10. Leadership: Using Resistance To Your Advantage

Hey, welcome back, my friend. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. And this is leadership in a nutshell, where we're cracking the code of the driven mind. Today we're in episode 10 where we're going to dive into using resistance to your advantage. Now, we all have plenty of resistance in our lives. We've created some ourselves, by the way, as leaders many times. We have team that can create them. We have vendors that can create resistance. We've got competition, if you will, economy, all kinds of different things that happen as resistance in our lives. Today we're going to jump into how we can utilize this said resistance, if you will, to an actual advantage. Does that sound good? You want to take something that is perceived to be negative and turn it into something incredibly powerful. Of course you do. That's why you're investing the time. Spend a few minutes with me here each and every week. So one of the things that I want to really talk about first when we look at this title here today, using resistance to your advantage. Let's first look at that a word. What does advantage mean and why do we seek advantage? You know, I study the human brain a lot and I look at subconscious programming, how our subconscious mind is one of the most amazing computers on the planet. We're all looking for more, you know, different CPUs and the new iPhone or the new BlackBerry. I guess I'll date myself a little bit. Clearly I don't know that much about computers, but guess what? I know a little bit about human performance and that's why you're here with me today. But one of the things we look at all these different, oh, how's it going to run better? How's it going to run faster? This human mind right here is incredible. The challenge is that it's programmed to operate exactly how it's programmed to operate. The no different than when you, you know, garbage in, garbage out to a computer. The same is true with our mind. And one of the things our subconscious mind does in the way that it's programmed is it's designed to seek advantages. Right? There's really two main points to your brain, one or to your mind. One is to keep you alive. And not just keep you alive. I'll caveat. We'd have a whole nother episode. We could have a two day seminar, if you will, on really not just to keep you alive, but your mind exists to keep you alive in the program you've created to keep you alive into your routine to keep you alive in what you're doing. That's why I'm so big on morning rituals, on routines that you run, how you control your life, how you batch your circumstances and tasks, all those different things, because then you can have your mind program to keep you doing the things that keep you successful. But today, as we're talking more about.

Resistance, I want to just look at that. We're seeking advantages in business. We're seeking unique advantages so we stand out differently from our quote unquote competition. So our clients have no reason not to go, wow, they have a unique advantage. I want to work with them. I want that for you, and I want that for your team when it comes to your own behavior, your performance, your goals, your accomplishments, the things you do around finance, relationships, your health, all of those areas.

So when we seek these advantages, why is it that we get frustrated with resistance? See, the challenge is emotions are what really charges. We do a lot for emotion. Here's something that you might want to write down. There's not a lot of emotion tied to common sense, and that is a challenge. Common sense isn't sexy. It's not fun. It's really boring, and it's really humdrum. Here's the reality. Boring wins. Boring creates success. When I methodically get involved in my retirement plan in my 20s, and I continue to boringly put in the money, boom, boom. All of a sudden I'm a millionaire in 20 some years because I've been putting my 20, 40, 50, hundred bucks a month, whatever the case is, that's boring. However, it creates the results that we want. Now, when we talk about resistance, what's the resistance I have in that scenario? My friends want to go out. I want to have that extra money in my budget. I want to go out to eat. I want to go on trips I want to do, there's certain resistance like that. If I want to change my body, my physique, I go in the gym and I do curls and I do pushups and I bench press, and I create all this resistance, and it actually builds muscle. Guess what? That doesn't make me mad. However, when I get challenged in business, when I have an economy turn on me, when my investing schedule gets interrupted, when I have a challenge attracting new team members to my business, there's a resistance there. But now I want to get mad. Why is that? Why don't we take that resistance and use it to our advantage? Go, man. I'm going to utilize this. Guess what? You know, some people, back in 2008, when we had the crash, 2008, 2009, some people drew the line in the sand and went through a lot of pain. And they said, I'm going to use this resistance as an advantage. I'm going to change how I operate financially. I'm going to change my level of risk. One of my mentors, I had two uncles, great mentors of mine. One of them always told me is, I got into business in 1994. Yes, I'll date myself. I was 23 years old. I became an entrepreneur. I've never taken a check from a company since then. Other than a subcontractor. I haven't been an employee. There's nothing wrong with being an employee. All it's about is doing is utilizing unique ability. Mine ended up being is being an entrepreneur, right? And what's fascinating, in 94, we went and we had a little pullback in, in 2001. There's a little stuff in 98. Then 2001 happens, and then we're just on this amazing economy. And one of my uncles kept on saying, hang in there, Kenny. You haven't operated through a recession yet. You haven't gone through a recession yet. You haven't gone. And I used to kind of take offense, like, well, so what? I haven't had a recession to operate through. So what, you think I can't do it? Like what, Give me a recession? Then, you know, it's like, have this I'll prove you wrong type of thing. Guess what? Post 2008, 2009. Now Kenny knows what he meant by you haven't operated through a recession yet. And you know what else? He hadn't operated through a recession like that one either. Because he's only about, what, 30, 30 something years older than me. And so what's fascinating is when we look at resistance, we can use it two ways. We get frustrated, we can blame, we can create the blame game. Well, it's this, it's the market, it's the economy. There's no good people out there. Millennials are lazy. All these BS stories that we tell ourselves. Or we can say, man, there's resistance in the marketplace. Guess what? Maybe millennials are smarter than I was at their age. You ever thought about that? Maybe they solve problems quicker, better, easier, and want a different quality of life than their baby boomers parents displayed to them by begrudgingly going to a job that they didn't love most of their lives. Huh? What about that? How can I use the resistance to my advantage? I'm so blessed and grateful for the childhood that I had, the way that I grew up, Western Colorado I went to a little town or little school called Palisade High School in western Colorado outside of Grand Junction. And when I was a sophomore in high school, there was a karate instructor by the name of Mo. And Mo would come to football practice and just kind of watch. And I wasn't great at football, let's be honest. I don't have the physique, I didn't have the desire. I really don't like hitting people. So a lot of things against me in the football world. I was a baseball player, that was my passion. But however, I'm a three sport athlete. We're in a small school, it's what my buddies are doing. So I'm playing football and Mo would come and go, kind of scout around, practice, and he would watch and he would look and he would see who's really playing full out. And though I wasn't very good at the game, he saw that I played full out, he saw that I gave it what I had. So if he saw some characteristics in you, he would hand pick you to join his karate class. Little small town, it operated in the back of a vet clinic. Now, as I've grown up, I realize everything he was doing was completely against the law. But he didn't charge you because then when he would put his hands on you and physically abuse you, if you stepped out of line or did something wrong in karate class, then your parents didn't turn him into the cops. All you had to do was bring Gatorade. Remember, like the big Gatorade things, once a month or however the rotation went, you had to bring Gatorade to karate class. And I remember dreading karate class because it was so much harder than football practice. And if I did a specific move and I had my hand twisted or my foot out of place, Mo would get freaky with us, like, oh my gosh, what do you do? And he would walk around with a stick and he would hit you on the leg, he would position, why isn't it there? And Mo was teaching us discipline. And as we came up and became.

Brown belts and sorry, I never got my black belt, but as certain people became black belts, here's what would happen. If you go to I'll date myself a little.

Some of you that grew up in the country can relate to this. I would be at a woodsy.

A woodsy for you that grew up in the. In the city is a.

Is a time where you get together.

Generally in the woods with a keg.

Of beer and a whole bunch of.

Your friends and you Party the night away out under the stars and whatever. And lo and behold, a lot of times some fights would happen. Fight over the. The few girls in school that everybody's.

Raising or dating or whatever, right? So whatever.

Reasons. There's all kinds of reason. Kids fight. That's part of it. However, if you were in Mo's class and you got in a fight, you better watch out. It better be 100% self defense or you got to fight Mo next time. At karate class, mo was a 5th degree black belt and he would hand.

Your tail to even though he's a.

Little Mr. Miyagi kind of guys, like shorter than me, weighs 120 pounds or whatever. Unbelievable. What does that mean? I use that resistance. You never know where resistance can show up to help you at that time. I'm like, okay, I'm learning some discipline. I don't know what that means. Then I lost my way a little bit after I dropped out of college. I ended up in trouble with the law a little bit and I joined the United States Army.

And when I got to boot camp and I watched people come into boot camp that did not have the discipline that Mo taught me, I went, wow. I had more resistance going to karate class my sophomore, junior and senior year of high school than I did going through United States army boot camp. That was resistance that I then used to my advantage. I remember being in the first Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and thinking about Mo and thinking about controlling my mind and thinking about discipline. What about you? What about your team? What about your life? What about your company? What about your finances? What about your health? What about your relationships? Where do you have resistance that you can turn into an advantage? My friend, it's your responsibility. It's your time. You've got more. I want it. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. This has been episode 10 of Leadership in a Nutshell, where we're going to continue to keep cracking the code of the driven mind. I'll see you next time.