161. Battleground: Can Control or Can't Control?

Foreign. Hey, my friend, welcome back to leadership in a nutshell. I'm so grateful to have you on the show today. Or actually, you're not on the show today, but you're attending the show today. You're observing the show today. You're participating in the show today. Even though we won't be interactive live, I want to be interactive recorded. So how. How about that? I'm here to add value. Last week, we talked about adding value. All I want to do is create a space, create a moment in the week where you can add some value to your own life by challenging your perspective, by changing your perspective, by being reminded of some things that you might already know. And Today, in episode 161, I want you to think about the battleground can control versus can't control. And this mind, this amazing. I'm even thinking about renaming this podcast because all I want to do here, all I want to help you with, is mental control, helping you free your mind, helping you become happier, helping you become better adjusted as a leader, helping you really set down the baggage, really helping you learn from what's in the baggage prior to setting it down. And sometimes we learn. We set it down and then set it on fire. Okay, no, let's not set it on fire. But I mean, you know, sometimes it's time to get rid of it, right? And that's. And that's what I really want you to think about. And this battleground that goes back and forth, and this is the opportunity and the challenge that we have within our minds. It's like, well, I can. Can I control this or can I not control this? And where's this line? I mean, I mean, if God, divine, spirit, universe, soul gave me free will, then certainly I can control certain things, and certainly I can control Jimmy's behavior and Susie's actions. And you will make yourself crazy if you start realizing and thinking that you can control everybody's behavior, because you just. You can't. It's not a. It's not a reality. And so when you kind of take a step back and start realizing, like, well, what is it that I can control? That's where you enter the mental battle. And, you know, one of my conscious goals in life is to really elevate consciousness in everybody in my community and everybody around me to help become more adjusted for everybody in a better society and. And have happier business owners, which creates an environment for happier business leaders, which then creates an environment for happier business team members, which then creates an environment for happier families and happier peer groups and Happier communities. And yes, I'm that crazy enough guy that I believe I can influence the world through business leaders. That's where I hang my hat. It's what I want to do. It's my people. It's what I believe in. I, I believe that small business is the backbone of America. Yeah, you can invest in the, you know, the top tech and all the different things, but the reality is small business is where it's at. And I say small business, you know, south of a quarter of a billion dollars or so. You know, it's like if you're up to 250 million, you're still a small business. I mean, we work with some really what the world calls large companies at blue collar. And the fascinating thing is we see them all the way from, you know, 10 million to 100 million to a half a billion to a billion. And it's all the same stuff. It's people dealing with people, and that's where we find freedom. And so what can I control versus what can't I control? You know, it's like, well, there's certain, certain times I have negative thoughts. Okay, you with me? Like, think about that. When, when is the last time you had negative thoughts? Well, some of you are like, well, I had a negative thought about this person that just cut in front of me as I'm driving to work or whatever, right. Or, you know, that you, you take on negative thoughts. And I used to think that life was about completely eliminating all my negative thoughts as I elevated my consciousness and as I wake up more to my true self. And I realize now, no, that's not it. My brain is going to process. It's going to do what it's going to do. But my freedom comes from allowing it to pass through and allowing. If I have a negative thought, I no longer hang on to it. I no longer have to grab it and build a, you know, build a little container for it. And I don't have to build it its own house. And once I get another negative thought, then I'm going to make it a duplex and another, and it's a four plex. And the next thing you know, I've got an aplex. Now I'm an apartment building owner because I have all these negative thoughts and I store them all in my brain and it makes me flip, flipping crazy, okay? So when you take a step back and you go, all right, I had a negative thought. Yeah. So what? It is what it is. Let it go. I don't have to own this. I Don't have to. And you go, yeah, but Kenny, I want to be able to control. That's where a lot of the pain comes in. A lot of pain comes into our lives because I'm trying to control something that I don't have control over. And when you think about like, I can certainly now, don't get me wrong, I have control over training my brain, okay? So I can do certain things. I can meditate, I can journal, I can, I can, you know, have affirmations. I can use cognitive behavior therapy and catch myself and re. You know, restate what I want to be rather than the, than the behavior that I, that I just exuded. Like all those, like, and, and I work with all of those modalities. Like I, I personally use all those modalities and that still here and there. Here comes the thought. Now understand just several short years ago that most of my life was that way. I was this professional motivational speaker and I was speaking positivity, trying to change my own life and I had all this baggage and all these negative thoughts coming and I built a great life. I mean, I found my soulmate during that, you know, a period of my life of understanding who I am and different things and we started building a life together. You know, I'm grateful for all of those things. I'm just here to shed some light for you that just because you have a negative thought here and there or a lot of negative thoughts depending on where you are in your walk, it's okay. They're just thoughts. It doesn't define you. It doesn't make you a bad person, it doesn't make you a negative person. If you go looking for them, that's a different story. Okay? Now that's where drama comes in. That's where the ego comes in. That's where I want to be smarter. I want to know more, I want to be better. I want to differentiate myself from everybody else in my team, whatever that is. And the easiest way to know, and guess what? I mean, we're in the human business, right? So regardless of your trade or regardless of what type of blue collar company you operate, you are dealing with people first and foremost. Then you have a product that you sell and people do interesting things and they do self sabotaging things and they do team sabotaging things and they're all, all of us are just trying to deal with our stuff and we use work to do so and so it shows up in all different ways, different forms and it shows up. I mean, the same person can show up in different ways five days in a row. And it's like, who am I dealing with here? They're just dealing with their stuff, and it's okay. So when we realize and take a step back and go, okay, if I have a negative thought, then that's not. That's not so bad. But what's not okay to me is when I go looking for that negative thought or I go looking to perpetuate that negative thought. I ended up forcing the, like needing to leave some toxic relationships after I got sober and got Claire in my mind and really leaned into my own authenticity and who I am and stopped putting on masks for people and trying to be somebody that I wasn't to fit in. When I stopped doing that, I had to leave some relationships I was in because they were toxic, because they were negative. And I found myself getting sucked into it. And, oh, the politics are doing this and the government's doing that. Yeah, that really sucks, doesn't it? That's terrible. That's. Hey, I'm not saying don't have an opinion. I'm not saying walk around out there all vanilla. But I'm saying work on what you can control. I can control my vote. I can control, you know, how I. How I structure my tax return for. To pay the least amount of taxes within the law. I can structure certain things like that, but beyond that, I'm not going to complain about things that don't matter. And most things don't matter. And I don't. I'm not minimizing your life situation. I'm not minimizing any of your business, Chuck. Challenges or struggles. I'm trying to create some context and perspective for you that, you know, when people operate from the ego, they drive negativity forward. And it's things that you can control, but you're choosing not to. You haven't heightened your consciousness level yet enough to where you don't do it. And I've spent a lot of my life this way. That's why I'm speaking truth to you. I did this. Don't do this. Don't do it to yourself. Don't do it to other people. Don't do it to the people you lead, for Christ's sake. Don't do that stuff and get aware of it. Catch yourself when you're doing it, and don't demonize people that just have a different perspective than you. It's not necessary when somebody's coming from the ego. You know how you know right away. Kenny, did you hear about Fill in The blank. And I say most of the time, no, I didn't. Why? Because I don't watch the news, I don't read the newspaper. I don't pay attention unless somebody tells me. I'm not totally off of, you know, online connectivity, so I'm aware my, you know, people. I'm not living under a rock, but I'm not going looking for negativity. If I need to know it, it's going to find me. And that's just how I believe. I don't need to know about every murder that happened today in the greater state of Arizona. I don't. I don't. I'm not minimizing it. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm not saying that it didn't happen. But I'm not going to give away my mental freedom to go search for that stuff, to feel crappy before I have dinner. I'll just choose not to. I did it for most of my life. Not worth it to me. Not going to do it. And when somebody goes, oh, did you hear about that? No, I didn't hear. Oh, you didn't hear. Ego. I'm operating from my ego, and I know something that you don't. And my ego loves that stuff. Stop it. Get away from it, release it. And realize, okay, can I control that? Yes. You can control how you show up with who you show up, when you show up, for how long you show up. You get to control all those things. What I can't control is what happens outside of me, what people do. I can control the training that I expose my team to. I can control the key performance indicators that I hold them to. I can control the accountability levels in the business and what my expectation is and how accountability shows up. What I can't control is what. How about just about everything else, right? I can't control what a client's gonna say yes or no to. I can stack the odds in my favor based on the training, based on the education, based on the team buy in, based on the execution. I can control some of that, or I can control my output, but I can't control their input. And there's a heck of a lot of freedom that comes there, my friend, when you, you know, what are you. One of the things I love to tell leaders, and I tell clients a lot, take 100% responsibility for every single thing that is yours to own and don't take a single bit of ownership for anything that's not yours. I highly encourage you to think about that. Take full ownership of everything. Every single thing that is your responsibility to own. But don't take any ownership that's not yours. So what does that mean? Well, Kenny, are you saying to let myself off the hook? No, I'm not saying to let myself off the hook. I'm saying don't beat yourself with a club when it's not necessary. That's what I'm saying. So we want to take full ownership. No, I don't buy victim mentality. No. I don't believe in a society that doesn't take responsibility for themselves. But that's ultimately all I can do. I can take responsibility for me and my actions and what I do and how I show up and where I invest and what I do for this business and my. In my family and the people around me, but that's it. Beyond that, they're going to do what they're going to do. Some family members are going to act certain ways, Some team members are going to act certain ways, and everybody's just fine doing that, by the way. We're all just dealing with our own pain, with our own previous trauma, with our own stuff. Put that in air quotes. It's our stuff we're dealing with. And I'm encouraging you. I'm. My God, my friend, I'm begging you to release the stuff that you can't control from driving you crazy. Because what happens, it runs a script in your mind. I had lunch with a buddy of mine that's going through a challenging time. He's in litigation right now. So he's involved in a lawsuit, and it's driving him nuts. It's eating him up inside, and there's only so much he can do. He didn't do anything wrong. In his perspective. He. He hasn't, like, violated. He hasn't done. Done, you know, any of the accusations or charges against him in this. You know, it's a business. It's a business thing. And. And he's like, why are they doing this, though, man? Why are they. They know they don't have anything. They know they're going to lose if it goes all the way to a trial. Like, why, dude, you're making yourself insane. Like, I don't know why. You don't know why. They might not even know why. Right. But what they do know is that they can control your mind a little bit if you buy it. And that's the key. That's where, you know, don't give away. Like I said, if a negative thought comes in, just allow it to go on through and pass by, without grabbing it, holding it, building it a space. Just don't go looking for it. Don't go looking at like, oh, my gosh, my past. I did this and I was so horrible, and I was a terrible. Hey, you made some mistakes. So what? You did some things. You're not a bad person. I don't believe anybody does anything intentionally bad. And you go, kenny, that's terrible. There's people doing horrific things today. They're doing it based on their own situation and trying to handle their stuff. And guess what? You and I run companies that every single day, people show up to our companies to deal with their stuff, Period. That's what everybody does. They go to work to deal with their stuff. And you and I are in leadership because that's how we deal with our stuff. And so when we call it out like that and go, okay, well, what can I control? My gosh, I got some negative thoughts. I'm not going to dwell on them. What is really, you know, what, what can I really control? What do I need to just accept? It's just how it is? There are certain things that I don't agree with in, in society, in life. Sure. There are certain taxes I wish I didn't have to pay. I don't, I don't agree with certain laws. Personally, I, you know, I used to want a lawless society until one of my mentors pointed out, like, you know, what if you took away all the traffic lights and all the, all the traffic laws? Yeah, that'd be kind of a mess, wouldn't it? You know, so laws are good, structure is good. But we have structure in our businesses. We have organizational charts. We have, you know, we have processes, we have standards, we have procedures. All those things are good. We just need to realize that once I put out that those are the things I can control what people do within those roles, I can't control it. I can influence it. I can offer it. I can create environments. Environments. But I can't control it. And if I'm gonna. If I'm going to beat myself up by not being able to control it, then I'm going to head myself to a padded room. And usually it doesn't end up being a padded room. It ends up being the bottom of a bottle or the end of a bong hit or the end, you know, fill in the blank of some sort of a narcotic or some escape mechanism that we're genius at in society. I was brilliant at that myself when I ran those, those programs. So, you know, it's a battleground out there and the biggest battle is what can I control and what can I control? I hope today you just had a chance to think a little bit. I want to leave you with three things as we, as we leave here today. Like you know, there's a big one. This is pretty deep and so I, you know feel free to shoot me an email or any follow up kenny the blue collarcoach.com or kennyennychapman.com either one. But you know the reality is how we, how we continue going right? Like when we, when we continue to show up in the way that we want. I want to leave you with three things. Number one, practice. You've got to get when you're, when you have ah, there's a negative thought, I hung on to it. It's so ah, I just realize it. Let it go, let it let just be aware. So you've got to practice. You've got to have patience. Number two and three, self reflection, contemplation, awareness, whatever that is. Look at yourself. Not for fault, for awareness, for pattern recognition, for understanding why you're doing what you're doing. Okay? So be mindful of these things. Practice things, have patience with yourself and up level your self awareness and before you know it you're going to realize wait a minute, I can't really control that. Why am I getting all jammed up over that? That's the thing. My happiness has turned to bliss in my life simply because I think this is one of the biggies. I've released it. I'm just not going to worry about stuff that I can't control. Doesn't mean I don't care. Doesn't mean I won't take some action to influence. But if I can't control it, I can't control it. And I spent way too much of my life. I got the little pit right down here in my gut. Anxiety. It comes from trying to man fears. Fear can be a good thing. I'm not saying don't, don't step out of your comfort zone, that's important. But don't trip out on things that you can't control and allow it to drive you nuts. Be mindful. It's a battleground. What can you control? What can't you control? You decide, go a little deeper. Challenge yourself a little bit on this. Have some fun with it. You're doing amazing my friend. I'm proud of you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for showing up. I would love it if you would share this with somebody. Just it's part of my creative work. It's what I do. I'm here to help you in any way that I possibly can. Until we talk. Make it a better than fantastic week, and I'll see you next time. Thank you so much. I honor you.