SENSEI LEADER Live! The Indisputable Definition of Success… REPLAY

Welcome to another episode of Sensei Leader Live. I'm Jim Bouchard, author of The Sensei Leader. It's interesting, there's going to be an upcoming post that we do, probably do a Sensei Leader Live on this too. I don't like the term leadership development anymore for a number of reasons, and there is an article on our blog for that. Just go to thesenseileader.com or thatblackbeltguy.com, take you to the same place. Click on the top tab for the blog and you'll see that. I believe actually we have highlighted that article about leader development as opposed to leadership development, so you'll get a full explanation there. Also, click that blog link for today's topic and everything I'm going to be talking about for the next few minutes you'll get there as well, including the bullet points that we'll be talking about in just a few minutes. So let's get right down to it because I don't generally consider myself an arrogant person, but I am as we say here in Maine, wicked arrogant about this topic, about the topic of success. I believe I have the indisputable definition of the word success. Now usually when I bring that up and I say, look, I can define success without a doubt, people argue with me for a number of reasons. We're going to hit a couple of those arguments in just a couple of minutes. But one of the main arguments is that, well, success is subjective. You can't define it because it means something different to everyone. Well, I just couldn't accept that, and the more that I thought about it, it actually made me very angry for a while, and I had to take some time and really do some research and do some thinking about that topic. Why would we chase something with every cell in our body, with every fiber of our being, we work so hard towards something we can't define? That just never sat well with me. So I did come back with a definition of success. And I'm going to share it with you right now, and then, hey, chime in. See if you agree, see if you disagree. If you're watching on the replay, please put the comments in anyway because we'll respond to those the best we can, and your thoughts and your comments will become part of future episodes as well, and we'll keep that discussion going. But anyway, here it is: Success is nothing more than the product of abundance. It means having enough, and you have to have enough in 3 major areas of your life in order to feel successful. That's material, emotional, and spiritual. And I'm going to touch on each of those and exactly what it means in just a second. But here's the thing. This is not some kind of New Age mysticism. It's not a semantic game. I'm not trying to be cute with words. All right? That is exactly what success is. If you don't feel a sense of abundance, a sense of having enough in each of those 3 major, major areas of your life, you're simply not going to feel successful.— you're going to feel like a failure or you're going to be stressed, you're going to be anxious because you want or you need more. Now let's hit each area in turn and I hope this will bring it right down to earth. First of all, material. It's the easiest one to talk about, it's the simplest one to talk about. And to keep things short for today, because this is something that we workshop usually for an hour or more, but just to keep it simple today, the material parts, it's the money. It's the money or anything, any tangible thing, something that you can put your hands on, you can measure. Video screen behind me, the camera I'm holding in my hand, my internet connection. These are all tangible material assets. The money that you have in the bank, money you have in savings. That's what I'm talking about when we talk about material. If you have enough, you're feeling successful in that area. If you're not, you feel impoverished. It's that simple. Let's move on to the emotional part. The emotional part is a little bit more difficult to understand, but not terribly so. The emotional part can still be measured to a large degree. It's still pretty much a tangible, what I would call a tangible asset, because we can measure it, we can quantify it. And the emotional part of it is this. We talk about your friends, your family, your support system. Hey, thanks everybody for joining in. Please make sure you chime into the comments. Please argue with me. I love to argue respectfully, but I love to argue these topics. That's how we learn more and move the subject forward, right? Anyway, back to that idea of emotional assets. Having enough emotionally. Emotional assets, like I said, friends, family, your support system, who believes in you. Measurable psychological things, like for instance, self-confidence. Self-confidence is something we can measure fairly easily. Your talents and your abilities. These are very tangible. Again, we can measure, we can quantify these things. So these are all emotional parts of us that make up— they're not things in the sense, you know, they're not like these glasses or bottle of water or anything like that. But we can measure them even though they live within, within us inside. Now we go to the toughest one, right? Spiritual assets. What are your spiritual resources? That's a difficult area, and I'm not talking about religion, although that might be for you. Okay, that's completely up to you. And I'm not talking about anything that's mystical at all either. All I'm talking about in spirituality— this is the way we use the word actually in martial arts more or less— now we're talking about the intangibles, the things that can't be readily weighed or measured. You can't touch them with your hands, but we know that they're true. Love, for example, is one of those, one of those spiritual assets. We know it's true, although it's never been scientifically proven. We know that love exists. We know that we need it. We can't live without it, even though you really can't find too much, too much of a way to measure that or quantify it or objectively stamp it scientifically. But there it is. We can dance around the edges of it. We know what happens when people don't have it. Courage is another one of those. Courage is more or less an intangible or spiritual aspect— asset. And here's why I don't put that in with the emotional ones as much. Because courage only really manifests itself under fire, under pressure, right? We can train to be courageous, certainly. That's a lot of the work that we do, helping people become more courageous or prepare to be more courageous, to act in the face of fear. But you really, really don't know how much courage you have until you face a challenge or an obstacle head-on. So that's why we put that more in the spiritual aspect. And the final one that I want to talk about today, again to keep it brief, we try to keep these to about 30 minutes or less, is that idea that we're part of something bigger than ourselves. Now however that takes shape in your life, that's completely up to you. But the sense that my work has value, that my life has value, that I'm connected to other human beings or to nature. All right, that I'm just simply part of something bigger than what I am and something bigger than what I can understand. You know, I know I'm a bit of a geek, but it always amazes me. I love to go out at night and look at the stars. I love to look through telescopes. I don't know what the hell I'm looking at. I really don't. I'm not an astronomer, but it's amazing to me. I know enough about it. I have enough interest in it that I know that, you know, I'm looking at a bright star And that star may not even exist anymore. You know, it's millions or billions of light years away. That thing could have gone to a black hole eons ago, and the light is just reaching us now. That's an amazing thing to think about, that we're connected somehow. We're part of this universe. It's so vast. So that's what I'm talking about with, with spiritual assets. So let's recap real quickly. The definition of success, very simple: product of abundance. You must have enough in 3 major areas of your life: material, emotional, and spiritual. Let me know your thoughts. Do you believe that? Do you think I'm just, uh, pushing horse hockey here? Or can you add to it? Can you argue against it? All right, so far I haven't found too many people that have really shot holes in that definition. And that brings us back to the two major arguments that I usually run up against. The first one is that people say, "Well, I really haven't addressed the subjectivity of it." And I'd say, I would argue that, I said, "Yes, no, actually I did. I addressed it head on." Because here's the out clause, if you want to call it that. I can't tell you, as an individual, how much is enough. That's completely up to you. I'm not going to sit here and pretend to tell you that you need to attain any certain level that I have in my mind for you to feel successful. And I'll give you an example. I have a friend who's a great guitar player, wonderful guitar player, and he's never worked at any kind of job that's really paid a whole lot. He loves to do— I think now he's a computer repair person. Previous to that, I remember he was a prep cook for a long time. But you know what? And he lived always in an apartment, a small apartment, but he was so happy. He just enjoyed life. Those jobs gave him the ability to go out and play guitar. He had a lot of freedom. He had a lot of flexibility. He was very satisfied spiritually and very satisfied emotionally. He was successful. Who am I to tell him otherwise? Some of us have different visions of what success means in all these different areas, especially in the material one that we measure and quantify quite a bit. So there's a lot of subjectivity there. It's entirely up to you how much is enough for you in any of these given areas. Okay, and don't let anybody else tell you differently, right? If somebody tries to lay a standard on it— which brings it to the second argument, and it actually comes in two parts. The second argument I hear most often about that definition of success is that you need somebody else to tell you, right, objectively whether or not you're successful. I don't want to use bad language on Sensei Leader Live, but that one really, really gets my hackles up. No, absolutely not, could not disagree more. No, you do not need someone else telling you what your idea or your feeling of success is supposed to be. All right, and the reason I say that is this: there's proof all over the place. If that were the case, then anytime someone acknowledged you and said, hey, you know what, Jim, you really, you're successful, you're really doing great, I would never, never, never feel dissatisfied or feel bad about myself. Now, I don't know if I'm the only one in the room that feels this way, but there are times when I feel particularly unsuccessful in any one of those areas. All right, so no, it's not about someone else telling you. You've got to define that for yourself, and you've got to feel it for yourself. Absolutely. And right along with that are people that argue we need objective standards to measure success, especially when it comes to the material area. A lot of times people say, you know, there are objective standards. Well, we do kind of measure things, uh, especially here in America. I don't know other parts of the country, whether other parts of the world, whether you do things, you know, quite this way or have the obsession with it that we do. Anyway, friends of mine in different countries don't seem to have it as much. But we do, we have these lines. There's the poverty line, right? And we know what that is. Any given year we can tell you if you make X amount of money, you're above or below that poverty line. Or you're part of the 20%, the upper 20%, or the upper 1%. All right, so those are some objective lines that are used to compare one another as far as material success goes. Others are jobs. And I'm going to come— I'm going to circle back to that in a second. Let's stick with the money for example. There are plenty of remarkably successful people that income-wise live below the poverty line or wealth-wise just don't feel the need to accumulate assets and hold on to them. Now I'm not arguing the financial pros and cons of that, right? That's completely up to you. There's different ways to look at that. In fact, very soon we're going to have my my dear friend Kevin Frisby on our Walking the Walk podcast. He just wrote a book, Every Dime Every Day, I think is what it's called. Terrific book, terrific advice to help you with finances. But no, it's still up to you. You've got to decide that. Now when I was doing research actually for a number of these different things, different ways we're going to express this idea of blogs and whatnot, I wanted to know Could I find examples, tangible examples of people that were remarkably successful and felt that way that really didn't make a lot of money? And it led me to the Amish people in Pennsylvania. Some of you are very familiar with the Amish people. There's a large concentration still of Amish people live in eastern Pennsylvania, largely farmers. They have very, very simple lives, very austere lives. They kind of eschew what a lot of us would take for granted. As far as technology and modern conveniences go. Many of them still don't drive cars, they drive horses and buggies. That's kind of the iconic picture you see of them. Others won't use phones or cell phones anyway. So I think there's a wide range of it, but anyway, you get the point. Well, I want to know what was the average income of Amish people. Now the average household in America makes about $56,000 a year, $52,000 to $56,000 a year. And I believe the poverty line has been established these days somewhere around $15,000 to $16,000 if you're living below that. And if I'm wrong, please let me know. Just chime in and correct those numbers. But close enough for the purposes of our discussion. The Amish people, average household makes about $24,000 a year. So that's well below the average American household income. And yet some of these folks on that amount of money each year, that's their income, are building wealth. They have farms that are worth $400,000, $500,000, up to $1 million and more, okay, because of the way they manage their money and whatnot. But more important, because of their feeling of satisfaction, their feeling of success. They feel they're very successful to generate that amount of income. So that's really a tangible story that illustrates how, you know, how subjective that sense of enough is for them. That's plenty. $24,000 a year is plenty. For you, it might be a quarter of a million. It might be a million. I don't know. Again, I'm not here to judge. That's completely up to you. But there is no objective standard that can be applied. Now, that's— we just talked about the material side. Imagine trying to apply that objective standard in the material and spirit— I mean, sorry, emotional and spiritual aspects of life. And you're going to have a heck of a time trying to do that. Now, generally, we can say on the emotional side, that you have to be mentally healthy, right? When you're mentally ill for any reason, you're really in a state of poverty as far as emotional assets go, emotional life goes, those emotional resources. So here's the key. Now, how do we establish this feeling of success? Like I said, we already established, and I'll review it again, success is a product of abundance. It's a feeling of having enough in 3 major areas of life: material, emotional, and spiritual. How much is enough in each one of those areas is completely up to you. But here's what I do know, and here's what I learned, and I'm going to share with you, you know, my experiences. This is where my experiences as a drug abuser, uh, are still so useful and so valuable to me. Not that I'd want to go through that again, all right? And I don't glorify it. Those of you who know me know that it's not something to be glorified. Uh, it was— I think it was kind of my obligation, uh, in respect to my gift of human life to recover from that and get on track. But having, you know, putting that aside for the time being, what I learned was this. That's when I learned to be, first of all, grateful. And that's how we start this process of feeling successful. I started to count what I had instead of worrying about what I didn't have. And that's a product of gratitude. I just started to feel thankful and actually would say it out loud. And that's my gratitude practice, by the way. Different people have different gratitude practices, but it's simple for me. Just once in a while, and I do this when I'm feeling blue, when I'm feeling impoverished, when I feel a sense of scarcity in any of those areas, I take an inventory. I look around and I say, "Oh, thank you for," and fill in the blank. And that means thank you for the things that I have, material. Thank you for the people in my life. Thank you for my wife. Thank you for my friends. Thank you for anybody that's helping me out or being supportive. And the spiritual parts. Thank you that I have a sense of purpose, that I feel so energized and dedicated to training leaders. Thank you for friends that in music, that I have that ability to connect with people as a musician. Some of you share that same, I'm gonna call it a gift, I don't know, call it a skill or an opportunity. But again, that connects us spiritually. It helps us reach out beyond ourselves. For some it'd be painting, writing, whatever the case may be. So that's what you have to do. You have to find those things and focus on them. No matter how little you have at any given time, that's where you're starting from. And that's the cold slap in the face reality part of this whole thing, right? Wishing and hoping is not going to make you feel successful. It doesn't work that way. It's what you're doing. And at any given moment, it's what you're doing with what you have right here and right now. Again, materially, emotionally, and spiritually. When you're feeling impoverished in one of those areas, it's tough. The material one, you know, god, it's tough. And I don't want to discount it because I've been there. If you've ever been to one of my live presentations, I always share the story of Stonehenge. That was the trailer that I lived in when I was a drug abuser, an old 1950s vintage trailer. And most of the time, we seriously didn't know whether we were going to eat that day or not. Now that was self-imposed, and I don't blame anybody for that, but I'll tell you what, poverty is poverty whether it's self-imposed or not. Lynn's chiming in, "Whoever does not regard what he has as ample wealth is unhappy, though he be master of the world." I'm going to put my reading glasses on to see. How do you say that? Epictetus? Epictetus? I'm not up on my Greek philosophers. I studied mostly the Asian, but that's a great quote. Thanks, Lynn, for sharing that, and people can look at that. Yeah, absolutely. I would agree with that 100%. "Who does not regard what he has as most ample wealth is unhappy, though he be master of the world." And that's the, you know, that's probably what helps us. You don't know how to say it either. Okay, we'll have to look it up. We'll have to do the phonetics later. You know, when people argue with me about these objective standards, why do people who satisfy every one of the objective standards we would hold for wealth or expect people to be happy with are sometimes miserable? You know, that's, that's proof in the negative. There are very wealthy, well-off people that are well connected, have apparently have friends and family that they can depend on, apparently have a sense of purpose, but are still still in difficult times individually. You know, they'd still feel bad about themselves. They don't feel successful. They feel like a failure. And I think that happens to all of us from time to time too. You know, sometimes we're in a pretty good spot, but we don't see it, right? We keep talking about going back and looking in that mirror all the time, that practice of gratitude, that practice of taking the inventory. So anyway, those are the easy steps for it. Now I want to share simple steps, I should say, not easy, right? Always have to correct that. Let's see what we put on the blog for you because I want to make sure that you have this exactly. Again, go to thesensileader.com, top menu, the blog button up there, and it's— let's get the bullet points for you. If you want to feel successful, right? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't share those with you. I'm going to give them to you off the top of my head. I didn't share the individuals with you. One of them we just said, take that gratitude inventory. Think about what you have rather than focusing on what you don't have. Okay. The second thing is this, start the process of reaching out in the smallest step possible. And that's why the inventory is the first step. Like I said before, every place you're going depends on what you have here and now, materially, emotionally, and spiritually. There's no sense wishing and hoping about it. So once you understand that, you take that first step. Step, however small it might be. And then the third part of that is reward yourself for that. Once you take your first step, that's enough for now, okay. Tomorrow you're going to want to take another step. You're not going to be satisfied with that first step forever, but you do need to acknowledge that and say, no matter how small that step was, I did something. Lao Tzu long ago said, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. The rest of the journey is made up of single steps as well. And Sometimes we lose sight of that, especially when we're in the middle of a trip somewhere, we're in the middle of trying to attain that goal, we can get blinded a little bit. So we got to make sure we go back and say, hey, you know what, I did make some steps, I did make some headway. You got to do that for yourself because believe me, it's rare and you should appreciate when somebody else is recognizing it. All right, let's flip the page a little bit and we're going to talk about leaders and how you help other people gain success, because that's the whole enchilada as far as I'm concerned. This is not something we want to keep for ourselves. Although, I'll say this, very difficult to help someone else feel successful if you're not feeling some measure of success yourself. So as always, when we talk about these things at Sensei Leader, it's you have to take care of yourself first. You have to focus on that first, and that is not selfish. That's the argument I get back sometimes with that feedback. Well, that sounds selfish. Absolutely not. It's absolutely not selfish. In fact, Lynn, thanks for hanging with the, with the show today too. He brought something up yesterday, right, Lynn? You were talking about the idea of the oxygen mask in the airplane. First thing they tell you, right, about the oxygen mask is put yours on first. You can't help anybody out if you're passed out, right? So you've got to take care of yourself first, make yourself healthy or solid first, and then you can, you can move on. As far as self-improvement goes and this continual commitment to personal professional development that we're always talking about, that idea that perfection is not a destination, right? It's a never-ending process. Uh, it's, it, it can be selfish in, in some way, but it only in a positive way. When you're improving yourself, you're becoming a much more valuable resource to the people around you, the people you serve, the people who count on you, people who in your life. So that's what I'm talking about with that. You've got to make sure you take care of yourself first. Now, assuming that you are doing that, and hey, don't think you got to get to these again, the standards. That's not what it's about. While you're in the process of improving yourself, you will feel more successful. That's the payoff. And share whatever success you're feeling at the time. But let's bring it to earth. There can be— there are some very tangible, very, let me say, process-oriented steps you can take as a leader to help other people achieve success. All right. And I'm going to say this. First of all, as a leader, right, let's hit the material area. What training are you willing to provide to other people so they can increase their skills, so they can especially expand their assets in that emotional area? Remember, still being tangible. Sometimes, you know, sometimes you put the skills right in the material area, and I may have at the beginning of this. Can you offer scholarships and time off for people to further their college education or other training? That's something that's usually pretty simple to do. Do you send people to seminars and workshops for personal and professional development? So those are simple steps that you can take. Are you generous with encouragement? In every single one of our workshops when we're working with, especially with established leaders, we ask the question, and it's in the SL15, by the way, our survey, our survey tool, and we ask, how often do you encourage others? How often do you offer some praise and encouragement? Sometimes, always, never, daily? And thankfully, most of the people we work with, because we only work with good people, you know, are pretty good in that area, you know, but there's always room for improvement. I'm only going to say there, hey, just make sure that encouragement is founded on something real. People will read through false praise very, very quickly, right? Are you supportive of personal issues? Hey, you know, you lead people. How often do we say that? You lead people. People, and people are complex. They have issues just as you do as a leader. So are you supportive of those personal issues to the degree that you can be? How well do you manage interpersonal relationships and conflicts? Very important too, and that's two aspects of the same thing, but it's nice, you know, it's probably a little bit easier to manage interpersonal relations when things are going well. But how about when there's a conflict? How well do you manage that? That's one of the ways that you can guide people towards success. And are you a skillful communicator? That's a big question you have to ask yourself as a leader all the time, all the time, okay. So let's go back and recap real quick, and then we'll get to the spiritual area. The material area: What training are you willing to provide to increase skills? Can you offer scholarships and time off for furthering college education or other training too? I should have put in there. Do you send people to seminars and workshops for personal and professional development? In the emotional area, are you generous with encouragement? Are you supportive of personal issues? How well do you manage interpersonal relationships and conflicts? And are you a skillful communicator? Again, go to the blog, go to the SenseiLeader.com top menu, you'll see the tab for the blog and just go there and this article will be titled the same way, it's Success. Definition. I think I'd put indisputable definition of success. Oh, I can tell you exactly what I put. Yeah, the indisputable definition of success, how to get it, and how leaders can help other people get it too. And let's hit that spiritual area before we wrap it up today. Are you living, expressing, and communicating a vision of a higher purpose or calling? That's the most important one. I'm going to circle back to that in just a second. Are you able to rally people around the idea that together you're accomplishing much more than any individual? And finally, do the people you serve feel that you genuinely appreciate and value them? That's probably one of the biggest problems that are brought up by the folks that you serve in our workshops. You know, are they feeling appreciated? Sometimes they feel underappreciated. That's a simple, not easy thing to do, especially when, when things are tough or when things are busy, or times are busy. So you've got to really come back and pay attention. But let's hit that first one. Are you living, expressing, and communicating a vision of a higher purpose or calling? That's one of your primary responsibilities as a leader, and that's one of the things that differentiates a leader from anyone else. Now, I'm not talking about position of authority. You could be doing this, you could be a fry cook at a McDonald's and still be leading people, right? And of course, those of you who are familiar, if you're not familiar, one of the central tenets of the whole Sensei Leader philosophy is this: lead by example. Now I wish I had made that up, but like many of the things that I share with you, it's nothing new. It's not rocket surgery. This has been around for thousands of years, and the The expression of that idea that I share, that I got, came from Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu is the master who wrote The Art of War. Very, very, very old text. It's now become required reading at a lot of business colleges. Unfortunately, sometimes they go right to the strategy and tactics in either process form or in a manipulative form even. But he's got a lot of spiritual gems there, and that's the biggest one. Lead by by example. I think also he may have expressed it this way, or Lao Tzu may have expressed this way as well, that those who lead by example, right, are— I'm paraphrasing a bit— but those who lead by example are the most inspirational, right. I just say it this way: people follow examples much more enthusiastically than they do orders. So lead by example. You have to constantly look in the mirror to determine if you're doing this. And the thing is, the power of that— and that's why I say the vision is a little bit more A little less tangible, isn't it? I put that in the spiritual asset bucket. Got to develop a clear vision, and that's what brings people together. That's how you get everybody moving in the same direction, but you've got to live it. And that's one of the toughest areas, but one of the most essential areas where you cannot talk the talk without walking the walk. You've got to walk the walk. When you create that vision or you're the steward of that vision, You've got to live it. You've got to express it clearly and articulately. And you've got to absorb that. You've got to embrace it with every cell in your body. If you're not living that vision, then you can't expect anyone else to embrace it either. And it's that simple. Not easy. I understand. It's tough. We all go through our tough periods. But that's the thing. And I want to finish with that kind of a thought. You know, again, one of the great gifts I learned in my life as a martial artist is just this: simple, not easy. It's simple to get the black belt. You practice, you study, you work hard, you're going to get there. But it's not easy. There's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears along the way. There's a lot of pain. There's a lot of introspection. And that's one of the imprints that we like to share. I think that's a wonderful and direct imprint from Martial Arts: Right to Leadership. Is that we have to keep looking in the mirror. We have to constantly seek self-improvement. And we can't ever be— we can be happy, we can feel successful, but never quite satisfied. There's always something else that we can explore, or another way we can apply the talents and abilities and the skills or experiences that we, that we learn along the way. Of course, you're going to do that by teaching and mentoring at some point. But that's the idea. Keep going back. Go back to that vision. Make sure you're living it. And these ideals, these standards, are not there to measure yourself by. We talked about that trouble earlier, right? They give us a compass so that when we're off track, we can get back on. And I'll wrap up with a real quick story about that. I remember, I can't remember where this came from, but I remember going to hear a speaker and he shared this story about losing direction where This must have been pre-9/11 because the story centers on someone who was invited into the cockpit of an airplane, a commercial airplane, and got the tour, right? Back in— I'm old now, I can share this. Back in the day, once in a while, if it was your birthday, they'd invite you into the cockpit, wouldn't they? Anyway, this guy saw this device, you know, on the wall near the navigator, said, "What's that?" I'm sorry, on the bulkhead, sorry pilots. He said, "What's that?" He said, "Well, that's an inertial guidance system." Really? What's that do? Well, every time the plane's off course, it brings it back on. How often is the plane off course? About 99% of the time, right? And you think about it, the plane moving through the air is— there are any number of variables that are taking that plane off course. The wind, the temperature, currents, you know, the thrust of the engines, people moving around on the plane. If you're not a pilot, just trust me on this one. Even the people moving around the plane can change the direction of the plane. So this thing is constantly bringing you back on course, and that's what your standards and your goals are for. We're going to get off course. You can spend time beating yourself up about it. What's that going to get you, right? Or you can simply use these ideas and these standards and these goals to get you back on course. That's what it's all about. So anyway, quick question, and please send your questions in and comments. Like I said, if you're watching on the replay, We're watching those all the time now, so don't worry about it if you didn't join us live. Thank you everyone who's joined me live today. Wow, a lot of people have been chiming in. Thank you so, so much. But let me finish with this quick little thought. Someone wrote in and asked, "Are you a real sensei?" Well, a couple of years ago someone approached me from Six Sigma. I don't know if any of you are Six Sigma black belts or anything like that. He's doing a podcast for Six Sigma folks and he said, "Would you be on?" Sure, and he said, well, of course you're a Six Sigma black belt, right? I said, no, I'm a real one. And we got a laugh out of that. I did do the show with him and it was really a lot of fun, 'cause we talked about the same things that you and I share every day. But that was kind of interesting. Yes, I am a real sensei. I've been a sensei, I had been a sensei for, oh gosh, almost 30 years. Kind of semi-retired from that a couple years ago. I'm not as active as I used to be anymore. But, you know, it was a wonderful, wonderful life. As we got busier doing this and sharing these ideas, especially with leaders all over the country, and then now we're so blessed all over the world, it just got too much to keep teaching in the school. So we passed that along to one of our black belts, Tony Lacroix, who's a great guy, and I think he's got that up and going again. So that's— yes, the short answer is, in my real sense, yes, I am. At least I was. Okay, the term, just to clear it up too, the term sensei, and I share this at live events, most people say, oh, sensei is teacher. Well, yeah, it's used for that. The literal Japanese translation for that is one who went before, which I think is a terrific imprint for a leader. So when we say the Sensei Leader, remember, is, you know, do I call myself the Sensei Leader? Sure, that's how we get people to pay attention to all this. But listen, you are the Sensei Leader. It's not a title that's reserved for, for one person or group of people. It's when you embrace these ideas, when you embrace the truly human qualities of being a leader, that's when you can call yourself the Sensei Leader. So anyway, there you go. That's it for today, unless anybody has anything else they'd like to weigh in on. And we'll be back next week. We've got another episode planned. On decisions. I was working out in Kansas City last year and I got a chance to visit the Truman Library, and Harry Truman had a great definition of a leader. He said a leader is someone who makes decisions. So that's what we're going to explore next time. So if you got some comments, questions on that, as always we're going to put up a blog post before, and we now have subscription buttons up too. So just get on the, on the blog and you'll see a subscription button at the top or on the side there and And that's the best way to stay in touch and find out what's going on. We also have some cool online stuff coming up, some online workshops and webinars coming up. And don't forget to listen to Walking the Walk. What terrific guests we've had on Walking the Walk. Again, you'll find that tab right at the top of thesenseileader.com. Just amazing people. We've got a whole bunch more lined up for you coming up in the— over the next few months. So anyway, that's all for now. Thanks a lot for joining me, and we'll be back again. Jim Bouchard. The Sensei Leader, thesenseileader.com. Thanks for being with me today.