043 Are Your Priorities Bass Ackwards? Cart Before The Horse

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This is Dr. Torrey. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better and we influence for good.

Okay? I'm at high risk for going on a rant right now, so I'll do my best not to do that. But a friend of mine reached out to me and he said, hey, Ed, I'm considering purchasing this Influence program, this one on Influence Leadership Communication. And I was wondering what you thought of it. He went on to tell me that he's up for a promotion, potentially. And. And so he wanted to make sure he thought about what kind of leadership skills he would need to have. So a little while later, he texted me saying, you know what? I'm going to wait. I'm not going to get that program unless I receive that promotion. So I replied back basically with all sincerity, with all love and concern, and with something that I would tell my own children, something I would tell my own self with my own internal thoughts, and that is that you have it in the wrong order. I'll get the program to learn leadership skills if I get the promotion. It should be the other way around. Get the leadership program so that you can develop the skills that make you worthy of getting a promotion. You see, we have this kind of language often. It's. It's actually way too common. I hear people say things like, oh, I'll be generous once I'm rich. No, you don't get generous by having money and then giving away. You get generous by giving. And what is more generous, but to give early when you have less? So I'll be generous when I'm rich. I'll be settled and chill when I get married. No, get settled. Get mature. Get responsible now so that you're marriage worthy, so that you're a responsible spouse. I'll be humble when I'm a leader. I'll be respected when I'm a leader. No, humility comes before you have that. Respect comes before that. It doesn't come because of that. And so what we often do is we tend to talk about the consequences, desire and wish for those consequences before we actually insert the cause or insert the effort or. Or take the action we need to take. And there's. There's an analogy or a saying that I think was originally attributed to Henry David Thoreau, but that may be apocryphal, but it's essentially to put wood in before you get the heat. You have to put wood in before you get heat. Speaking of a campfire or a wood burning stove, you will not get heat until you put the wood in. And too often we're trying to get the heat because, well, I deserve it, or I think I. I should have it. Once I have it, then I'll put in the effort. You may have heard of another saying, putting the cart before the horse. That saying is as old as the first century. Some. Something similar was attributed to Cicero, but later in around the 1500s, it became a very common saying in the English language. Putting the cart before the horse is a metaphor for. For prioritizing incorrectly, almost grossly incorrectly. Like putting step one after step two, putting step one after step seven, or. Or a metaphor for mixing up cause and effect. Putting the cart before the horse. The horse pulls the cart. You don't put the cart in front of the horse for the horse to pull it. You put it. Put the horse in front of the cart. Right? That's essentially what we're doing when we use words like this. We're essentially doing things out of order. We're focusing on the less important or secondary tasks rather than the primary. The first. The thing that needs to happen first. And so where in your life might you be putting things in the wrong order? Where might you need to shift and think about it and. And put them in the right order. Think about where. Where there's something that could improve or something that's really good already and you want to make it great. Think about some. Some aspect of your life. You know, do you think you're gonna have a blissful marriage without putting the work in? Do you think you're gonna have financial stability or security without putting the work in? You think, no, I'll put the work in after I'm financially stable. I'll put the work into my marriage after, you know, that we get over this thing or she stops treating me that way? No, you have to put the work in. You have to do it. So if there's any trait that you want, any trait that you want, any skill that you want, the first step is action. It's action. You see, action is the shortest path to clarity. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. When you are in motion in a certain direction, then it's easier to steer. If you have to adjust, you may not have started out in the right way. That's okay. You can tweak later. You can tweak later. The point here is that you invest first. You put the wood in, and then you get the heat. You. And you put the money in into a program, and you study it, and then you develop this. You develop the skills that allow you to get that leadership position. It's not owed to you. You don't necessarily deserve it until you put the work in in. If you put the cart before the horse, that's bass ackwards. If you put the if you want the heat before you put the wood in, that's bass ackwards. That is messed up. It that is not how the world works. So I highly recommend you examine the things in your life. Whether it's your business, your career path, your marriage, your relationship with your children. If you want something that is not there currently, you need to put the work in. If you want to be a writer, you need to write. If you want to be generous, you need to give. If you want to be a business person, you need to conduct business. It's not studying it and reading about it all the time. Those are important elements. But the first step is almost always action. And sometimes that action is investing in it. It's investing in a coach, investing in a learning program, investing in a way to develop your skills. So I hope this didn't sound like a rant and I certainly didn't mean to call out my dear beloved friend, but I do want to call out that thinking because we're all guilty of it. We all tend to put thoughts and changing our thoughts after our circumstances change. It's the other way around. The action is what leads to clarity. The action, the effort, is what precedes the reward. And even small efforts can create feedback loops that create momentum. So it has to start with action. I'll see you in the next episode.

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