expectations have nothing to do with you and yours, zero. Once you fully grasp this understanding, you will be set free. Write this down, Edie and everybody else you can be in this world, but not of this world. Have you ever fished out in the ocean and caught something and then brought it home and barbecued it up? Now in order for it to taste good? You have to sprinkle what on it? Yeah, salt. But how could something that spent its entire life in salt water, not be salty, because even though he was in saltwater constantly and always surrounded by nothing, but saltwater, it did not absorb it, it was in it, but did not become of it. You see, that is the way you want to live your life like a fish gliding through saltwater, using observing and enjoying the world around you but not absorbing it. Nothing and no one has influence over you that you do not allow. Hear me now as this is one of the most important Self Mastery principles that you could ever grasp and live by. Take victimhood, completely out of the equation forever. And always everything that is in your life is there because you chose it to be there. Let me say it again, to be sure that you've got it. If you live in a first world where you have human and economic freedoms, then everything that is in your life is there because you chose it to be there everything. If you don't like your marriage, it is because it was you who chose your wife or husband. If you don't like the way they treat you it is because you are continuing to choose to tolerate it. If you don't like the way a friend or colleague or family member is treating you it is because you are choosing for them to be in your life at all, or the environments that you are choosing to show up in. I personally will not allow anyone to treat me disrespectfully. No one not a family member, not a friend, not a VIP client. No one ever. That doesn't mean that I go around shutting everyone down. Quite the contrary. In fact, I just walk away. I will not give someone the gift of my attention. My attention is my very lifeforce. I am very protective of what gets my attention And since I have complete 100% control over my attention, I have complete 100% control over my life with those who make it into my inner circle, I am immensely trusting, extremely loyal. And I would even say loving, if you can say that about yourself. But I have very definite concrete and firm boundaries. And if crossed, you will know about it immediately. And with radical candor, and if crossed too many times, you will know it by my absence. Understand that you are not a victim to anything. If you take victimization out of human relationships, and you take full responsibility, your life is better, your ethics are stronger, and you become happier. Now, for those who just love to argue from extremes. But what about those who were sexually abused, contracted a rare disease got hit by a bus caught in the tsunami attacked by a madman? Did they choose that? No, don't be ridiculous. You cannot control what always happens to you. But and hear me now. You can control how you respond to it. If you suffer an unexpected and let's say even an instigated tragedy. Now what? That's all you have to say, now what what's happened has happened? It sucks. It's horrible. It's unfair, yes, all those things. But now what, you can't go back and change it, this is your new reality. Now what you get to choose, it's still your choice, stay a victim, or retake the reins and take back control by determining how you are going to choose to respond. What you're going to do now, because once again, it's your choice, when you remove the shackles of being a victim, to your friends, your family, your neighbor, your peers, to the marketplace, to your competitors to the government or to the environment of indifference, promoting an expectation of small and mediocre life, when you choose that you are no longer a victim to any of that you are finally liberated. You are the warden of your own prison cell. And you have the keys to unlock yourself free. It's all a choice.

Pretty good, right? Yes. Very good.

So why don't you unpack that? What the What the catches your attention with that?

I think, you know, obviously, us knowing is each other as well as we do, I believe in radical personal accountability. And what really, I think resonates with me, well, all of this does, but everything in your life is because you chose it to be there, like we are creating our reality. You know, and so, I love that, uh, you know, and we've talked about this before, to where it being self aware. And like, that's hard to hear, like, so if you are he use the example of in a marriage that isn't fulfilling? Or, you know, and for you. So for you to take radical responsibility for that personal responsibility and say, you know, my marriage looks the way it does, because I've created that. Right. You know, as hard as that is to maybe acknowledge and accept initially, it also is freeing, because if you created that, then it means that you can create the opposite of that.

Well, and you know, he talks about, what are you tolerating? Yeah, you know, which is, is sort of, it's a lesser form of what you're creating, but the what you're tolerating is so important, and a subtle thing,

Don't you say? Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. And he talked about those boundaries, you know, getting back to, you know, again, exactly what you said, with tolerating and setting those boundaries and being very clear about those boundaries. And, you know, so I think that, again, goes directly to that statement about, you know, you get what you tolerate, you know, the reality you create is what you tolerate.

Yeah. Yeah. It's powerful. And this is, I mean, that's this is the essence of personal responsibility is, first of all, acknowledging that you create, you have created the life he has all the all the good things, and all the bad things. And, you know, I think back when when I turned 50, and I'm doing live like everybody else was doing, you know, I'd get up and I just do my best, I didn't have a guiding light. I just be you know, I'm going in life. I was telling the coaches this just a few minutes ago, that you I interview, each of the 18 head coaches, a new coach each month and I always ask him, what's your morning routine? And this is pertinent because in the program I give him I give him Wakeley a program a couple of weeks ago, we heard from Brendon Bouchard. But I know you're a big fan of and been trained by, and he talks about how your morning routine determines your life. And then, you know, probably two weeks before that, we heard the coach of UConn who won the men's national championship last year, talk about his morning routine, determined his success. And all around this idea that you create the life you want. Well, you know, what could be a better morning routine, than to feed the succinct articulation of your life to yourself each day, because now you have something that is pulling you forward every day, your overriding being wired for survival, which causes you to be fear based and reactive. And, and now you have something that is pulling you forward. And it's so easy now, to create the life you want. Because you're affirming all the things you want to be as a person, you're affirming how you want to be with your health, how you want to be with your romantic relationship. And, and same with your business, your defining, you know, what are the things that move the needle so that you only focus on those, and what's my strategy for success. And so, you know, I see that the methodology for creating the life you want, is, is having a morning routine, like we did that, you know, makes it clear what you want, and how you're going to get it.

I love John, you know what you're mentioning right now, and I want to help, I'll share a story really quick that drives this point home. And but I'll first start by sharing one of the lines that's in my visualization in my sacred Viet methodology, which is, when I am triggered, and I begin to feel overwhelmed, I immediately think about two things, which are I have control over my thoughts. And I have control over my actions, which is right aligned with what Darren just mentioned, your action and your reaction is your responsibility. So it puts you right into that I did train myself. So for example, it when we, you know, in March of 2020, with the pandemic, and I know, I've shared this story before, it would have been really, really in hate, I'll be honest, it took a minute for this to kick in, because that was like a two, two by four upside, the head is a busy year, whose businesses are about hiring, and everybody is laying off and you know, their workers are staying home and all of that, you know, that statement he made is take victimhood out of the equation, right, we just said it was easy in that place of uncertainty, because we're wired for fear for me to immediately go, I can't believe this is happening, like what's going to happen to my, you know, employees, we've worked so hard to get the businesses to this level, and here, you know, this has come out of nowhere, and it was this kind of like thought spiral that was happening. And then the the subconscious programming kicks in and says, What are the two things you can control? You can control your thoughts, and you can control your actions. So how can you choose to think about this a little bit differently? And, you know, and then what actions can you take that are aligned with that? You know, and you had to have a conversation with me to, to remind me of that, because I was in that like, right in the middle of it of that fear based kind of thinking, you know, because we had, so you know, what, all business owners, and everybody was impacted by that to some degree, but I'm thinking about my employees, I'm thinking about, Oh, my gosh, you know, people getting sick, those kinds of things, too. But I think that's the power of this, of that getting up because it would have been easy. And a lot of business owners did this, they curled up into a little ball, being there, like, this is happening to me, I can't, you know, and didn't make it through as a result of it. You know, and I know there's different business owners that have different businesses that were impacted more than others and all of that, but point being, you, your thoughts, your actions, your reactions are your responsibility and taking victimhood out of the equation. And getting into that kind of solution mode where I was taking action and thinking about it a little bit more differently. You know, right after the pandemic kicked in, I'm like, Okay, well, how can we look at this, like, what can we be doing in our business right now, to prepare for when this is done like now we have the time to do that. What have we been putting off? What processes have we like it got you into that mode then of like, alright, well, if we can't do this right now, what can we do that helps the business? And so I wanted to share that story is just an example of what he's talking about. Because you could see it was easy to spiral, you know, In terms of that either victimhood and kind of mentality or just having the wrong thoughts about it, and not taking any action. So Right.

You know, I think the biggest problem in this country today is victimhood. I think we're wired for victimhood, in that. We're fear based and reactive. And so if you don't have a morning routine that that override sat in a programming, you're wired to be a victim. And I know, some of the people listening would go, Oh, that's all right. I'm not why I'm, I'm not a victim. Well, be sure about that. You know, I think it's subtle. Sometimes, you know, it's not Yes, you, you, oh, you overly are not thinking like a victim. But sort of under the surface, you might be thinking like a victim, and not to get on my almost weekly Trump rant rant. But, you know, he's, he's, he got elected by telling people, they were a victim. And, you know, he's the master victim, you know, the election was stolen, come on, Donnie, you know, and so, you know, I think that there's a big section of the American public that embraces being victims, and then, you know, it's interesting, then you look at the far left, and you have, you know, a lot of, you know, social programs that promote people being a victim and not, not being able to stand on their own and, and, you know, the political agenda to keep that going. So I think, this whole idea of victimhood is a big problem. And, and I think it's healthy to, for each of us to look at our lives and go, is there any victimhood in my life, and if there is just routed out, right,

One of the ways to, and join, you might have some other ideas, but the first thing that comes to mind, too, is like, if you ever are in a conversation, and you are complaining about somebody else as the like, well, if you know, this, this employee is just Bob at blah, you know, or if, you know, if our we hadn't, if so and so hadn't made that hadn't made that mistake, we wouldn't be in this situation, if there's like some subtle or overt blaming, that immediately is your that would be a sign that you're in this place of victimhood, you know, when you're not accepting responsibility for a situation and two things can be true at the same time. Yeah. Right. And that you could have really screwed up. But guess what you hired them? Yeah, you know what I mean? So there's two things can be true at the same time, you have to accept your responsibility for where things are at. But if you I think that would be a subtle way that victimhood shows up in people's lives, when you're pointing the finger at somebody else, that typically is a sign that there's some victimhood going on there.

Yeah. You know, the other thing he talks about is that you control your attention. You know, I find that such an interesting idea. Because, you know, a few weeks ago, we did another Darren Hardy clip, and he talks about how, let me think, if I can remember well enough that your the life you create, is based on the input that you're bringing into your head, you know, the the input is driving, your expectations, and your expectations, expectations are driven by your thoughts. And your thoughts are determined by the input that you're bringing into your head. Well, another way of saying that is that whatever you're directing your attention to, is determining the input that's coming in. So if you're, if you're looking at it intentionally looking at TIC tock for two hours a day, and you're bringing nonsense in your head, while you're making that choice, whereas if you direct your attention to, to growing and reading and learning when that type of thing that brings in a whole different set of input in your head, right. Oh,

Absolutely. And again, I know I talk about this all the time. We talk about it all the time. Like it's energy, right? Yeah. If you're bringing in negative things into your life, or things that make you feel bad, then guess what, you continue to get more of that energy picks up this momentum. But if you're focused on bringing those in that input into your life and support your goals, and that is positive, and, you know, then guess what, you're gonna get more of that. You know, being really careful about your attention is so important. Like I have gotten rid of any of the social media apps on my phone. If I need to go do research or whatever I do. it on my desktop so that I am not tempted to go and do the other than YouTube, I have YouTube on my phone still, but the rest of the stuff is off. Only just because it's a distraction, it doesn't really support what I want to do and helping me get to my goals. So you got to do some things like that to again, that is taking personal responsibility. And I knew I needed to get those off my phones so that I wasn't distracted by them.

Right? You know, I was talking about you to the tennis coach here at the University of Texas. This morning. He I interviewed him for my, my program, and I was talking to him, we're talking about sort of the input that we're bringing into our heads and head is telling you how how, you know, basically, every quarter, you figure out what you want to learn. And you bring that that input. You know, that's such a perfect example of being intentional about your attention. You know, you're defining what you want to improve on, you have a system for doing it. And I'm telling you, because I I study this with people, 99% of people have no system for personal growth at all, none. And I'm a big believer that if you don't have a system, it ends up that personal growth is more of an intention than a reality. But yeah, I mean, it's it's all about the input that you bring in your head. So Well, I think we have probably covered this to the ultimate Don't you think?

That's a really great way of saying what I what first came into my head when you start just saying, Well, I think we and I was thinking beat this topics.

Well, you know, this is yes. The nice way to say we beat this topic. Oh, no, no,

I think your way of saying it was much more appropriate.

But you know, there's there's value in being blunt. I see. So I think your way is equally as good. Well, until next time, we'll see you.

Thanks for listening today. If you've had your own aha moment from today's episode, send me or John an email. We'd love to share your epiphany with our audience. So email us at kelly@thinkitbeit.com or John@thinkitbeit.com. In the meantime, live the exceptional life