979. The 7 Day Reset: Day 2: Family (Relationships)

My 3x5 Method:

5 Skills: (5 C's) Communication, curiosity, creativity, continuous learning & action, & productive confrontation. 

5 Actions: Wake up at a set time. Read 15 minutes. Write at least one page. Workout. Design your day. (Set your expectations.)

Across 5 areas of life: (5 F's)

Faith. Family (relationships). Fitness. Finances. Fulfillment (personal & professional).

Day 2: Family. I share the 3 patterns I see in my own life and examine why I've struggled with developing and maintaining relationships. 

My 3 patterns: 

1. The Lone Operator

2. The Rescuer

3. The Comfort Guy

Transcript

0:01

So I've really, I say enjoyed, but I use air quotes on that. I've really enjoyed working through this seven day reset, and I just turned the mic on because as I examined my life, I think it's, I think it's beneficial because I always feel like the reason why I started this podcast. Is because I feel like if I'm going through something, then someone else is too, and this is why I share what I share. And so I'm really enjoying air quotes. Again, the seven day reset, because using the the three by five method that I use and the three by five method, there's basically three. Columns three, whatever of, of, of five anyway. Three by five. Let me, let me just explain it. So there's three different sections, let me say that. So there are five actions that I take a majority of the time in my life, and these are daily actions. It's waking up at a set time and with enough time to be able to budget for. Um, the, the, the waking up with enough time to, that's so number one, waking up at a set time. Number two. So there are five actions that I take every single day, and it's waking up at a set time. It's reading for 15 minutes, 15, 20 minutes. It's writing at least one page. Um, but normally it's 15, 20 minutes. So it's emptying my mind to clarify my thoughts. Writing saved my life. This is why I'm so big on it. Working out, getting some sort of movement in. Sometimes it's just 10 minutes on the jump rope. Sometimes it's even longer than that, but some sort of movement and then designing my day and that's setting the expectations. So those are the five actions that I take, um, across. And then there are five life skills that I believe every person needs. And those skills are communication, curiosity, creativity, continuous learning and action, and productive confrontation. These skills I learned from sales, and this is why I originally called the podcast the Sales Life, is because I believe the skills that are useful in sales are the same skills that you need in life.'cause if you think about it. I was talking about this last night. We're all selling our way through life. And so sales, sales is a profession. Selling is a life skill. And so I believe you need to use those five skills every single day. The better you use those skills, you'll be RFA, ready for anything. And then there are five areas needed for a full bodied life, and those all start with the letter F. And it's faith, family, fitness, finances, and fulfillment. And so the previous episode we talked about in the seven day reset, we talked about faith. And faith is an important component in my life. Um, from a spiritual sense. I ran from God for a long time. I was a. I guess low key kind of bitter at times. And really it was things that I put in my own life. It's it's positions I put myself in. I just kind of use big G as the scapegoat. Um, but faith is not only from the spiritual sense that I believe that you gotta have, but also it's an alignment. And I believe the, the deeper your faith, the better you can focus because you just stay aligned. And you pay attention to the signal and less so of the noise'cause there are distractions. So go back and listen to that episode. Um, that one has been popular. A lot of people have been listening to that one, and I think that you'll find it beneficial. And I, and I hope that you'll just look at, examine your own life. This is, I'm just, I'm just telling you where it is for me in my life. I'm not here to give you advice or anything like that. I'm just basically here to share. What I'm dealing with and what I'm working through, and maybe you'll hear this and look at your own life and say, let me look at some different areas in this. So. This episode is on family. And let me, let me tell you this, man, I shied away from this episode. As a matter of fact, I didn't even do an episode last week because I violated the confrontation. Uh, one of the keys to one of the life skills that you gotta have productive confrontation, because I didn't want to sit down and examine this part. The family aspect of it. And as a matter of fact, I kept writing, but I was doing other episodes. I even recorded other episodes and was like, yeah, I'm gonna sprinkle this seven day reset throughout. Um, and I realized in examining this, that I was just avoiding the tough topic. And that's family. I believe in family. Um, I have blown up my family. I have and had some deep regrets, and I say past tense because that's things that I had to work through and come to the realization and confront, and this is the thing that that really, using faith, really turned my life back around. I just had to confront some issues in my life and identify some areas. Of weaknesses, and I wanna share those things with you because I see the patterns in my own life and it really calls me to kind of check in with myself to make sure, hey, where, where are you at in this? And you know, I, I believe in family, but I can't say that I come from a strong family background. I don't come from an abusive family. Um, I come from a loving family, but it's, it's a different. It's a different kind of family. Like my wife's family, they are really close. They hang together, they travel together. They're there thick and thin. My family, we love each other. Yet we're, we're really distant, you know, we can pick up a conversation. It, my wife looks at it and she's like, y'all are the weirdest family ever.'cause you know, I hadn't seen my brother, one of my brothers in probably 10 years, and we saw him for Thanksgiving and we picked up like right where we left off. It wasn't awkward, it wasn't, I mean it's just, it's, it's strange. It's just how our family is, was, and I'm trying to work on getting closer to that. So saying all that to say I've, I've kind of always been that lone ranger and I've kind of been that guy who. Who just had to figure it out himself. So before I go too far into that, I believe there are, there are three patterns, two of the three that I've seen in myself. The third one, I'm susceptible to it and gotta make sure that I don't slide into this, and I call these things patterns because. Uh, it, I, I don't believe they're labels. When you label something that's, that, that's solid, like you don't, you know, you can rip the label out of a shirt, but it's still made by polo or whatever. I call these patterns because the patterns really can morph one into the other. And as I unpack this with you and talk this out, I see this in my own life where I went from one pattern into the next. So the three patterns. As an overview are the, the loan operator, lone ranger, if you will, that I just alluded to just a second ago. The second one is the rescuer, and the third one is the comfort guy or the family guy. And I'll unpack each one of these and how I identify it. And maybe you'll look at this in your own life, or maybe you'll, you'll see there's a, there's another pattern. What's a pattern for you? And that's all I wanna do is just kind of highlight these things. So the first one is the loan operator. And the loan operator By default setting, when I'm stressed, I'm a loan operator, meaning I go ice cold and I try to figure it out myself, and that is a strength, but it's also a weakness as well. So I've still got some scar tissue from. My brothers are older than me. My sister, I'm the baby of the family, and so my brothers are a good bit older than me. I have two older brothers, one older sister. My sister's a year older than me. My brothers, I don't even know how much older they are, you know, nine plus years difference. And so I was kind of the awkward surprise to my family that I thought they were done with having kids after my sister. And then boop, I pop up. Shame on you, dad. And, uh, so I, I wasn't really close to my brothers because they were so much older than me and my mom and dad worked. So they were, and my, my parents were not the kind of parents that I can just, it, it was probably, you know, I could probably pick up the phone and call them at any time, but it was just never really fostered that way. And so I just kind of was on my own. I dated outside my race and that was a, a source of contention. And this you keep in mind, you know, I live in the south. And this was in the early nineties, and so it wasn't really, you know, you, you saw black men dating white women, but you saw very few white men dating black women. And it was a source of contention with my family at one time that, you know, my mom made the ultimatum. She was like, you either pick her who she was black or, and that's my son's, uh, mom, my oldest son's mom. Or you choose us. And if you walk out that door and you choose her, you can never come back. And you know, this was, I was 17 years old when this happened and I was away at college. I had a full scholarship, um, and was going to play football, athletic scholarship. And I turned my back on my family. I was like, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. And I was, and that, that, that was really the. The bookmark for me, I was fiercely independent. And so when I got to college, there was me and another white guy who dated outside our race, nobody else. So for other white guys, I don't wanna say they shunned me, but I wasn't really welcomed because they didn't really understand that. And then some of the black guys thought it was funny to see if they can't. Steal their black woman back. And so that was kind of a game. So I became really isolated and I really just drilled down and did what I was supposed to do. And that was play ball. And I was the runt, I was on scout team. I was the last to be picked on teams. I was not the most talented. And I really just drilled down at in the loan operator mode. And worked myself into becoming an All American and was named one of the top linemen on the school's, all 75 team. I think the school was just made a 75 year anniversary or something, and, and I was named as, you know, one of the, one of the linemen, tremendous honor. Hopefully one day I'll get in the Hall of Fame. I still wanna do that. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. So I became fiercely, fiercely independent and that has served me very well. But also what was a strength can also be your weakness. And so there, I've made situations very hard in my life because. I get in this defense mode and I don't have to stay in that. It's good that I can do things on my own, but also I have to open up and allow other people, because there are people with tremendous experience who have a lot of love for me and want to help me, and I've gotta allow that in, and I've gotta understand that. So that is something that I've gotta identify. And like I said, when I get stressed, I get into lone ranger mode, lone operator mode, and it's something like my wife has to like tap on the glass there and be like, Hey, come on out of this, this cave here. What's going on? Talk to me. Um, and so I'm learning. To be more open. I'm learning to be more of a family man, and, and I'm really close to her family, but I get in my caveman mode someday where I just don't want to be bothered. And so that's something that is, is constant work for me. Um, and, and it is really tough. So this brings me to the second pattern. And the second pattern is the rescuer. Here's what I've understood about myself is when you get to a low watermark as a loan operator and you become alone for too long, isolated, the person that you gravitate toward is. A person that you try to rescue. And so I don't wanna say they're weaker, but they need you. And so because I was fiercely independent, because I had become successful air quotes on my own. I put on the cape to go rescue them. They were the damsel in distress. Lemme just put it like that. And so I tended to gravitate toward people who needed rescuing. And I say people, these are females in my life, but they're also just other people in. In my profession too, and I gravitated toward the runt. I gravitated toward the people who needed saving yet, you know, like for sales, like the weakest, absolutely weakest salesperson there was. There was no saving him. You know, I could sit there and talk for hours and he appreciated it, and they were never any better because. At the end of the day, you gotta do your own work. You gotta shoulder your own load. You gotta be sick and tired in your own life and then start standing on your own. And so the, the, the person persons that I was rescuing became a sense of validation for me, and so it was nice to be needed. The problem with that, when you begin rescuing. People is you begin to, you actually make them weaker because they can't figure it out for themselves. I've done that with my sons. I rescued them. So again, this is not just, um, marriages, this is also for your children. This is also in your profession. And so when you actually, your intent is right, maybe, uh. But your, your ways about it are all wrong. And so when you try to lighten the load and rescue everybody else, you end up shouldering the burden. You have your own needs. And this is why I say you put yourself first. Now this is why I preach this.'cause I've learned this the hard way. You shoulder, you begin to shoulder their loads. It weighs you down and you get to a sense of overwhelm. And with overwhelm there is always going to be a breaking point. At one time or another you are going to break. Part of the breaking for me was to look for someone else who needed rescuing and start putting your attention toward that and. Because the load was so light, it seemed like it was the way to go. Yet the vicious cycle began again, and this is how I've collapsed my life. And so I want to be wanted, I don't want to need, I don't want to be needed. It's nice to be wanted, not needed the the wanted aspect. I believe there are, people should stand on their own. I believe you should be there to support them, but I don't think that you should shoulder the load 100% and people gotta figure it out themselves. You had to, you gotta figure it out and so do they. And it's actually, you're actually doing them a disservice when they're not allowed to figure it out on their own. And so it kind of reminds me as I'm sitting here talking this out, I remember I had a sales manager a long time ago, and he would let me, he wouldn't come in and help me on my deals. He would let me sink and he would help others sooner it seemed, and he would let me really struggle. And one day I was pissed off and I said, you know, his name was Brady. I said, why don't you help me on these deals? And he was like, if you don't know what it tastes like to drown, then you'll never learn how to swim. And he said, I'm actually doing you a favor because you're having to struggle and figure it out on your own. Because if I come in and rescue you every time, you're always gonna need me. And he was like, I'm not always gonna be here. God rest his soul. He is not. But I learned a valuable lesson in that in sales, and I've learned it through life, but I have a tendency at times to wanna rescue, not to the degree that I was before, and figuring out who else can I rescue, but I gotta be careful of that. And sometimes too, like just talking this out, I gotta be careful that I don't come on this podcast trying to rescue people. The emphasis of this podcast deals with three problems. We all face adversity, uncertainty, and complacency, but it's three problems I face. Adversity, uncertainty, and complacency. I just shared with you because that is. That is a sense of calling for me. And so again, I feel like if I'm going through something like this, maybe you are too and maybe it'll help you if it doesn't, okay. I just put it out there. So the three patterns. The first one is the loan operator, lone Ranger, second one's the rescue, or the last one is not me, but it could be susceptible to me. And that is the family guy or the comfort guy. And I gotta be careful in saying this because I don't mean this in the wrong way, but the family guy is the guy that's all about family. But what I mean, it's really kind of a covert disguise. It's a cocoon of complacency. And so I've seen this many times and I believe we're all susceptible to it, but it's where you're capable of more. Yet, you really just, you're lazy, you're complacent, and so you're okay with being less and you nestle yourself within your family. You're always there, which is great, but also you're putting your family at risk. And because you won't go out there and take the calculated risk, you won't go out there and better yourself. You won't go out there and. Shore up. Your skills get tougher and your job as a man is to be a protector and provider. And part of protecting your family is to be able to provide not only just for today, but also for their future. And I find that the family guy tends to just live in the moment and they actually are okay with. Relegating some of their responsibilities to the other party, to the other spouse, in my case, to the other female. Again, I'm not that guy, but I could see I, I've seen it, but I could see how somebody could just be okay with that. And so the, the other spouse, you really put a burden on them and you make them shoulder more of the load than they should again, I believe. I believe relationships, each person should stand on their own. Each person should pull their weight absolutely in, in whatever degree that is. But also I don't believe that you should. If you're capable of more and you have more potential, then you shouldn't be home. Vegging out. At 5 0 1, you get home and you're on Netflix or on your Xbox or whatever, and when there's more that you can actually do to provide for your future, and I'm not saying it should be all hardcore profession, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, but if that's the season you have to go through for time to put yourself and your family in a better position. Then you gotta do what you gotta do. And with a strong relationship, your family understands. And I guess that's maybe the better way to look at it, is there are going to be seasons, there are going to be seasons where you gotta go hard and fast and you gotta go long. But it's, it's all for the better purpose of putting yourself and your family in a better position. So it's a, it's a very fine line. You don't wanna work so much that you're never home and never there for them. And I'm saying emotionally there too, but also you don't want to be so home that you could actually put your family in a better position. You can buy your children a car when they need one. Or help them go to school, go to college if upper education is better for 'em, or if your spouse wants to be an entrepreneur and do her thing, then you can actually play a part in that by being able to row the boat while she does that. So there are degrees on that, on that. So this is, this was the examination for me and family, and I'm not, and I didn't even really touch on this, but I'm not a big relationships guy. Those of you who personally know me. No, I don't just hang out with you on the phone. Like if you call me, um. I want to be there for you, but I'm not the best at like building relationships and maintaining the relationships. And so that's a struggle for, because it's really foreign for me, and that is something that I can do better and I will do better. Um, and I, I believe I will be better as long as I have the family aspect of it, right. I finally, I'm in a point in my life now where I have to resist being the loan operator. I'm no longer the rescuer, but I have days of that, so I gotta, this has really helped me examine that, and I'm not the Mr. Comfort guy. Sometimes I'm, I'm too hard, too fast owned, professional, and not enough at home. And then sometimes I'm home and yet I don't handle my responsibilities at home. I'm home, but I'm kind of lazy. And so that's a degree that I've gotta work on that. So maybe I am a little bit of that guy. I, I'm, I'm really traces of all three of these patterns and so, and it's okay at times. But it's also, you gotta confront that and that's why confrontation is is key. I gotta confront that. I've gotta talk this out, examine it, and make sure that it doesn't fester into something more and get trapped in this vicious loop. So that's what I'm looking at. Hopefully you can examine this in your own life and, and really, you know, what's a pattern that you see in your life? Is it one of these three patterns or is there a different one? I'd love to hear if you see a different take, if there's another pattern that you identify in yourself. Man, I, I'd love to hear from you on that. Alright, let's get outta here. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough. Peace. I.