The "I'm Ready Now!" Podcast
Ideas to help you when you're ready for change.
The "I'm Ready Now!" Podcast
EP 11: The Language of Actions (Louder than Words)
Ever wondered what is louder than shouted words? In today's episode, aptly titled "Louder Than Words," we explore the silent yet powerful language of actions in relationships. Drawing from Dan Miller's wisdom in The Rudder of the Day as well as my own experiences. Dan's shares the power of watching what someone does and not hearing what they say to draw conclusions about who they really are.
Also, I share personal anecdotes about the small yet meaningful gestures I make to show love and commitment to my wife, like opening doors and crafting handwritten letters habits that started in our courship. These actions, filled with humor and warmth, underscore the importance of ensuring our deeds align with our words.
Finally, Dan Miller challenges us to reflect on our own silent actions and what they say about our character.
Welcome to the I'm Ready Now podcast Ideas to help you when you're ready for change. I'm your host, isaac Sanchez, here. I share my musings on whatever it is I am reading at the moment, as well as any other ideas that I believe will help you break free from a standstill in your thinking in order to get you dreaming again. Thank you for joining me today. Well, I'm ready now. How about you? Excellent, so let's get started. Hello everyone, welcome back to the I'm Ready Now podcast. I am your grateful host, isaac Sanchez. I say that pretty much every time, and I mean it every time I see your downloads. Host Isaac Sanchez, I say that pretty much every time and I mean it every time I see your downloads, and it means so much to me that you return to hear what I've learned about how to approach change and that you might just find some use for yourself in what I have learned. So that means a lot to me. It really does. I'm especially grateful to be experiencing cooler weather today. We have moved away from the triple digits I was complaining about last week just last week and we're back into double digits, meant for Southern California. That's why we pay so much money around here Too much money. Actually, the high around here was 73 degrees, so that works for me. It does look like we're moving back up to 93 degrees exactly a week from today, but even that works. That works, I'm good with that. So it's going to be gradually dropping soon here, in the near future. So I'm going to keep the complaining to a minimum. I am so happy to have you here. I appreciate it so much.
Speaker 1:Let me again go through a couple of common communication bits I share here. First, remember there are chapter markers on this podcast, so if you want to get straight to the content and use those markers to skip right ahead, no harm, no foul, I understand. Also, in the description of this episode there's a link you can tap that to text me. I'd love to hear from you to get your feedback on the podcast, or to hear from you about topics we're addressing. Or even you can email me at IsaacSanchez at Maccom. Let me know what you think we should be talking about in the context of change and I look forward to hearing from you. So, what's up in your world?
Speaker 1:For me, I'm going to talk about mechanical pencils. Yes, mechanical pencils. Yes, mechanical pencils. I have a thing for these mechanical pencils, um, and I remember first using them in my high school mechanical drafting class with Mr Hamner. I remember him even today. I can, I can just see him in my mind's eyes, a really cool guy. Um, I don't know that I used mechanical pencils before that. I just don't recall that and I don't recall that I really cared too much for them soon after that class or high school. I just know that we use them to work on the machines, the tables there.
Speaker 1:I was a musician, also in high school. That carried on through college, of course, in my life. But at that time as a musician I preferred pencils because I would just be marking up my music sheet, turn around, erase something and keep going. I would use the 0.5 lead, always a soft lead. I then graduated to 0.7. Somewhere soon after that I discovered 0.9, because I'd keep breaking 0.5 and even 0.7. I thought 0.7 was amazing. Then I discovered 0.9 and then I just went bonkers when I discovered 1.3 lead and 2.0.
Speaker 1:Now 2.0, I have those pencils and I don't use thema lot. When I do use them, I use them on my digital camera in class because the students can see it better. But my 1.3, I like it a lot because, same thing, it shows up nice and dark when I'm marking papers, doing notes or illustrating some point on the digital camera in Classroom. But yeah, so I just I have a thing for them. I've kind of settled on 1.3, and I just love the way they write. When I'm kind of keeping notes for myself, I'll use that. Love the way they write. When I'm kind of keeping notes for myself, I'll use that. When I have to go to my calendar, I'll end up dropping down to 0.9 mostly. So I don't know.
Speaker 1:I love mechanical pencils and I was this weekend going through them again and just kind of sorting them out as I was going through my bag, sorting them out and make sure I had the lead for the different pencils, I didn't want to get caught without lead in the classroom teaching. So, yeah, I love my mechanical pencils. I'm looking right now at a bunch of yellow pencils. I just bought some of those for myself because I still do use those. I'm looking at a pencil sharpener on my desk. So sometimes, just a quick access, I'll use those, but most of the time it's those mechanical pencils with tons of lead. So yeah, that's what's up in my world. What is it that you love, that you just kind of overuse or spend money on because you just love these things. I'd love to hear what it is for you. Maybe it's mechanical pencils for you too, or maybe different other kinds of pencils.
Speaker 1:I know pens. I haven't gotten into pens, but I know some folks that absolutely love their fountain pens and other types of pens. So a pen? So I haven't gotten into that yet, but maybe mechanical pencils is the gateway drug to getting into pens. We'll see. It hasn't yet and I've been dealing with mechanical pencils for years, so I'll stick with the pencils for now.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's transition into our topic for today. Today's topic is louder than words. I asked a few questions last week, really strange questions. I'll repeat them next and then we'll dig in to find out. What do they even mean? All right, louder than words.
Speaker 1:Dan Miller wants to talk about that in this commentary section of the Rudder of the Day, his book that we're going through, and he first kind of points out, opening up this section, that he talks about creative strategies that people have used to get to know someone, particularly in interviews. So those questions I mentioned last week why are manhole covers round? How many barbers are there in Chicago, if you could be an animal, what would it be? Do you put salt on your food before tasting it? And how about this one? How clean or not is your car inside and out? So Dan Miller starts off by sharing these questions that have shown up in interviews when the interviewer is trying to know the candidate better. So that's the idea behind these just trying to get away from the stock questions so these specific questions can change, of course. The point is that the intent is, as I mentioned, to get away from the canned answers that come with canned questions. You know that group of questions that someone will study when they know they're going to go into an interview. So Dan says that, because it is said that 55% of communication is nonverbal, some interviewers favor interview techniques that will allow body language to be analyzed and assessed.
Speaker 1:He brings up JCPenney, who had his own infamous strategies. I used to shop at JCPenney, at least with my mom. I might have as a young adult myself. So what did JCPenney do? He would take potential hires out for breakfast and if the candidate put salt on their food before tasting, boom, interview over. I hope that he finished the breakfast with them, but anyway the interview was over, because he would see that that person probably makes decisions without having all the evidence. Interesting JCPenney would have hired me. There's no way I'm putting anything on my food without tasting it first. Taste the food. There is one exception salads. I put a bit of salt and pepper before eating my salads, so maybe he wouldn't hire me.
Speaker 1:Dan also goes on to mention a gentleman named Jeff O'Dell, a former CEO of August Technology. He mentions. So O'Dell would invite candidates out to lunch and the twist is this he'd asked them to drive, and the reason for that was he wanted to see how organized their car was. He claimed this was a good indicator of how organized the rest of their life was. Now my wife had heard about this when looking for tenants to rent to, and the advice she heard was walk them to their car to see how it looked, even from the outside. So okay, so I would probably not pass that test. I'd be homeless today.
Speaker 1:I absolutely enjoy a clean car. I really do. It's wonderful the smell, the look of it inside and out, everything. But I just I end up tolerating a mess, you know, for too long. It may take me several days before I cleaned that up. My wife has a wonderful habit of taking trash out of the car as she exits. I should take my cues from her. We have discussed around the house, just as an aside, like you know, trying to keep the house as clean as possible, because she loves that and I do too, but that as you exit a room pick up one or two things, or fluff the pillows and put them where they belong on the sofa little things like that. So I do love her habit. I'll just see her grabbing trash and put them in a little bag or something as she exits the car. Okay, so back to Odell.
Speaker 1:Odell also looks at casual conversation from the candidate at the restaurant. If they excel at that, he'll learn a ton. Do they smoke, do they have a family? And he says that it's a way to learn the personal side of things and that doesn't come out in a formal interview. So that reminds me. I've not done this for a couple of years, but it does remind me of just. You know, I love my walks and for a couple of years I was taking my freshman students on Friday for a 15-minute walk, the last 15 minutes of class on Friday. We'd take a walk around campus and, man, it was wonderful to see conversations students would have with each other. I'd end up with some great conversations with students that would just they would just not happen. There's no way they can happen in the classroom. Sometimes it was those quiet kids walking on their own and so I'd walk beside them and just start asking questions and just learn some wonderful things about them, and I've just not done that for a while. I need to do that again, I believe. But anyways, odell's strategy here really reminded me of that that there are certain instances when you will learn more from someone. Moving them in a different environment, a different context, you're able to get more out of them.
Speaker 1:Moving on, in this commentary this week, dan talks about some of his strategies and he shares some others as well. So he says that he too would often ask clients for lunch. He wanted to see how did they interact with others, how do they treat the wait staff? And this one's interesting Do they attempt to pick up or avoid the check? These are all great. I do love seeing how people treat other people Really really important. I love that I had this similarity with Dan Miller here, because I think it's just crucial watching how people treat others. It's a big deal.
Speaker 1:Dan goes on to mention, in terms of dealing with these strategies, a gentleman named Dave Hall who's a principal at Search Connection at least at the time of the publication of his book and this gentleman would place want ads without the company phone number. And so what his thing was was he's looking for candidates who would bother looking up the company phone number. That was a filter right there for him. And beyond that, if he doubts the candidate's viability, he asked them to make a follow-up call. So, in other words, if they made it past that, they looked up the number and they did an interview, they reached out, they had an interview, but then after the interview he doubted them a little bit. He'd have this other check to check their viability, and what that was is he'd asked them to make a follow-up call. Now, once they did that, then he purposefully would not return their first three calls. So again, he was looking for someone who would be able to persist through a million rejection calls when recruiting.
Speaker 1:The responsibility that they would have in working for him try to get uncanned, I guess we can say, responses from people to see them in a different light, to get more out of them than just being in an interview session, just kind of getting them to drop their guard a little bit. So you know it's incredible. You look at all these, and these interview techniques do set up a candidate's actions to speak louder than words, which is what Dan Miller is talking about here, so they get to see the behavior as they are talking. Now, of course, as we mentioned earlier what Dan was talking about, you do listen to some of the things that they're saying. You learn about them, but the key for all of these was what is the behavior of them? What are they doing, rather than what they are saying?
Speaker 1:Finally, this reminds me of my own experience with when I was dating my wife, before we were married and we just met and I just really knew that I wanted her in my life. I was just hellbent on making sure she will want to marry me. So what do I do? She will want to marry me, so what do I do? Well, when I began dating her, I set up a self-imposed system to demonstrate to her and to myself when my words were not as worthy as my actions, in other words, when my actions would speak louder than my words. I wanted to show things I wanted to do, things that would demonstrate consistency of how much she meant to me and that I was showing her through these actions. I really want you to be my wife, and so a few of the things that I did is I consistently brought her flowers. From the first day that we met, I brought her flowers, and I would consistently do that over and over again when I would see her at least every week, and we did start seeing each other pretty much every week. So I brought her flowers.
Speaker 1:Starting from that first date, I consistently opened doors for her as we were leaving the house. Of course she had to open her house door when I first got there, but opening doors and closing doors for her the car doors I opened them up for her and I wouldn't let her get out until I went and opened the doors for her. And there was a reason for that was it actually came out afterwards where this was a real score for me because you know, she'd been living on her own for a bit of time and so she was driving herself around opening doors for herself and she had made that comment and she didn't know how much that meant to me to know that she just had to sit there, as I can serve her in those different ways, so that was another one consistently opening the doors for her. This became quite a joke in the family A few times where her cousins would take her somewhere, or family members, she'd be with family members and she'd be in the driver's seat. So whenever she would go off without me, she'd expect her sisters, cousin, uncles, anyone who was with her, to open the door. So they'd wonder why she's still sitting in the car there after we got out. So she'd stay in the car until someone would open the door for her, because she was so used to that and she would, of course, would have fun for that, and they would have fun by making sure they'd open the door for her. So everyone got a laugh out of that, but it was out of something that I've established.
Speaker 1:I also began the habit of sending her handwritten letters. After our first date I went home and I just like man, how can you make a mark to let her know that she matters to you? So I sat down. I remember throwing myself from my bed, getting my stationery and writing a handwritten letter to her. Now, this was a habit for me, because I do this for my children and every once in a while I'll do it for very few others, very, very few others. I've done it every once in a while for my siblings, but it is for my, it is. I do this for my kids special occasions, their birthday, new Year's, other times I just want to encourage them or I see something going on, so I'll write a letter to them. So, anyways, I just knew, yes, write her a letter. So I sat down, wrote her a letter Again, score, that meant so much to her. Now I'm not talking about a card, hallmark card or something. This was just blank stationery that I would buy. I would go by the store and have the stationery on hand and then I'd write letters on there to people. So I just pulled it off my bookshelf and started writing to her. So I began that habit and would continue to do that.
Speaker 1:Now here is a point on these. When I started on these, when I started these actions, these things to demonstrate what my words were saying, I knew that in the beginning of the relationship, when all is beautiful and just wonderful love is in the air, that if I eventually started to fail at these things, at these actions, I would feel awful because these were done at a time when I desperately wanted her to see that my actions were supporting my words, and so I wanted her to see that I can be an amazing husband and life partner for her. I wanted her to see that I can be an amazing husband and life partner for her. So today, if I slack on these things, it's an indictment that my words are louder than my actions. That's just the opposite message I wanted to send her. So you know this means a lot to me.
Speaker 1:When I went through this commentary here already a couple times, you know it came to life as I started my relationship with my wife before marriage. I wanted to again. It was purposeful. As I headed to her house I was making mental notes. What can I do to show her at the beginning that I really am interested in her and set up this standard that if I started to fall away from it, it would be evidence that my words are becoming louder than my actions, rather than my actions supporting the words that I'm saying? And she has just said it's a big deal. It matters to her. It was a neat thing. It was a wonderful thing that I set up and I've caught myself and she's brought it up a few times, rightfully so.
Speaker 1:We have a wonderful relationship and where we both knew we would share certain things and say, hey, we used to do this, we're not doing it again. We fully understand that there are seasons in relationships and some things, quite frankly, would be kind of immature if they continued past these different stages in the relationship. For example, one thing would be how you know, I would see her once a week. We lived about an hour apart and I would come to see her. But once we're married, we're living together. So there's just kind of certain things that change, because now in marriage, the relationship is much more intimate, we're living together, we see each other every day, those sorts of things. So we've learned to give each other grace on that. But the key is, it still remains that our actions need to be louder than our words, and so this again is what Dan Miller would have been talking about here today is louder than words, right, are our actions louder than our words? Are they demonstrating something that support what we're saying? Then, yeah, that works out and that's what we're going for here, all right, so let's find a way to apply this. So let's move on to see how can we make this work in our everyday life. So you know what that means. Let's go pen to paper, fingers to screen or voice to text, whatever works for you. Mainly, let's act on what we're learning today. All right, so here we go.
Speaker 1:If your life was a TV or YouTube reality show but there was no volume and there were no words, a type of silent film of the old days, how would your character be described based on your interactions, based on your actions, for the viewer? Now here's how Dan Miller poses the question and here's the question that we're using for wrap up. I'm going to take it a little bit step further, but here's his question what message would your life send to those around you today if you didn't open your mouth? Okay, what message would your life send to those around you, your actions, what you do? What message would it send today even if you didn't open your mouth? Now I want to encourage you to take his questions a few steps further by rotating it through a variety of roles you play in life Same question about you as a spouse or a partner, or as a parent, as a friend, as an employee, as a leader of others, etc. You fill in the blank of your different roles For me as an educator, so answer the questions for each of these, okay. What message would your life send to those around you today, even if you didn't open your mouth?
Speaker 1:I keep referring to this book because it's so influential in my life the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr Stephen the late Dr Stephen Covey, where he talks about beginning with the end in mind. So, in other words, whatever you want them to say, start doing the things today. That would get you there at the end of your life is what Dr Covey says. He asks that we kind of pretend that we can see our own funeral and these different people come up our children come up, an employee comes up, a parent comes up, a friend comes up, our spouse comes up to speak about us. What would they say, based on our actions? So this is what I'm doing right here for you and it's an important. I remember that first time and I've gone through it several times. That little practice means the world to me because it's just so blatantly truthful.
Speaker 1:They're going to say something and what they're going to say is going to be based on what you and I did not what we said. Yes, certain words will last the notes that I've left to my children. That text will be there, but will my actions support it? What I've said to my spouse? Will my actions have supported things I wrote in the letters? Will my actions have supported that? Okay, so work this question through those different roles. I think that's going to be very, very beneficial to you.
Speaker 1:And again, do not beat yourself up if there's somewhere where you find yourself lacking. Be grateful that you came across this idea today and that it woke you up to decide I need to change and I could start changing today, bit by bit. Okay, that's what we're looking for to apply what we have done today. Hey, if you don't like the answers you're writing, then it's a perfect time to change. Be grateful that you still have time to rewrite your story in order to send the message you want a life story that is lived out, with actions that speak louder than words. Let's get on making that change today, if we need to, all right.
Speaker 1:So what are we talking about next week? How about this? If it ain't broke, break it. Wait what I've heard the saying if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But this? Well, that's right. If it ain't broke, break it. That's what Dan Miller is telling us to think about for next week. So, with that in mind, go find your hammer, because we're going to need it next week. We're going to make a bit of a mess.
Speaker 1:All right, let's move on to the quote. Here's your quote Don't think about making art. Just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art. That comes from Andy Warhol. All right, that's it. That's the quote. Think about it, act on it, have an amazing week and thanks everyone for hanging out. I appreciate it. Let's do this again next week.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. If you found this time together useful, please consider following this podcast and leaving an excellent rating. If you feel you can't do that yet, please reach out to me and let me know what I can do to get you to leave a top rating. If you are already excited about what you've heard, please consider sharing this podcast with a friend. I really would appreciate it. Also, I'd love your feedback, both on today's topic as well as what you'd like to hear me address in the future. I would really appreciate that input. Again, I'm your host, isaac Sanchez. I hope today's thought serves you the way it has served me. Remember your next move is just one inside away. Have an amazing rest of your day. I'll see you next time.