82. Balance or Harmony? You Choose!

Foreign. Hey, my friend. Welcome back to leadership in a nutshell. For the home service professional, I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. I'm super pumped to be with you as I always am. Today. I'm coming to you for episode number 82, Balance or Harmony? You choose. That's a big question we have, right? What's this balance? What's harmony like? I spent so much of my career and my life, I should say, of just seeking balance. I was always told I was out of balance as a young entrepreneur. I'm working too much. I'm not spending enough time with my family. I didn't have a family of my own per se at the time. But I would get kind of guilt and shamed for not showing up on time for family holidays because I was on call or I was in the truck and I was trying to build a business and I was trying to do certain things and I wasn't in balance and I need to find balance and all these different things. I'm not here to defend or say that I was in balance or there's no way I was in balance. I was a young entrepreneur. I just launched my business. Many of you had just launched a career. Some of you are launching a new level, whatever that is. And as driven minded leaders, we've got to kind of take a step back and go, well, what does this mean to me? And that's what my goal is with today's episode is really just to get you to ask yourself some questions because here's the reality. You, yes, coaches can help you. I run one of the top coaching organizations in the world for the trades and home services. Yes, coaching matters. And at the end of the day, what you do with that coaching is all that matters. And you finding your own recipe for success is the ultimate thing that matters. And so when we think about a driven minded human being and we think about balance, generally, they don't go hand in hand. And so I'm going to talk to you for a few minutes about balance and then I'm going to wrap up today talking a little bit more about harmony and kind of getting into where can you maybe find some harmony? So I also, you can certainly go back and find previous clips of mine, times. I've been on stage over the last 20 years as a professional speaker, books I've written, I'm sure I've referenced balance all kinds of different ways and eat a balanced diet and have a balanced exercise program and have balanced communication and your relationship and have balance between debt and cash or whatever it Is. I don't know. Right. Well, here's the reality. What matters to you? What's your own balance DNA, if you will. What does that mean? Yes, most people are running like crazy. The human body is simply a package. It's a container of sorts. And I want to talk to you about when we get too far out of balance, there's some dangerous things that can happen. But let me ask you a question. When is the last time you think you were truly in balance? And just answer that to yourself and just kind of ponder for a moment, maybe contemplate like when was I last really in balance? And what did that look like? What did it feel like? Well, it probably looked very good and it felt very good. As a driven minded individual, maybe for a moment. Why? Because if I quote too balanced. If there's nothing going on, then what is going on? And we think about the airplane analogy of if, if I'm flying across the country, we've got a lot of our team lives in Florida. HQ is here in Arizona, in the Phoenix market of Arizona. So we board a plane in Phoenix and our Phoenix staff is going to go see our Florida staff and we get on this airplane and we take off and we're flying that airplane. Being on track is completely out of balance. It's hardly ever on track. It's hardly ever in balance from what the GPS says the route it should exactly be on. Why going back and forth, it's off the line, it's on the line, it's over the line, it's crossing the line, it's back and forth. Oh, there's turbulence, there's ups and downs. Oh, whoa. It's so bad we can't have our drink service. Holy cow. All the flight attendants need to sit down. Whatever it is, right? There's all these things, you know what creates balance? Does a blizzard create balance? I'm not sure. Does 120 degrees in the summer in Phoenix create balance? I don't know. Does you? Working 60, 70, 80 hours a week for bursts of a period of time, project moment in the business, create balance. Argue with me. Of course not, Kenny. No way. There's no balance here. I would agree, probably not. There's no balance in 120 degrees or 30 below. But is there harmony when we think about the greater good, what everything needs with the different things? Because just to offset that 80, 90 hour week that we're running, run project going now. You got to pull back though. You've got to give yourself space. You've got to peel back and go Hang on, wait a minute. Let me find some relaxation. Let me see where I can find what the world calls balance. I'm going to call it harmony. And so when we think about the human container of the human body, why do I seek balance ultimately anyway, what is it that you're actually seeking? I talk about there's always a question behind the question. And as human beings, unfortunately, many of us spend our entire lives as seekers. And we're seeking the next thing and we want the next thing. And the next level of success is going to make me fulfilled and the next relationship is going to make me complete and the next zero in my checkbook, hopefully that's a zero after a number one or two or something. Not a zero, zero in the checkbook, but the next zero. And sometimes, guess what, the zero when you go bankrupt, sometimes that's exactly what you need. And so when I you, what am I seeking in balance? Maybe the better question is what are you seeking more of? Or what are you seeking less of? Many times when we start striving for balance, it's number one. It can be a social thing and there's a collective consciousness right now in our world that's completely out of balance from perception and division and unity. There's all kinds of things of we're arguing with each other at unprecedented levels, we're canceling each other's beliefs and thoughts and different things, and we're killing off history. Whether it happened or not, I don't like it. So let's remove it, whatever that is, right? I'm not here to have any of what's right or wrong. I'm just stating what's happening right now. And there's a lot of division. So I ask you, are you seeking better mental health? Are you seeking to reduce stress? Are you looking to increase fun, passion, enthusiasm, some different categories like that in your life? I would assume so. Right? It's what I call emotional regulation. In the life mastery work that I do with clients, one of the main things we focus on is emotional regulation. And so there can be a shit show going on outside in this terrible crazy thing. It can be 120 degrees outside in Phoenix, but it's 75 in my house or 72 or 73. I like it a little warm, so maybe it's 75 in my house and you want it 73, but I'm not feeling the 122, 125 degree sun that's beating down on the roof tiles of my home. Right? It's my own sanctuary. And you get to do that with your life. And a lot of times that comes from the harmony, right? And so when we kind of look at this and we take a step back and go, well, we're leaders in business. Why we spend this time together on this podcast is because we're leaders and we're thinking about our thinking, and we're, you know, helping guide people and lead strategies and implementation and thought processes. And actually, we turn into psychologists at times and help our team members with various personal challenges and relationship challenges and financial challenges. All of this while we're executing our own exploration of creativity, our own elevation of consciousness as leaders in this human experience. And so I want you to think about balance or harmony. You choose. And you know how often you've been in balance to this point in your career. And again, I'm not telling you what to do. And please give me a comment. Shoot me an email. I'd love to hear from you. What are your thoughts around balance and harmony? I think it's an interesting concept, and one of the reasons I wanted to bring it to you today is I've realized how much I realize that I'm finding myself. I'll get out of balance, not for long, but for moments in time where I have a project coming. I'm in the middle of a book project right now. I'm completely out of balance. When I'm working on my book, I'll work days, hours at a time, and then I take a break from it, and I get completely away from the manuscript, and I don't talk to the editor for days at a time. Is that balance or is that harmony? I like to think of my life as not a pursuit of harmony as we wrote in the American Constitution. One of the biggest problems I think that happened with our founding fathers is we wrote early on the pursuit of happiness rather than the expression of happiness. Why are we constantly pursuing happiness? Why don't we just allow happiness? Why don't we accept happiness? Why don't we be happiness? Because we're out of balance. Because we're seeking the next thing. Because I need my line extension. Because I need to add this trade. Because when I add this next human being, when I have the next position, when I add the next truck, when I add the next million, whatever that is, is that going to be it? Or am I going to find a new way to get out of balance? Perhaps? Hmm? What if harmony might hold an answer for you, my friend? When you think about the word harmony, what comes to mind? I picture, like a conductor of an Orchestra and waving hands and all the instruments playing at the same time and coming together to create this perfect harmony. We think about it in music or singing where, you know, the different voices. I remember as a kid, my dad would sing in the, not the choir, he'd sing the hymnal or whatever, as we were just in church. And dad would always try to go down and hit the low notes. I would laugh at him. And I don't think, I think he knew he couldn't hit the low notes, but he was trying to find some harmony because my mom and sister would be up at the top of the range and I'd be sitting there. Can you hear me? See, that's what I was doing in church. I was acting like I was singing, but I wasn't singing. I was lip syncing. That's what we call it now today when the professionals get busted by acting like they're singing. That's what I was doing in church. So everybody else trying to create harmony, right? We think of harmony in colors. And I already mentioned in church, sometimes it kind of can come through in religion too, of harmonies. One of my favorite kind of definitions or explanations of harmony comes around the concept of really harmony is a pleasing combination of different parts. And when I think about harmony like that, I think about our business experience, our life experience, our leadership experience. And when I'm in harmony, I've got a good pleasing combination of different parts, different aspects, different community, different perspective, different beliefs, different reading, different listening, different understanding, different education platforms. There's a lot of different combinations of things that are coming together. And I believe that creates harmony. And I believe that right now where we're at in the world is a place of probably the opposite of harmony. And I would say that means that we're out of balance too. And today's episode, I just really wanted to ask you some questions and get you to kind of think about your own balance. Is there an area that you need to address? Are you spending enough time in your intimate relationships? Are you paying enough attention to your kids? Perhaps most importantly, are you investing in your own self care? Are you making time for yourself? You can be completely out of balance. Work 60, 70, 80 hours a week. And if you have a strong ritual where you get up and you exercise and you put some positive mental food into your mind and you do a mental download and do some form of journaling and you do some mental introspective or prayer and do some meditation practice. If you mentally set an intention for your day and then you go out in the crazy world of 120 degrees or 30 below, whatever your choice is, and you're completely out of balance and running crazy in meetings and all these different types of things. But you're emotionally strong enough to catch emotional regulation throughout the day and be mindful enough to know why you're doing what you're doing and catch yourself when you're going out of presence and being sucked into a collective agreement with insanity. How does that make you feel? Maybe it's not about how many hours you're working. Maybe it's not about how much time you're spending doing certain things. Maybe it goes back to the quality. Maybe it comes back to your choice. And one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this topic today is to ask you this question. Are you happy? Are you truly happy? You're alive at the greatest time in history? Sure, there's all kinds of breakdowns happening, and I was just talking with our team here in Phoenix this morning about, you know, different platforms of economy breaking down, political breaking down, there's some religious structure that's being challenged, the higher education system's crumbling. It's the greatest time in history to be alive. And you can challenge me on that, and that's fine. I just choose to believe that I'm here at the right time for the right reason, with the right people, playing the right game for the right amount of time. And because of that, I choose happiness. Sure, I've chose a ton of pain in my life, my friend, and that's one of the reasons I choose happiness today. I might be out of balance. I might be out of whack, I might be crazy as hell. You can call me all those things. That's fine. I probably represent all of them. But I'm in harmony because I have a lot of different pleasing combinations of things coming together and that makes me happy. And I would encourage you to stop looking at the world's definition of what happiness is, what harmony is, what balance is. Don't take anything that I've said here today to be truth. Take it as an inquiry to yourself, to your own self reflection, to your own self freedom, and continue asking questions like this. Are you happy? Are you passionate? Are you enthusiastic? Are you having fun? And if you answer no to any or all of those questions, my friend, the time is now. It is your time to change it. There are all kinds of opportunities and ways the Blue Collar Success Group exists to help you do those things. I'm here for you. There's all kinds of information out there. There's all kinds of areas for you to get the help that you need. Don't go at it alone, but start asking yourself better questions. One of the best questions you can answer is are you happy? And if you can't say yes, guess what? There's no amount of money, there's no relationship, there's no amount of religion, there's no amount of anything outside of you other than your divine connection that's going to help make that happen. Balance, harmony. It's your choice my friend. I'm Kenny Chapman, your host of Leadership in a Nutshell. Super grateful to have you. Please refer this podcast to somebody kick them over a link if you would give us a rating, give us a review, give us a like depending on the platform you're on. I want to thank you. I love hearing your feedback until we talk my friends. Make it a better than fantastic week and we'll see you next time. Cheers Sam.