Grit Starts At Home

The difference between a fragile follower and a future leader often comes down to one habit: perseverance built on safe, real-world reps. We dig into how parents, mentors, and teens can trade helicopter control for a clear framework that creates strength, not dependence. From setting boundaries around effort and rest to knowing when to step in and when to let natural consequences teach, this conversation is a practical guide to raising resilient people who plan ahead, communicate early, and own the outcome.

We start with the pressures today’s teens and adults face—always-on feedback, social scrutiny, and the fear of public failure—and then map out tools that actually help. You’ll hear why perseverance beats simple resilience, how to use a “safe to fail” check before intervening, and what micromanage-then-release looks like when skills are new. We share real stories from the NJROTC classroom and field: tough workouts that build confidence, uniform days that sharpen standards, and debriefs that turn bad grades into better habits. Along the way, we tackle device accountability, the role of faith and purpose, and the courage it takes to ask for help before the deadline hits.

By the end, you’ll have a straightforward loop to use at home, school, or work: plan, communicate, execute, debrief, adjust. Validate emotions but refuse to be led by them. Create space for kids to try, stumble, and try again while signaling exactly when leaders must step in for safety, bullying, or irreversible consequences. If you’re a parent ready to step back or a young person ready to step up, this playbook shows how to build the muscle of perseverance—one honest rep at a time.

If this resonated, subscribe, share it with someone who needs the nudge, and leave a review with the one habit you’ll put into practice this week.

https://www.wordsfromthewise.net/

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Purpose
• 2:07 Grit, Perseverance, And Preparation
• 5:55 Modern Pressures And Mental Health
• 9:55 Teams, Relationships, And Support
• 13:20 Letting Kids Fail Safely
• 17:18 Micromanage Then Release
• 21:05 Boundaries, Rest, And Quality Work
• 25:20 Emotions, Consequences, And Ownership
• 30:15 ROTC Stories: Fitness And Standards
• 35:30 Failing Forward And Choosing Growth
• 39:10 When Leaders Must Step In
• 44:05 Phones, Trust, And Accountability
• 48:20 Debrief, Repent, And Move On
• 52:10 Closing Takeaways And Next Topic

Transcript

Gary Wise : 0:00

All right, everybody. Hey, welcome back. Gary Wise, Words for the Wise. Uh, really appreciate everyone coming back to the podcast, dialing in, looking at the YouTube channel, listening to the sound of my voice. Really excited to bring you another episode today. Today, we're going to be talking about how parents, or really people in general, that can help to raise strong followers and develop them into be the leaders they need to be to take charge of their lives going forward. And particularly, I'm talking today to parents, really, and of course, to my young people, my students, teenagers, young people that are going into, I would say, adolescence. What can you do to level up as you come through your teenage years and hopefully not get lost on track? Uh, again, who am I? I am still Gary. I am a retired United States Navy Master Chief. I am a high school Navy junior ROTC instructor. I am a believer in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I'm a dad, I'm a husband, uh, all these things. And I'm somebody that wants to help you hopefully work with your family, work with your people to find the things you want to do in this world and then accomplish them. Right. And today we're going to be talking about again, how can I help you lead, guide, train the people in your lives to have the strength they need to not quit, to see it through to the end. It's an important part of the process. And I will tell you, one of the things we need we need in this life is grit. We need strength. Uh, as a as a reminder, our goal is to become your mentor's favorite podcast, right? That's our goal. And for today's inspiration, I want to remind parents uh have an open mind. We're all figuring this out together. You know, my oldest son is 18, my younger son's 11. They're both different human beings, different people, different challenges. All my students, you have to approach it all differently. So, not everything's gonna work the same for every individual. But today we're talking about stepping up back. How can parents step back and give their young people a chance to find strength and to find success? And then how can we inspire for the young people that are listening? How can we inspire you to step up, take charge, take control of your life? Uh it's hard to let go, it's hard to raise gritty, perseverant, tough, tough followers. And a big piece of this is giving them the chance to fail and to learn from this, and to not hover, right? To not be this hovering parent that is there saving their kid from all kinds of challenges, and it's something we need to work on. Um, young folks, how do you level up fast? How do you build real strength? And how do you take responsibility for your life, your choices, and your journey? This is something that we're going to talk about today. And look, I'm guilty of it. When I was a teenager, I wanted to take responsibility for my life, but I wasn't prepared to do so, and I made a bunch of bad choices. And so we're gonna talk today about how you can hopefully not make those same bad choices, but work with your parents, work with your teachers, work with your partners in your community to help you find uh the accomplishments and the strength and the synergy, which means everyone's working together to help you find success. It's hard, it's not easy, but it's gotta happen. And I've seen the fallout at home and in the classroom when people unfortunately are not ready uh for the tough times, and that's the thing. The enemy always gets a vote. You don't know when the challenges are gonna be coming, and so you've got to stay ready, so you don't have to get ready. And this is one thing that I've learned with my cadets can you you can always be preparing. I'm 48 years old, and I you never know when a bad day is gonna come your way, it doesn't stop. And truth be told, I wouldn't want them to because that's life. Life is about highs, you know, highs and lows, smiles and frowns. Nobody would want to ride on a roller coaster that never goes up and never goes down. So it's just it's a flawed logic, hoping for a life that just never has a bad day. The goal is to be prepared for the bad days and make sure that you've got the energy uh to handle them and to get through it and to optimistically guide people forward because people are going to depend upon you, right? And you've got to look for opportunities for growth on both sides of this conversation, both parents and kids. So, why does why perseverance? For me, perseverance is the goal over resilience. I just hate always fighting from the place of reflex, right? When you when I think of the word resilience and that that letter R-E re, it's almost always post post the thing happening, right? Something happens, causes you to have to change your plan. So now you're going to re-re we're gonna react, you're gonna be resilient, you're gonna reflex. And while I appreciate that that those things will happen, I much more would rather have my people on my team be in a posture of persevere. We're not gonna always have to reflex or react because we expected things to happen that were contrary to our plans, and we already kind of had a plan in place for those things. And and to young people today, in particular, they face challenges that my generation we didn't face. We did, I mean, we had our problems, don't get me wrong. But when I was a teenager, we had payphones, we had beepers. Thank God we did not have social media 24-7, constant camera surveillance, cell phones in our pockets, always in our hands, tracking our every move. These are things that I just I do not wish on people. And while I do appreciate technology, I do appreciate uh a lot of the things that it helps to change in our world. I will tell you that there is a lot of pressure, and it's not just for the teenagers, this is for the adults as well. 24-7, getting pressure as to whether or not what you did matters. Me, me filming this content, putting it out there, and having the possibility of people that are going to hate on it or appreciate it or value it. Now, the reality is that's always been there, it's always been there. People have always had an opinion, and and that's fine. It's just it's different when it's up in your face, right? And again, ladies and gentlemen, if you're going to put yourself out into the world of leadership, be prepared for people to have an opinion. Comes with it, comes with the territory. Now, there was a survey done recently that shows 40% of high school students, so two out of five students are unfortunately saying they're persistently sad or that they're they're possibly feeling hopeless. And and that sucks, right? That sucks. And the question has got to be what are these kids not looking forward to? What is it that's causing these young people to feel that way? And oh, by the way, I will tell you, it's not just teenagers, adults have the same challenges. What's worse is so you when you're a teenager, you've got the possibility of your entire future in front of you that you could go out there and conquer the world. What do you do when you're 35, 40 years old, and the life you were hoping for has not uh played out the way you wanted it to play out, right? That's those are tough, tough, tough times to consider what you're doing with yourself and what you're doing with your time. And what I would suggest is that we all have got to deal with the anxiety and the depression uh of the world that we're living in today. Now, there's ways to combat that, and that's what we're gonna talk about today because ultimately there are way too many things to be excited about in this world, but you've got to be tough and prepared for the downtimes and understanding that we are all in this together. None of us are alone. You should have some people in your corner, and if you feel like you don't have people, you need to work on that. You've got to develop some relationships or you've got to repair the relationships that you've already have to ensure that the people you you that are there for you are dialed in. You know, I I not nobody can do this alone. No one's gonna find success without a team. Do you need a big team? No, you do not. You do not need uh a crazy amount of people, but you need a few. You need a few people, and you need to know what you want to do to change your situation. Perseverance is not something you're just born with, it's something you've got to build every day, every moment, every win, every loss. And you've got to learn that a setback is just an opportunity to rebuild and go forward again. And and when it comes to my children, to my students, to my my followers or people that are on my team, I it's okay to let them fail. If you shield people from every failure, they're never going to build the internal strength and fortitude that they need to battle through it when you're not there. And that's one of the things that does keep me awake at night. You know, I love my people, I love the people that I serve with, and I worry what are they gonna do when I'm no longer around? So, how do I prepare them for that unfortunate reality? Because we're all living to die. I prepare them by letting them go through the experience of sucking it up and not giving them all the answers all the time, but instead providing tools to help them to go ahead and heal and work through hard things in a space that's not crazy, right? The reality is if you come through a world of zero scar tissue, you're not gonna be prepared for life. You've got to get some muscle memory that's going to support you when you get into these tough times. And I'd rather see somebody failing at 15 or 16 years old than at 35, 36 years old. That being said, if you are a 35 or 36 year old that's coming through life and it's just not working out the way you would like it to work out, find some people that can give you some advice and some feedback that's going to really resonate with you, that's going to be the truth, that's going to give you some solid feedback, get a literal plan of how to move forward because evidently what you're doing is not working for you, right? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. So if you are an adult that is just not happy with where you're at in life, find somebody that's going to give you good advice, good feedback, and listen to them and let them support you and then get after it. Right? Get after it. Because you know, life is way too exciting to just not be proud of where you're at. And it's okay to be struggling. It's fine. It's fine. That's you know what that's fine. It's not okay to do nothing about it. Like the struggle is great, but making progress, working on your faith, you know, asking the Lord to love and support you and to guide you and to give you the blessings that you need to move forward and to hopefully recognize the goals and the visions and the dreams that he has for you, and then make a move, right? That's what you got to do. You got to be able to get back up and keep on pushing and to be okay with not being okay and letting people know that you need some help, right? Now, can we live a life that's too overprotected or too safe? Unfortunately, yes. You know, for as parents, we over we overprotect our people because we love them, right? We love them. We don't want to see them be hurt. I get it. I'm a dad. I don't want to see my students have bad grades, I don't want to see my kids struggle in class. Today, my son was playing flag football, and look, I'm not a tall human being, right? Five foot six standing here. Oh, that's who I am. My younger son is like me, and the fact that he's not neither one of my sons are gonna be six foot two. So when we get out there and we play, there are going to be challenges that people that are possibly taller than us are not gonna have. So what? Get out there and figure out the best way to make a play to be a positive contributor to the team and get over it because you chose to want to be on the team. And oh, by the way, you're really good. Just you've got to be good at playing your game. You cannot worry about living a life that's being played by other people's rules. And as parents, while we're overprotecting or as leaders, while we're overprotecting, what we're failing to do is get getting our people to learn what the rules are gonna be for them, what are their boundaries gonna be, what are their high points, what are their low points, what are their strengths, what are their weaknesses? They gotta figure these things out, and unfortunately, some of that they got to learn on their own. Failure is not the end of the world, it's really not. It is just a chance to learn where you need to improve. You cannot always have somebody coming in to save you. Now, you can have people that'll come help you because you've requested the help, but I need you to understand that not everything is gonna require someone else to help you. Sometimes you gotta help yourself. Uh, you know, it frustrates me when I never hear from a parent at school until a kid gets a bad grade on something and then they want to react or overreact to a grade, but the challenge is their question is not always, how did my child get in this position? Right? Um, typically there's there's a lot of there, well, not a lot of not all parents are going to be aligned with the correct frame of of thinking. No, a lot of them, I will be honest, they shoot me an email, and the question is, hey, Master Chief, what did Johnny do to result in this grade? Is there something I need to know? And I appreciate that. Um, a lot of times I'll be available for like these conferences or for these meet and greets, and nobody will show up. I'll just be sitting there, minding my own business, and no parents will come through. And I know I'm in high school, so sometimes parents are less involved. But then I've also been across the table from people screaming at me, basically telling me that I'm I'm a horrible human being, but they have they do not want to know what their child could have done differently because they come into there so defensive. And I learned this in the service, there's always three sides to every story, right? And you have to figure out what is it you don't know. Now that's life in general. If I look at my child, like they can do no wrong, but they're not meeting the expectation of an educator or a coach or a family member, a boyfriend or a girlfriend or whoever it is, and they're going through a tough time, instead of just immediately telling them, Well, oh, baby, there's no way you're ever wrong, maybe we need to look at this and think about what's really going on and how do we process the decisions that got us to this point, right? And I'll tell you, if your child is late on getting homework in, if your child drops the ball on a responsibility and you're always rallying to get it fixed for them, that's a bad habit to create. Now, if your kid's in third, fourth grade, that's that's different, right? If your young person, my younger son is in sixth grade, I'm still all hands on deck helping him get through things because we're just now learning in middle school how to take responsibilities for certain things. By by the time your kids in high school, they should be pretty much in the driver's seat of their education and of their day-to-day. What's funny about this, though, is when I was in the military, I would get these young sailors coming out to me in the fleet, 18, 19, 20 years old, and I would expect my leaders to be very involved in their day-to-day because they were essentially starting over and figuring out life. And so they had to get a lot of touch points, they had to get a lot of mentorship, there had to be a lot of direct, intrusive leadership, until they achieved a little higher position within the organization to have a little bit more independence. That's how things go. So people will build trust, people will show resilience and strength, they're gonna show that I've got I've got the understanding what I need to do, give me some independence. And independence, in my in my opinion, that is a good thing, that's a reward because you're proving that you can do things without me always micromanaging you. And you know, that's micromanaging is one of those things that I'm not afraid of. As leaders, if we have a responsibility for this young person or this follower to be successful, if micromanaging is what is required, then manage that micro, right? Until they prove that they don't need you there. If there's trust, they're not gonna mind the micromanagement. If there's trust, if there's not trust there, you've got bigger problems. But if you're unfortunately always swooping in to save your people, what they're gonna start to think is they're unfortunately really helpless. They're gonna start to believe that they actually can't do the thing without you being there, and then you're going to build an expectation that you're always gonna be involved, and that's not going to make them feel stronger. That's gonna unfortunately make them feel weaker, or it's gonna cause them to not want to be there any longer because at some point we all want to grow. You know, we are animals, right? Humans are animals, we're going to grow, you're not gonna stop it. We have got to mature. We're like plants, right? Everything in this world has a life cycle, and we have to grow. And when growth feels stifled or development feels like there's being blocked, there's going to become frustration, there's going to become uh anger, and at some point, there's going to become a problem, right? A conflict. So you want to allow help them grow while providing spaces for them to grow into as you're developing them. And that's why I'm a big fan of mentorship. And I love leading, don't get me wrong, leadership is a big part of my life, but I love to lead through mentorship if I can help it. Coaching is another way to look at it. Um, and I I love putting my people in spaces where other people are coaching them besides me because it shows that similar perspectives by different people that are all finding success means they must all have the right idea. And and and away and away you go, right? And you have to understand that taking responsibility for the situation you're in is always going to be the most important part of what's whatever you're working through. If you do not take responsibility for your part in the process, you're gonna be frustrated because you can't control what other people are going to do next. You can only control the role you're going to play in it. Now, you might have people that are directly under your responsibility matrix or that it's your job to tell them what to do. And hopefully they're gonna listen to you. But in my opinion, especially as you're getting started and whatever, and pick your organization high school, military, a job, for the most part, you are at the bottom of the food chain and you. You do not have a lot of people to blame or to ask to do the thing. Typically, that's going to be your job to do what's asked of you. And you can either be a person who's frustrated and complains about it and is always just griping, or you could be somebody that gets out there and makes things happen in their under their own power. And that's the place that I would always operate from because it's a lot more fun to work for yourself in that regard. And that is you understand the task, you understand why you're doing the task or why you're doing the thing that you're supposed to be doing, and you have a goal in completing it. Again, if you're feeling helpless because people are stifling your growth or they're always coming in and taking care of things for you, you do have an obligation to push back. In my opinion, you have got to have that conversation with mom, dad, leader, older brother or sister, auntie, uncle, grandpa, grandma, uh, manager, whoever it is, to say, Hey, how about instead of you always just doing that, how about giving me the space to try to get that on my own? And then if I can't get it done, can I come ask you for help then? You might be very surprised for them to say, Well, thank Lord. I've been hoping you were gonna say something along those lines. And then, parents, if you're tired of always going in and saving your kid, maybe you want to ask them, Hey, why are you not able to get ahead of this, man? Like, why am I always having to be the one that swoops in to help rescue you from the pits of failure, the jaws of failure? Uh, how can we better improve that? Because in the future, I maybe I'm not, maybe I'm gonna let you fail. And I've me and my wife have had that conversation countless times. You're right. We we've talked about it so many times where I would tell her, like, look, let them fail, let it happen. Do not be afraid of that failure. That's how they're gonna build that grit. And we wanna we want to not let that failure break you, but you gotta take the loss sometimes. And so here's the framework that I use at home, and it's pretty simple, right? It's simple for you to apply, simple for your kids to apply. Uh, the first question is going to be if I'm telling you or if I'm if you're thinking about should I let my person fail? You know, it's my son, it's my daughter, it's my follower, it's my whoever. The first question is the failure safe, right? Is it the end of the world if this thing happens wrong? If they fail, will it wreck their permanent record? Are they going to be hurt physically? Is there a long-term mental health challenge if they fail? If if the answer is no, if there's no real lasting problem, let it fail. Let it fail. You know, let's let it play out. Step back. Step back. Young people, if you see the failure coming, right? Why don't you if you see the failure coming, when are you going to freaking step up? If I'm a if I'm a person that I I do not want to fail purposefully, right? I don't believe anyone does and say, and look, we all have to deal with challenges day for day, pound for pound. I've got a I've got a whole bunch of things that I want to do in this world, and if I fail, I'm not gonna be able to provide for my family. I maybe I'm not happy with the outcome or the consequences or the results. So, how do I prevent failure? I'm always actively working, assessing, collaborating, communicating, and talking to people. And when I set my to-do list, right, because this is not just my visions or my goals, but these are things that I'm going to actually do, I ensure that I plan them appropriately and I've got the resources and the training and the people that I need to get it done. But if you see a failure coming your way, again, if I'm a mom or a dad, I'm probably gonna let you fail if this is not really going to be a significant impact. If I'm talking to my kid though, and we see you're gonna fail, I might ask, hey, uh the failure's coming. Do you see the train wreck about to happen? What are you doing about it? And who are you communicating with? Because, in my opinion, typically all you need to do is communicate with people. At least you see the failure coming, and here's my concerns, and here's how I would like to address it and start working the problem before the failure hits. That's proactive, and that's a strong place to operate from. Now, you might want to document the lesson learned as to how do I always get into the position that I'm in the red zone and I've got to be proactive and I've always got to work, you know, under pressure. And some people like to be in that space. Personally, I don't, but I'd rather that be a bit ahead of the problem. Vice, you missed the deadline, the work is late, you completely lost the sight picture on whatever's going on, and now you're asking for forgiveness. That's a bad place to be. And in my opinion, consequences can need to play out. Natural consequences need to play out. And as parents, I know we always want to slam on additional consequences. Trust me, we do it in my house, right? We do it in my house. If if you miss enough deadlines where your metric and the grade drops below a certain letter, there are consequences that suck in my house. Now, typically, you get to that certain letter grade, which is below a C, right? In my house, you get there because you've had consecutive failures and managing your priorities and your responsibilities. But once we get to that mark, things get to be real sucky real fast because those are consequences that me and the mom have and the students, my children, have agreed upon as our consequences that are going to be on top of the consequence of having a C or having a lower GPA. Right? But I don't try uh to have to put additional consequences on everything right away. I want there to be a natural consequence so they can learn to understand what that feels like. On the reverse, uh, when I was in the service, I felt this way, and I and I will tell you that I feel this way when it comes to my regular life, is I believe in making mountains out of molehills so we never have mountains, right? I will treat a failure like it can become catastrophic because if you don't convince me otherwise, then I'm going to go to the parameters of, oh my God, you are not taking care of your responsibilities. How many other things are you not doing successfully? And what else do I need to worry about? Now, it maybe it's typically not that serious, but I want them to assess their situation because what if it is? Right. And you know, I nothing was a worse feeling than when I, as a teenager, was in trouble with the law and my parents could do nothing for me. Right. I remember that feeling. I remember being a young teenager in trouble, and my parents could not take me home. There was, I would go, I would be very, very sad if my young children, if my sons ever did something that I lost the ability to bring them home. That would be tough. And then I would have to really pick apart how did we get to this point? Because it's it's almost never going to be just because one day, because of one decision. There was going to be a trail of decisions that got us to that point. So, so that I never get down that road, I will take the the first little data points of possibly going down that road, and I will make them feel almost catastrophic to the point that you will never want to be in that place again. And then as they get older, and as unfortunately the consequences do become more real, I will less overreact, I will more support, I will more teach them how to work through it and give them the space to be gritty and to be strong because ultimately I'm not going to be able to be there for them in the long run, and they've got to be able to handle it on their own. But when it starts, when you first start doing this, be involved, be involved, but understanding depending upon where your young person is in the in the conversation, you've got to approach it a different with different mannerisms, right? I will definitely treat my 18-year-old different than my 11-year-old, right? Um also, I would notice, or I would like to know if you start recognizing people are not meeting their expectations, if they're not meeting their deadlines, uh, are you finding out about that before it the grade? Are you finding out about that earlier than the consequences are hitting the radar? Or are you only finding out after the consequences hit the radar? If you're not finding out till after the consequences are already hitting the radar, you may not be as involved as you should be. You maybe you should be a little more involved. And my wife and I, we feel that way, you know. Part of the consequences that come from like my older son uh having these bad results is now we're way more involved in your in your Kool-Aid, right? We're way more involved in your day-to-day operations, we're we're way more involved in what you got going on now because you caught us slipping and a few of these consequences hit, and we didn't see him coming, and now we care, so you got us back on you, and that's not a place he wants us to be. I don't blame him, right? I don't blame him, but this you know your mom and dad, or you know your leadership. This is what's going to happen as a direct result of your failing to follow through on your responsibilities, right now. Another thing for me is be the debrief partner. You know, I'm a I'm a big believer in planning, executing, right? Briefing and debriefing, right? So plan it out. What's what are we going to do? Let's brief everybody on what the plan is. Let's get out there and execute how we said we're going to execute, and then let's talk about it afterwards and make sure that we met our expectations. As a partner in this life, as a leader, as a manager, as a parent, as a whoever, I want to be a part of the conversation with you as to how we failed this. Right? And if you could convince me in that conversation that you understand what went wrong, you understand how to fix it, and you actually can can convince me that it was just an honest mistake, that's a win. That's a win. That's a win. So as you're getting to the point where you want to get delegate to them more responsibility for their lives, instead of always bringing the consequence slammer, right? Maybe just be that debrief partner and help them to figure out what's going on as they as they move forward. And and then remember, there's the whole, okay. So now, so what? Right, what happened? So what? Now what? Now what are you gonna do about it? And if they've got good plans, let it go. Let it go. Let's see how it plays out. Give them the opportunity to get out there and work the plan. Maybe even set, hey, let's talk about this again in four or five days and go from there. Um, please, mom, dad, leaders, you've got to be the ones that guide the conversation. A lot of times, young folks are going to are going to just say whatever they think they gotta say to get you off their off their their case, right? And it's not just teenagers, it was the same thing when I was in the military with adults. The sailors would do whatever they could to get out of work for the day. So they would tell you whatever they needed to say. And look, it didn't mean they were trying to lie, they were just not trying to tell you that there was more work to be done, right? Um, because typically that's what people hear is there's just more work. There's always more work. We have got to be strategic with our day-to-day planning. There's always more homework, there's always more studying, there's always more training, there's always more things you could do to work to improve your situation, but sometimes you just need to take a break. Sometimes we need to call it done, right? I don't think I need to tell my son to read for five hours a day. That becomes ineffective, right? I think there needs to be a point where they can only do so much work, and then at some point they need to be given the ability to recover, to decompress. And I understand that people almost always need that permission. When I was in the service, I remember a time where I was always working so late. We had so much work to do. There wasn't enough people, there wasn't enough time, and so I was consistently working and seeing seven, eight o'clock at night. And eventually leadership brought me in and said, Hey, senior chief, that's too much. At some point, you guys are going to not be successful. And from now on, if you want to work past a certain time, we need you to better communicate with us what's going on. And at first, I resented them stepping in and giving me that that that boundary. At first, I just thought, why don't you trust me that this is what we're doing? I was a young senior chief. I mean, at the time I'd been in the Navy 12 years, 13 years on an aircraft carrier, getting ready for major inspections, just doing our best to survive. And I was super proud of the work my people were putting in because we were putting in the hours. What I learned was it's not always about the hours you're putting in, but the quality of the work you're getting done within the hours. And when I was able to tell my people, like, hey, from now on, we're not working past 430 as long as we get these certain things done on time, and we will then let the duty section take care of some little other parts of this job, and we'll come back at it again tomorrow. Huge game changer because my people started getting the work done by 4:30. And what I learned from that whole thing was it was more about communication and actually having real deadlines and not just keeping everybody around until I felt comfortable, like it was safe to go home. Fast forward, you know, to well, I'm where I'm a command master chief now and I'm on the ship, and I would go tell my commanding officer, like, we need to go. Like it is now five o'clock. We need to be walking off the ship right now. But but but no, no but nothing, sir. You and I need to leave right now so that we can get out of everybody else's way and so that they can have the ability to not worry about us. We have got to set the tone. You've got a duty officer, we've got people that are running their own things, we have got to go. And that was based off of the training that I had learned as a young senior chief. And to this day, that's still an important part of my leadership philosophy. It is give your people time and space to not always be working and support them as they decompress and re and recoup for the next day. And I do that for my kids, I do that with my with my spouse and I. I do that for myself, right? I do that for myself, and I recommend everyone does that for for themselves. You've got to be able to not have people always feel like they can never stop producing. Okay. Um, one of the things I also would tell you is that uh people are going to be emotionally attached to the challenges they're going through. You've got to help them recognize that you don't need to be emotional about the everything. Right? You don't need to be emotional about everything. Having a bad day doesn't mean you're failing, it just means you had a tough day. And it's okay to have tough days. I hate when people have to make everything emotional because I think there's bigger problems there when that when that's happening. And so I would tell you just be wary of always using emotions as a way to possibly manipulate circumstances or yourself or whatever you're going through. You know, I I see young people especially just love to be upset. And I don't mean that they that they are enjoying it, but sometimes people like attention, sometimes people want they want people to share in the emotional turmoil, maybe they want some pity, uh, maybe they want to have some grace, maybe they want to get out of something, so they're looking for some sort of emotional connection. And what I will tell you is, mom, dad, don't fault for the emotions. The kids don't try to always use the emotions. How did you get in this position to begin with? Okay, you're oh, you're sad. I appreciate that. Sucks to be sad, huh? That's it's called empathy. I'm sad too once in a while, right? I get sad too. My my bigger concern is how do we get to this point, right? What are we gonna do about it? And how do we prepare ourselves to not let this happen again? Okay, now stop feeling sad if you can help it, or go feel sad. I remember uh people would not make rank, or if I would not make rank, because I didn't always make rank first time up. I used to tell my my my team members, I'm gonna go home and be sad about not making this rank, but tomorrow I'm gonna come back at it again, right? I'm gonna give myself the day to be sad, but then I'm going to get out of it because I understand that I'm not going to move forward by continuing to wallow in this in this circle of this hole, of this pit of pity at this moment. And that's the thing. You've got to learn how to level up, how to own the pain, and then take responsibility for the comeback, right? Take responsibility for how you're going to move forward and be proud of that opportunity. Now, what you know, one thing I see every year is when kids come into the ROTC program and they're not quite certain that it's for them. You know, they they take the they take the class because they they think they think they know what it's going to be, or more often than not, parents haven't been involved in the conversation. Mom or dad wants them to get something out of it. Some discipline, some athletic involvement, maybe some exposure to a guy like myself, which is one of the, I mean, the benefits of the program are huge. Just having access to these career military people that have a different perspective from the other career educators, in my opinion, is a great thing. We're all on the same team. We just have different perspectives, right? And then, of course, there's the team building opportunity, there's the leadership development opportunities, there's the citizenship development opportunities. But the first part of the year, man, it's always interesting because there's about having to get your hair in regulations, there's having to get your uniforms issued to wear it for physical fitness training. They're seeing people at the beginning of the year not able to handle some of the pressure they're put under by the organization, by the upperclassmen, by the leadership. Because when it comes to physical fitness, at least on my program, we get after it. My students are freaking physically capable and they love to go outside and play, right? That's how I look at it. I look at our physical fitness training days like they're outside playing. We actually had a former student of ours come back to the program. He's currently a naval officer. He did he did four years at Vanguard. He was the commanding officer at Vanguard when he left the high school. He got a full scholarship to go to college and become a naval ROTC and to become a naval officer. So he comes back to the school to visit us one day to speak to the classes. And it's just so happens that this day we're also doing physical fitness training. And he says, Hey, Master Chief, after we're done with his whole speech, he says, You mind if I come out there and PT with you guys? I said, You're more than welcome to, sir. It's fine. Come on out. Let's go. They would love it. We had a tough workout that day. And I remember him just telling me afterwards, he was so impressed at how these kids got after it and how they continued to fight through the push the workout, and that he was very, very impressed of what they did. And I told him, I said, Well, thank you so very much for that. And oh, by the way, for us, this is just Friday, right? Every week, these students are going out there and proving through physical fitness and training that they can do hard things. That they can do hard things. And when they begin the year, trust me, that's a fear for them. They start off a very, especially when they're a freshman and they're 14 years old, they're very afraid of these workouts because there's they're legendary, right? These kids make them sound like it's almost like completing a nine-month physical fitness training course when you go through one PT session. And it's not that serious, but they make it sound like it's something big. But by the time they're juniors and seniors, they're pretty strong, they're pretty solid. And oh, by the way, the freshmen learn that week in and week out, they will improve. Now, the thing I tell them is if you're only getting after it one time a week, that's not enough. Right? That's not enough. So if you want to really improve and earn the recognition, you've got to do it more often on your own time. But at a minimum, show up that one time a week and do very good. And what I find it, what I find is that people actually, uh, those days are kind of what keeps them around the program. They like that those days a lot. The days they don't like a lot are the uniform days, right? But again, they learn how to properly wear the uniform, they learn how to get prepared for a day where you have to look like you came to play. You know, you have to look professional in this uniform and representing the entire organization, representing the entire program, and not making us look less than we want to than we want to look. And what they find is they can do it. It's not that complicating. Getting haircuts are not that challenging. And you know, some people at the beginning typically want to quit. I will tell you three, four weeks in, that they typically don't want to quit anymore. And what I ask from them, and it's the same thing I ask of my own sons, you know, is before we quit anything, we're going to really authentically try it, right? Because you're in life, you just if you're just quitting everything you try to do, you're gonna always never really see it through. And things need time to develop. So give us a month or two and we'll go from there. And what people typically find out is that they actually don't dislike it that much and they want to see it through. You know, when I was in the military, I'd get these new sailors to the ship and they they would be struggling at first, and they would be kind of trying to do whatever they could do to get sent back home. And I would tell them, like, you know what? I don't know what your reasons were for joining the military, I don't know what it was that brought you here. And if you want to go home, just keep making bad choices. You do that and you'll go home. But they wanted to go home without consequences, right? Just send me home now, Master Chief. No, that's not how this works. If you want to go home, keep making bad choices, and there will be consequences, and as the result of those consequences continue to roll in, eventually you will go home. But then I would tell them, I said, but oh, by the way, I have a feeling that by the time you start making all these bad choices and you start getting these consequences out along that road, you're gonna change your mind and you're gonna decide you like us and you actually want to stick around, and you're gonna find out you were just wasting your time being freaking disruptive, being rebellious, because it's really not that bad, right? And I appreciate that you've got your concerns, but this is just starting for you. Do not cut your opportunity short because you're afraid to just become a part of the team. Do not cut your opportunity short because you're missing home, or because your girlfriend back home is letting you go, or because you don't like the current weather and the situation you're in right now, whatever. Like relax and keep working on it, right? And you may find out that it's gonna work out for you, right? Now, uh fail early, right? Fail, fail forward and keep on working. And understanding that not everybody's gonna always want to see you win. Now, mom, dad, parents, we need to always communicate with our kids that we want to see them win. And oh, by the way, they don't have to always do what you think they should do, especially as they get older. That's a tough one. I think all of us remember being young adults and trying to figure out our life and having parents maybe have opinions. My opinion on that is if a parent wants to have an opinion, be involved in what's going on, being be involved in what's going on and be supporting whatever's happening. Because the minute they go out on their own power, on their own steam and they're doing it on their own, we've just got to be supporters at that point. At a minimum, try to be a part of that debrief, right? Hopefully, they'll come to you to talk it over, try to figure out how it went wrong and go from there. Also, maybe they'll talk it over with you about how it went right. Now, when do you know when to step in, right? Because there are going to be times. Uh you know, there's there's a there's a space between, you know, safe failure and real harm. And parents, we need to know leaders, that's what we need to know to come in. We got to help get involved. Bullying, right? If someone's getting taken advantage of, someone's getting mistreated, things are unfair, right? Or if there are potential for those things to be happening, then I think we need to get involved. If mental health is becoming a problem, we got to get involved, we got to get other people involved. The consequences have got to be something that we are recognizing are bigger than just a natural, you know, a regular challenge. For example, um, if my child is going to be permanently removed from an opportunity, I'm gonna want to have that conversation. It's a permanent removal. Now, if it's a temporary removal or there's a boundary put on them because of a consequence, I can deal with that. But if it's a permanent thing, I kind of need to understand what's going on. And I would welcome that conversation from a parent. I think also personally, at least in my organization, if I was doing a permanent thing to a student, I would reach out to the parent, I would contact the parent and say, hey, look, this is a I'm letting you know for me why this is happening and the consequence and how we got there. But then I will I almost I love a good comeback story. So I will almost always provide a path back for people on my team. But I also come from a place of I don't just get new people, right? You get the team that you get, you got to play the hand that you're dealt. And if you're a person who's always firing everybody on your team, you're probably never gonna get the chance to see your team fully developed. So I come from the place of I don't just fire people uh for no reason. And when it comes to your family, you can't just fire your family, right? And so you have got to understand why they are struggling with something and is it a choice for them to not find the success you want from them, or are they just not able to achieve it and what's the real problem there, right? I I my heart really goes out for parents who have adult children and they're going through really hard boundaries and consequences. I don't know what I would do if I was in that point. You know, I remember my dad and I, we used to really disagree on my younger sister. My younger sister had a lot of challenges in life, and and again, I was in the military, I was gone. But whatever I would call back home, she would always be living with my parents, with her kids, or whatever. And I would just get so angry for my parents. Like, why do you have to always have her living there with her kids? You guys are supposed to, you can barely support yourself financially, and now you're taking care of all these extra people. And my dad would just tell me, Hey, Gare, I love you, but it's not really your your concern, right? This is my role as a dad, this is my responsibility, and this is what I'm going to do. And I would struggle with that. We would just, we would not see eye to eye. Now, my parents have since passed away. My sister has unfortunately passed away, but now as a dad, you know, I think I'm almost always be there for my kids, right? I think I think I'm always gonna be there for my kids, and my hope is that I never get put in that position. But if I am, I would like to think that I would follow the example of of Jesus and God and always be there for my family and for my kids. Uh, and I think understanding that if it's if it's between my child being homeless or living with me, that's a consequence where I got to step in. Right now, it doesn't mean you're gonna always be as comfortable as you were, right? But you're gonna be welcome and you're gonna be loved, and we want you to know that you're a part of the team. And how do we get back on on top of our planning and move forward? Right. And and I think that intrusively coming from love, not from control, matters. You know, I'd say another thing is when it comes to these cell phones. Um, recently for the holidays for Christmas, I gave my younger son, my wife and I get my younger son his first cell phone. And him and his friends, you know, they're young, they're you know, middle schoolers, they're communicating on their cell phones already. They're me, and my son is one of the last ones to get a phone. All his other friends have had phones. He was one of the last ones to get a phone, and he was messaging with a friend, and I said, Hey, let me see your phone. I want to see the message, and he pulled it away from me. I said, Oh no, bro, that's not how this is gonna work. I want you to understand that this is this phone is my phone and your mom's phone. We're gonna let you borrow it with the understanding that whenever we want to look on this phone, we're gonna look on this phone. And the minute you start to think that that's not a reality or that you could be defensive about that, is the minute you lose this privilege because this is the phone that we're paying for, and we want to ensure that you're being safe and that you're not doing anything out of the wheelhouse of the rules that we put down for you. Period. Right. And that's that's what we're going to do. Now he wasn't doing anything wrong, but this was a boundary and a lesson that I needed to teach him very quickly. Now he heard all that when we first gave him the phone, but here we were, not even a week and a half later. And the first opportunity for it to happen and his reflex was the offensiveness. Gotta gotta lay that flat for my young people. If your mom or dad is paying for your phone, if they're paying for your internet, if they're paying for your privilege, respect them and appreciate that they care enough about you to keep tabs on what the heck it is you're doing. And if you're doing something that you know you shouldn't be doing, you are taking risk. And you know you're taking risk. And I hope they catch you. I'm not gonna lie, I hope you get caught because that's how some people need to learn, right? I don't mind people making honest mistakes, it's when people are purposefully doing things that they know are not healthy, hoping they don't get caught. And for my young people, you know, if you have a mom or the a dad or an auntie or a grandpa or an uncle or somebody that loves you and has the right and the responsibility and to to be on top of your, especially your electronics, I hope they're on you because that's a blessing. That is a blessing, and be appreciative of them for doing that. And I would highly recommend that someday when you're older, you do the same thing for your kids, right? No, I'm not saying every day needs to be overly involved in your electronics, but I think it needs to be something you need to be respectful of and be involved. Now, I've watched people fail safely my entire life. I love seeing people own their failures. I love people bouncing back. I love it when people say, you know, that was a bad grade on a test. This was a bad day of the game, this was a bad day with my relationship, or I'm gonna go ahead and let this relationship go because it's not healthy or productive. I love hearing uh somebody coming through a tough time, but then they're optimistic about the way forward and learning from the experience. It happens every day, and what we have got to do is help our our family members, our team members not shatter at the first challenge, right? So we need to provide the space for our for our people to work through their challenges and let them know that we're available, let them know that that we're here to talk. Young people communicate. It doesn't. I know you don't want to get the lecture, I know you don't want to hear all the words from your mom or your dad. But they're in it with you, they care about you, and they've got some experience. Perseverance is a muscle, you got to use it or you're gonna lose it. And I want you to remember, we're always fighting from victory, right? We've already won, we've already been given the blessing of being able to fix things that go wrong. But even when it comes to dealing with our father in heaven, part of that is we have got to talk about it. Part of that is we have got to be able to hit our knees and let let the Lord above know where we were less than best, right? Where we did not meet the expectations, what went wrong, how are we gonna address it? What do we need to be forgiven of it, and what's the plan to go forward, right? And again, that same cycle of repentance is applicable to everything I've talked about today. And then for parents and for leaders, we have got to be in the space where we can appreciate the the tone and the request and the honesty of what's coming to us and do our best to be supportive in that nature in that regard and help them through it. Uh, today, you know, was focusing the today words from the wise. We were focusing on both parents, young people, leadership, management, pretty much anyone that has a responsibility to mentor or guide somebody, or people that are working to improve their own life day for day, pound for pound. Whether you are a young person going through middle school, high school, whether you are an adult trying to figure out life and you're just struggling to make it one day forward. Uh, hopefully everybody gets something out of today. Uh, I want you to help one another. I want you to protect each other's hearts to the best of your ability, but don't rob each other of strength. They're gonna need it. You're gonna need the strength, and you got to learn you can do things on your own. You also need to know that you can have a bad day and your people will still back you up. I need you to own your falls, own your rises, don't be afraid to be gritty, right? Don't and when I say gritty, I mean that's that getting knocked on the ground, dusty feeling, getting back up. You got the stuff all in your hair, you got the muck in your mouth, and you're going to get back out there and not stop playing. That's the kind of gritty I'm talking about, not just the right foot creep gritty that I do around the classroom, right? Okay, I want you to own your journey, own your life, and I want you to help other people out in your in your circle of influence so they can own their own. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, that's it for today. Hopefully, you appreciated this, this commentary, my dialogue, me talking to you from the the words from the wise headquarters, which is in Ocala, Florida. And and I hope that some of the things that I said today can can can make sense, can hopefully help you out in your circumstance, whether you're a parent ready to step back, whether you're a young person ready to step up, if you could share this with somebody who needs it, I would appreciate that. If you could uh send me some inform a comment or two, let me know how how how it worked. I'd love to hear about it. If this was the kind of stuff you'd like to hear more about, let me know. Um the next time I do this is gonna be emotional intelligence, is what we're gonna be talking about. How can you and my my favorite way to phrase it is how can you be intelligently emotional? Uh, this is something that you don't typically learn about in school. And I well now in my program we talk about it, but most people don't talk about intelligently being emotional. And I told you that earlier today. I don't want you to always focus from a place of emotions, but so if you can learn how to discipline yourself and use your emotions. Emotions, they can really become a superpower. Uh, thank you all very much for spending time with me today. If you liked what we had to talk about, like the video, subscribe, tell a friend, follow the podcast, words from the wise. Thank you all very much. And I hope to see y'all soon. Thank y'all. Bye.