Weekly Wisdom #369 - Interviewed by my Daughter! (AWESOME)

Hey, everybody. I'm doing a weekly wisdom here with my daughter, but I figure I'd film it live for you on Facebook. We're just doing this for the first time, so I hope you're watching. But here's the deal. I'm here with my lovely daughter Briana. Can you say hi?

Hi.

So she had an assignment in school to interview anybody she wanted on three or four or five questions. And she chose me. I'm the luckiest guy alive. So I figured why not put her on the spot and record it for the DG family members and for everybody on Facebook. You okay with this? Mm. Alright, good. Why don't you. Shoot. Start with the first question.

How do you deal with someone being mean to you?

How do you deal with someone being mean to you? And that's something that everybody watching doesn't matter. If you're an adult, it never changes, does it? And they know it never changes. But being in school, have you ever had someone mean to you? Doesn't feel good, right? One of the things I would say when someone's mean to you. And again, it never changes, unfortunately, and we hope it will. But the first thing to remember when someone's mean is I would say think about right away, is it true about what they're saying. If someone says you're mean or you have silly hair or I don't like your jacket, or if someone feels they're, you know, whatever people say, in most cases, it's not the truth, especially because they don't know your heart. So the first thing I would think of is, is it true or not? Every time it's not. And then the second thing I would think of, and you know, I talk to you and Brody about this all the time, is if someone's being a bully or mean deep down, you have to have a little bit of empathy for them because that means somebody's probably being a bully or mean to them. You know, you and I, we won't mention any names, but we know some kids that are mean or say some not so great stuff to people, but we know when they go home they get that same treatment. So I would say, how do you deal with someone being mean? No, it's always going to be. And you can't change everybody else. So it's our heart. We can get sad if we allow it. We can say, is it true? Most likely it's not. And the third thing we could say is, oh, I can't believe you're being man. I mean, on your heart you could say, I Feel bad for you because you must be dealing with something at home. Maybe you say a little prayer or do what you want, and the best thing is to walk away. Is that good advice? Is that? All right. All right, what's the next question?

How do you get through a hard day?

Oh, how do you get through a hard day? Those never end either. Hard days stick around forever. So some days, you know, most days you want to go to school. Today you happen not to be at school. Oh, I hope your teachers aren't watching live. We might be in trouble. I was just away for a week. She gets two days a year. She can skip school. And today she did it. Decided to come to work with dad. I'll take it. We can catch up on homework over the weekend. But how do you get through a tough day? You know, as you grow up, it's going to be easier for people to say. And it's true. Oh, just be grateful for what you have. Just be happy you're not in another situation or things aren't worse for you. And the truth is, that works. But when you're having a bad day, it's hard to focus on it. So all I know is when you're having a bad day, it's because of what's going on in here. You're thinking about the things that could go wrong. You're thinking about the worst case scenario. And I. When I'm having a bad day, the truth is, you and your little brother Brody are the thing that gets me out of it. I just think for. I stop and I realize that my thinking has me in this rhythm of being in a bad mood or something. Something's going wrong, and I just stop. And I say, how grateful am I to have two amazing children? How grateful am I of the things, the people I've touched, the books I've written and where I've come from? And I do flood myself with being grateful. I just think of all the great things going on in my life, and I don't stop. I just keep going. I keep going. I keep going, and I don't stop until I feel better. And it stops. That thinking. Does that make sense? So be the manager of your thoughts and then flood yourself with gratitude. And a lot of times it pops you right out of a bad mood. And then the other thing, too is when you're having a tough time in your life, because we all go through tough times. Find somebody having it tougher and help them. Okay, I'm ready for the next one.

What does failure mean to you?

Ooh. What do I always tell you and your brother about failure?

That it's good.

It's good. When I ask you, is failure good or bad? What? Is it good? Yeah. Why is failure good if I turn it back on you?

Because it helps you learn what not to do.

Oh, that's a good one. That's right. You know, most success, most breakthroughs come on the other side of failure. You see, you don't know cold unless you knew hot, right? You don't know happy unless you know sad. So to have success, you have to have failure in your life. And what I'd say to anybody watching, and I don't mean to talk like I'm talking to a third grader out here, but I am talking to my third grader here with some great questions, by the way, failure is part of it. You know, Winston Churchill's best quote that I love is the definition of insanity is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. Have you read about Winston Churchill yet? You will soon. Really good, dude. But failure is part of it. And I know it doesn't feel good when you're going through failure. When you fail on something for someone to say, hey, failing, and it feels great, that's never going to happen. It's not going to feel great when you're failing. But what you can do is say, oh, I'm failing for a reason. What knowledge can I take from this? Throw out the stuff that didn't work and then do it better. I mean, I watch you play softball, for example. When we first started swinging, you swung hard, but you really didn't hit the ball. And you could say, I mean, that's a simple analogy, but that's you kind of failing because you kept missing. But then we practiced a little bit, and you learned from the wrong swing how to get the right swing. And I've never seen a girl your age hit the ball like you do now. You hit it like a monster. I'm afraid to pitch to you, but you had to fail a little bit until you got there. That's a really simple analogy. But in life, sometimes failures get a lot bigger, right? We have some massive failures, and if you're going through one right now, I'm sorry, but what can you know that when you're on the other side of that, if you can look back and reflect that failure, is that stepping stone to that next level of life? And failures can do two things. Somebody can fail at something and then immediately stop and say, that just doesn't work. I'm never Going to do it again. And unfortunately, those people get stuck on a plateau in life where if you can take your failure and use it as a lesson, it can become the sail, the wind behind your sail rather than an anchor. Does that make sense? Alright, let's go to the next question.

What was the hardest decision you've ever made?

Oh, the hardest decision I've ever made. Wow. In business or in life or just in general?

It doesn't really matter.

Okay. The hardest decision is I was gonna give you up for adoption and then I decided not to. No, that's not true. Not even a little bit true. I promise, the hardest decision I ever made. I didn't look at these questions first, so I'm a little stumped here. There's lots of them, but I would say is following my heart and not following what other people tell me you should do. You know, all the times, Bri, I'm always telling you and your brother, I'm trying to give you guidance and I give you lessons. And I know so many times I give a lesson with too much, with a lot of stuff. But what I'm really trying to do is teach you how to think for yourself. I'm not teaching you what to think. I want to teach you how to think. I always tell you, question your teachers. I hope they're not watching again. Question your teachers, question adults, question your parents. Because I want you to be able to follow your heart, not what your mind says. Because sometimes we get in our mind, I should go to school, I should get this job, I should do this career. Because my parents would be happy or my peers would be happy. But inside your heart's not happy. So I would say the hardest thing I've ever done is going off and doing my own business when people told me I was crazy or I'd fail or it'll go wrong. And when I decided to write a book, people were like, a book. You were in special reading. You can't write books. And I remember thinking, maybe they're right, I won't do it. But when I went against that, that was probably the hardest thing is always going against what most people think is right. So the advice I'd give for you on that question is the hardest choices you're going to have to make in your life is maybe you think you want to make your mother or your father happy and you'll make a decision or your teacher or a friend. And I would say, make the hard decision and follow your heart because you know what's right. They were really good questions, Brianna. Thank you. And thank you guys for watching. I really appreciate that this was. And just so you know, we're doing this live on Facebook, so there's no cuts. You just rocked it. Maybe you can interview me for my new shows coming up. You think you could do that? Maybe. Alright, we'll see if I can afford you. Oh, and one last thing. If you don't have my free books, my personal development book, or my latest real estate book, go to deansfreebook.com, that's deansfreebook.com and grab it. There's no catch. You just get it immediately. And these aren't just some ebooks that I did overnight. They're New York Times best selling books. So go grab them right now before they're gone. Thanks again, Bridge. You have fun. Thank you. Bye guys.