7. TRU strength

Strength isn't only expressed in how much you can bench press or how well you can handle test-taking stress in college.  Strength can also be expressed in being kind to someone when they aren't kind to you.  It can be expressed in showing concern for the one office person that the rest of the employees shun or talk bad about.  

When life surprises you with an opportunity to respond to someone harshly, how often do you exhibit the strength to resist that temptation?  How do you even begin to train such a muscle?

Find that out as Jason breaks down some key tools from his own experiences that can help you to experience TRU-Strength in your day-to-day!

Chapters

• 0:08 Strength in Facing Selfishness and Ungratefulness
• 10:01 Committing to Personal Progress

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

you. Greetings, hi and hello everyone. My name is jason pizzi flair. I'm a speaker, I'm a podcaster and my life's work is centered around allowing the world to meet the true you by helping you think, speak and eventually live better than yesterday. We do this, first, by establishing a good reason why, a strong and powerful motivation to keep going when the going gets rough. Second, we need awareness and acknowledgement of what's holding us back. And third, we need scalable steps forward as a reliable bridge between who we are right now and who we need to be tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that and the day after that. This, my friends, is how you go from stuck to thinking as, speaking as and living as the true you.

Speaker 1: 1:15

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway. What you spent years building, building, someone could destroy overnight Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget. Tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give the world the best you've got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway. It was never between you and them anyway.

Speaker 1: 2:35

The original version of this poem called the Paradoxical Commandment was written by Kent M Keith in 1968. While this altered version of it is credited to Mother Teresa. They both carry the same primary idea. My interpretation of this idea is the notion of both knowing and doing good purely for the sake of doing it, because it is good to do so. Now, why do we even bother with emphasizing that it is important to do good anyway? My response to that would be a question of my own. Is there even a point to that emphasis? If doing good was always easy in the first place, I would think not.

Speaker 1: 3:13

So to break all that down and simplify these thoughts and concepts for easy digestion, today we will be talking about true strength and what that sometimes looks like when faced with an ungrateful world or selfish people. Before I continue, though, allow me to make this one quick point. This isn't about pointing the finger at people around us just for the sake of telling them they're bad. Maybe this doesn't apply to a tasteful and distinguished individual such as yourself, but I know for a fact that I've had, and occasionally still have, moments where, counter to the moral code that I follow, I think speak or act in a very selfish or overly self-serving manner. That's it. We may not be pushing weights in a purple gym, but I'm trying to keep this a judgment free zone, if you know. You know.

Speaker 1: 4:11

So let's start and end by plugging in our personal growth trio. I mention it in every intro you need a strong why, a powerful motivation to keep going. Next, you need awareness of what's preventing you, or what could prevent you, from doing what you need to do or being who you need to be. Then we wrap it all up with two simple words scalable steps. That's it.

Speaker 1: 4:40

So for your why, only you can really determine whether or not a particular reason is good enough. Does it motivate you? Does failing to live up to it disappoint you? What are the stakes? Simple example someone whose diabetes diagnosis was a wake-up call will hit the gym a little differently than someone who's just trying to look good for the summer. It's not about one reason being good and the other being bad. No, it's about digging deep enough that, whatever your answer to the why question, you give yourself no room for excuses. I remind you of our previous, one of our past mantras, if you want to call it, that we let our excuses die so that our potential, our future, our true self can fly.

Speaker 1: 5:35

Moving on to the second point, what's holding us back? Why is it that when someone puts us in an unfair situation, we find it near impossible to be kind to that person, to be patient with that person, to give grace to that person? Is it just because of that one isolated act, or is this situation perhaps an unwelcome echo of past hurts or traumas that are left unaddressed and is therefore still an open wound? What is holding us back? Do we have some rigid bad habits that got developed in a time where we needed to protect ourselves, but now that we are no longer in danger, those very same habits that kept us alive are now choking us to death, because that can happen. You know A simple example in the military.

Speaker 1: 6:21

It's no secret that harsh language and charged words are often used in either conversation or the many times aggressive issuing of orders. During my time in the Navy, I didn't always have the pleasure of dealing with leadership that gave me the warm and cozy words of encouragement that remind me or that reminded me of my strengths and the fact that I was a name rather than just a number to be told what to do. Sometimes I got the people who couldn't care less what my name was, they just cared about getting the job done Well. I won't always condone going about it that way. I cannot deny that the occasional no-nonsense mentality is absolutely necessary in an organization that so often deals with life and death situations. I dare say that to claim otherwise likely means you've got a bit more life to live, a bit more world to see before you get it.

Speaker 1: 7:19

Anyway, my point in bringing this up is not to say that I'm a military drone with no feelings. I very much do have feelings and sometimes I did not like how I was spoken to. But I had to develop the ability to hear unkind words with a stone-faced determination to execute, regardless of how those words made me feel. I'd built that habit then because it was needed in that season. Cut to my life now as a civilian, and whether it's with family or friends, I occasionally have to hear something Difficult, some difficult stuff that doesn't always feel great. Although they don't contain nearly as many expletives, if any, they still don't feel great.

Speaker 1: 8:04

So I've done myself a major disservice many a time by defaulting to my old programming of stone-faced listening and cold execution. It used to be how I protected myself. Execution, it used to be how I protected myself, but now it's what causes the person I care about on the other end to feel unheard or even dismissed altogether, to feel that I'm unengaged. I've decided that that no longer needs to hold me back. It was a useful tool, so I'll keep it, but it needs adjusting so as to not send the wrong message to those I interact with. Does that make sense? Last but not least, scalable steps. Scalable steps, not just steps. Scalable steps. Since point number two is a bit long, I'll keep this one short and sweet. If you guys want a more fleshed out version, then be on the lookout for some bonus content coming out in the future. But here we go.

Speaker 1: 9:01

This cheat code is also something I learned from the military that has served me very well. It's called pprs. Ppr stands for pre-planned responses. I also like to think of them as pre-practiced responses. Planning is good, but practicing those plans is even better. Simple example, drawing from point two whenever a friend or family member says or does certain things that make me feel quote unquote not great, I have certain PPRs that I've practiced, things that allow me to not just express my emotions but also to properly communicate them, because there's a difference, guys. That's important, but that's a whole different episode. This was important for me to personally create some phrases that I could practice any time I thought to because I'm naturally someone who is used to avoiding confrontation, like the plague Hashtag recovering people, pleaser. Yeah, that used to be me.

Speaker 1: 10:01

Find things that you can either do every day or every week or every so often, that take you closer to your goal of acting like the person you know you can become or, at the very least, if you don't know you can become that person, dream of becoming that person and try to become that person, and don't you dare screw this up by holding yourself back with a bunch of self-deprecating talk of quote unquote not doing enough or not being disciplined enough. By the way, I'm talking to myself as well, because I've said that many times about myself. We aren't at the stage where doing enough is our goal. We will get there, but that's not now. Right now, you need to just commit to doing something. That one step already begins to separate the you now from who you used to be. And that's what we're after in this season Progress, not perfection or even optimization, just progress, something, anything more than yesterday.

Speaker 1: 11:09

Dr Martin Luther King Jr said if you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving. Those aren't the words of someone expecting change overnight, and you shouldn't either. Those, my friends, are the passionate words of someone who simply wasn't willing to settle for the way things were. Are you willing to settle for the way things are in your life right now, or do you maybe think it's time to start thinking as, speaking as, and living as, the true you? Thanks for listening.