Ep. 26 - Motivational Horsesh*t

Have you ever worked with someone who loves Motivational Horsesh*t? 

Yep, you know what I'm talking about. 

This podcast is Rob sharing a little bit of what's on his mind today... 

...motivational horsesh*t.  What is motivational horsesh*t? 

For example: 

To build a strong team, you must see someone else's strength as a compliment to your weakness, and not a threat to your position or authority.  

This can be used in a positive, motivational way - or it can be used as a subtle, passive aggressive form of communication, especially when posted in more than one location.  

Join Rob as he dives into this quote and the following talking points:

• Passive-aggressive communication
• Behavior / action vs message shared
• "What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say."  -  Ralph 
• Mentorship and Motivation
• You can't change people - no one else really cares
• One becomes two becomes many

To build a strong team, you must see someone else's strength as a compliment to your weakness, and not a threat to your position or authority.  

If you actually believe this, be able to back it up.

Be real.  Be vulnerable.

• EntreLeadership - Dave Ramsey
• What's the future of this podcast?
• Live and give a quality message.
• EntreLeadership Podcast
• Chris Hogan Show
• Ken Coleman Show
• Focus on positive content consumption to build a strong foundation to support the dreams we are actively building. 
• Don't let motivational horsesh*t get you down.  
• There are lessons to be learned.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello everybody. Have you ever worked with someone who loves motivational horse shit? Well, I have to. And on this episode of the All Around Growth Podcast, that is exactly what we are going to talk about today. This is episode number 26 of the All Around Growth Podcast. Today is Tuesday, October 27th. I am on my way home from another day at the day job. Today, it's a little gloomy, it's a little chilly, it's 44 degrees, overcast, and it's raining. Fall is upon us, and after today, you know, I just felt like sharing what's on my mind. And indeed, what is on my mind is motivational horseshit. Yes. Well, what exactly do I mean by that? What exactly is motivational horse shit? Well, please allow me to give you a fine example of what it is that I'm talking about. Quote, to build a strong team, you must see someone else's strength as a complement to your weakness and not a threat to your position or authority. Close quote. Now, if you read that or saw it posted in your office somewhere, you might actually think that that's one of those nice motivational phrases. But now let me be clear before I say anything else. I don't actually know who posted this in our office. But one day, a week or two ago, by the coffee pot, I happened to see this on the table behind not the coffee pot itself, but the little Keurig that some people use because Folgers apparently is not the best part of waking up. People that drink from the Keurig think Folgers is bullshit. I, on the other hand, drink the bullshit because I am just a lowly whatever I am there. And I learned that today in discussion with someone else, but we will go there another time. Back to the motivational horse shit. Again, I'd like to reread that. Quote: To build a strong team, you must see someone else's strength as a complement to your weakness and not a threat to your position or authority. Alright. Now, under normal circumstances, I would be all about motivational phrases such as this. However, I had a sneaking suspicion of the one who posted it, and I also viewed this as somewhat of a passive-aggressive attempt at communication with someone else who indeed sees other people's strengths as direct threats to their position and their proverbial authority. However, if your message is something different than the message conveyed by your actions, well, my friends, either your actions or the message is horseshit. Because, like my uncle told me many, many moons ago, what you do speaks so loud, I cannot hear what you say. Let me repeat that. It was recently when I learned that this was either a quote by Thoreau or Emerson. And I love that because my uncle is a man who influenced me greatly during my youth. He was the type of man that helped me learn and understand things that my parents could not. He was the type of man who could behave in a way that my parents could not. And I'll never forget that. And those are lessons that I carry on to this day. I try to share with people who may even view me as a mentor, and more importantly, people who may not. Because if we go through life trying to see who views us as a mentor and who doesn't, and who sees us as what, why, we begin to lose sight of what's important. We begin to focus more time, effort, and energy on other people's opinions of us instead of focusing our time, effort, and energy on change. Change that's healthy, change that's positive, change that's beneficial. There are only so many hours in the day. And quite frankly, my friends, I don't have the time or the inclination to passively aggressively communicate with people that I can't even communicate very well with in the beginning. If I could communicate well with them, I wouldn't necessarily feel the desire to communicate some passive-aggressive horse shit to them because I wouldn't need to. Now, I also don't post motivational horse shit all around the office because I'm pretty convinced that uh that the posting of these messages isn't gonna mean a goddamn thing. Because no one else really cares. Now I went so far as to do something a little bit ridiculous because a couple days later I saw this damn uh thing posted somewhere else on the suspected offender's own personal court board. So I decided that uh I would make a few copies of this thing and post them everywhere. In the window out to the barn, on the back side of the door in the bathroom, the front office window, the bathroom in the back barn, everywhere. Yeah, it was me. And was it a little childish to do? Yeah, absolutely. Do I regret it? Not at all. Because my hope was, and all of these things suddenly disappeared. They are no longer there. Someone decided to take them down. Maybe they took them down because they realized I was making fun of them. And you know what? They were right. And I regret nothing. Is that the most adult-like and proper way to handle this? Or something like that? No. What would have been the most proper and effective way to deal with this kind of nonsense would have been to let it roll off me like water off a duck's back. But when I sense someone's message isn't consistent with their action, or vice versa, and they're going to go around broadcasting that message so openly. Or at least be careful doing it around me. I don't have the time, the patience to even acknowledge this for anything other than what I perceive it to be. Which is horse shit. To build a strong team, you must see someone else's strength as a complement to your weakness and not a threat to your position or authority. Horse shit. If you actually believe this, you're going to find. Looks like somebody is pulling into our driveway, perhaps. Or is that the neighbor's driveway? But if you're going to post things like this and believe things like this, well, my friends, you had better be able to back it up with uh someone is pulling in our driveway. I may have to cut this short so I can go have a conversation with someone, but uh I'll try and wrap this up by the time I get up to the end of the driveway so I can see them. Not sure what's going on here or who this is. Could be the guy that cuts our grass, but anyways. Friends. To conclude my thoughts on motivational horseshit, what I'd like to do is encourage you to check out Entree Leadership. Program developed in large part by Dave Ramsey. This is a big part of what I've come to believe is the proper way to act and the proper way to behave. The proper way to lead, and the proper messages to share. It is a message of value on trade leadership. Uh, these are the guys that are taking care of the right-of-way who are managing, well, the right-of-way. We've got a gas line going through our property here. And um, you know, as I think about this and talk about it, I think about what the future of this podcast has in store. I think about what I'm doing with this podcast, what this is all about. In addition to having messages that came that that uh include positivity, sometimes there are messages such as this that help me think and process everything that's going on. And it is my goal moving forward as I begin to refine my system, my process, and reach a better conclusion of what it is that I'm doing and how I'm going to do it, that I follow the lead lined out and identified by Dave Ramsey and the rest of the team over there with Andre leadership. It's a quality message. A quality book that I'm through reading part way now. And it is the way that I'm going to run, or at the very least, manage a business when I'm in a better position to do so. And for those of you who are interested in management tips, or simply a better perspective to have on life, entree leadership is where it's at. The same thing with all of the people who are involved in the Ramsey Solutions podcast and radio show sweet. That's Chris Hogan, Ken Coleman, Dave Ramsey himself, and along with a number of others, but I find myself consuming more and more good content from individuals like that and leaving the rest aside because for me, focusing on people who have a message that matters matters far more to me than good ideas that I wish to implement somehow. And in order to do so, we need to surround ourselves with that. And while this may have been somewhat of a rant episode today, at the root of it, and the reason why I'm doing is what I'm doing, is to be that for you. There's enough negativity and inevitable bullshit that we're surrounded by on a daily, weekly, monthly basis that we need something greater than that. And it is my hope that this podcast will be part of the light that we see at the end of the tunnel. And it is not an oncoming free dream. That light is freedom. Freedom in whatever manner it is that we need it to be. Freedom from the life that we used to live. The life that we are living and the life that we can only dream about. We build a strong foundation.