23. Don't Cry Over Spilled Mi—Saffron! How to Embrace Feedback and Act Now

This is another thing you just need to do, and that is act now. You're never gonna be 100% ready. It's not gonna be 100% perfect. You just need to act now, go with the gut, and figure it out along the way. My wife says this intro sounds like a conspiracy mystery, so I'll stop that voice and tell you this show is for you to get you on the track you want for your life. I'm gonna share encouraging educational content, hopefully entertaining, Wouldn't it be nice to be growing, constantly leveling up, and actually meeting that next level of advancement that you seek? What about not reacting, not being overwhelmed, and actually taking action in the moment to serve you and those around you? Well, these are some keys to directing your life, and I want to share them with you today. I'm Tony Suriano. 3 ideas today. 2 ideas you should really implement. 1 idea you should avoid at all costs. Welcome into this episode. I'm Tony Suriano. I'm your coach and I'm a film director, and I'd like to share some scenes today with you. So grab a notepad, a pen if you can retain these takeaways so you can start directing your life better. If you're driving, Don't close your eyes, don't write, just absorb. And when you pull over, if you have some takeaways, jot them down, journal, reflect. Here we go. First big idea is learn to love criticism. Gosh, I love criticism. Now, I remember years ago when I couldn't handle it, I would create something and show a friend or family member, and I give all these excuses and these disclaimers before I showed them. I'm like, okay, so just so you know, I did this and that. And that's why I did this. Okay. Are you ready to watch it? Because I didn't want to be criticized and I wanted them to make sure they knew I did a pretty good job, but I would probably miss out on a lot of lessons, a lot of growth. I quickly changed my tune and I stopped making excuses. I stopped having disclaimers. I just said, hey, can I share something I'm working on with you? I'd love your feedback. And it really, really, really helped my outlook, helped the project, helped myself grow as well. I also would tell them, hey, listen, I have a final product here. I'm not editing it. I'm not changing it. I'm not doing anything to it. So I would love to share it with you, but please give me some positive feedback on this. I'm just curious what you really liked. Because I cannot and I am not going to re-edit or do anything. But criticism, learn to put yourself into criticism. A little story that is relevant that has helped me so much, it happened yesterday. I just gave a rough draft of a speech that I'm giving coming up April 24th in Cincinnati. At True Theater, check it out. Would love to see you there. The theme is true magic. I'm going to be speaking there, telling the story. There's a few other people as well. It's going to be awesome. If you're in the area, come and see us. But what happened was I gave a rough draft speech to my support community called Toastmasters, and it was amazing because. I was able to just go in the room, share my story, share my speech, and all of them were writing their criticisms, positive ones, but also ones that will help me grow and shape and really prepare for this speech. And I loved it. At the end, they put their papers on my desk. I had I don't know, 8 to 9 different papers with different ideas and different takeaways, the positive and the ones that needed work. And I loved it. I felt just by getting those papers and reading them, I leveled up so much and I made distinctions. I made new discernments on what I should shift, what I should keep, what I should really, really push. I didn't even know it until one of my mentors said, hey, I loved it when you did that kick. I was demonstrating I am a martial artist, and I did it on autopilot. I didn't even plan it, and I did it. And I said, ooh, I like that. Yeah, that's fun. It's a little flash, flash move to get the audience to kind of stay engaged. So all these takeaways, and by putting myself in this criticism situation, I'm able to go to places I didn't think I could go. I'm able to see other people's perspectives I wouldn't have seen. And this is key. This is the number one big idea of today. I want to make sure you really resonate with this because anything you do, your career, your family, your friends, you can level up. Even if it's pretty good, even if you have a great family life, you can be a better family member. If your job's going pretty well, get some criticism. See your blind spots. See your blind spots. It's actually very hard to see. That's why you ask others to show you. But then once they show you, light bulb, you know where you need to work on, or you know what you need to keep doing. Because sometimes we do so many things, we actually don't know what really moved the needle for us. So I believe this is an excellent way to level up your life and to direct your life. Moving to idea number 2. This is another thing you just need to do, and that is act now. You're never going to be 100% ready. It's not going to be 100% perfect. You just need to act now. Go with the gut and figure it out along the way. If there are any Curb Your Enthusiasm fans out there, this is a great TV show. I love it. And one of the episodes had the main character at a dinner table with other family members and friends. And guess what? Something spilled. On the table. And a lady, instead of grabbing a towel to clean it up, she just said, somebody get a sponge. And then the main character, Larry, said, why don't you get a sponge? You're right there. And I just remember that so vividly because it's true. People will just say, hey, there's a problem. Ah, complaint. But they won't act now and just clean it up. Take care of it now. How are you going to make sure you don't get caught in the complexification of overanalyzation? I think that's a phrase I just made up. It sounded kind of good. The overcomplexation of the overanalyzation. Don't do that. Simplify it. Simplify it and act now. Sure, you want to do a little prep, you want to think a little, but just go act now. There's nothing better than acting now because that's how you learn the best. That's what I did after I prepared my rough draft speech. They called my name up and I just had to go. It was time. I put myself in that situation, so I had to act in that moment. And then I found out so much gold. Now here's the idea number 3. This is where you do not want to implement this. It's relative to that last little sponge story, but it is a common phrase you've heard growing up, but I changed it a little. Instead of don't cry over spilt milk, For me, it's don't cry over spilt saffron. Why do I say that? Because this morning my beautiful wife was making matcha tea for me and her, and she's new to this saffron addition. And this last month she's been putting it in. She's been learning about saffron and the benefits and what you have to do to prepare it. You need to put it in warm water, let it sit there for a certain amount of time. And then you dump it into your matcha tea. And this is what happened. I came out energized, as I do. She was probably in her nice blissful state. And these little glasses that had the saffron and the hot water in them, she was going to pick it up and dump it in. It seemed like it was ready. And I like to say it might have been my startling her. I don't know. But she She went to grab it, and then the saffron water spilled on the table. I was like, oh my gosh! Because I was so thankful she was making it. So my reaction was, oh, let me help. And I grabbed that quote sponge, and I started cleaning it up. But she was doing something great for me, and then it it failed. Let's just say in the beginning it failed, and it upset her. She wanted to do a good job making these matchas for a morning. And the idea here is don't cry over spilled saffron. And it works even better than milk because saffron is quite expensive. If you know anything about saffron, it can be more than, I think, an ounce of gold or something per ounce. There's something like that. It comes from Afghanistan and India and all these other cool places, but it's rare. It's hard to find or harvest. So don't cry over spilled saffron because it's just the moment of overwhelm. It's a temporary moment of overwhelm. I'm going to say that again. The overwhelm we have, the intermittent overwhelm we have, it is temporary. So we have to remember that. So don't zoom into it and think it's going to be forever. It's going to ruin the whole day. No, we must catch ourselves and say, you know what? Okay, I'm just gonna clean this up, put the extra little saffron leaves back in the matcha, and move on with the day. I felt so bad though, because she really, she had a nice display out and I was excited about the matcha. She was excited to serve it to me. And then just the beginning kind of went south. But it's okay. It was a delicious matcha. I still had a few saffron things to put in it, and it was great. And the reason why I tell you this is because every day you're going to have something that could overwhelm you or snap you into a negative feeling, and you can't cry over it. You just have to realize, oh shoot, this is what happens. Okay. Let me grab a sponge. Let me just grab a sponge and move on and have a nice sip. Those are the 3 things. I hope you enjoyed it. Learn to love criticism. Put yourself in the position for positive criticism and feedback. Don't cry over spilled saffron and act now. Something spills, grab a sponge. Those are the 3 things. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you implement this. And if you like this episode, please share it to the world. I'm looking to share this podcast as often as possible to grow it and get other people directing their life like you are right here, right now. Thank you so much. Also, please do me a favor. Go to the Apple rating and review section. Leave me a review. Tell me what you think. Tell me the best takeaways from the show. Share why others should check this out. Yeah, I think that's a great way to do it. this show out. It would really help immensely. I thank you so much in advance. It helps more than you know. I appreciate it. Again, I'm Tony Suriano. I'm here for you 2 times a week, Mondays and Thursdays. I really hope that you enjoy the rest of your day and get out there and direct your life because it's precious and you deserve a great one.