In this episode, John Maxwell shares five thoughts on how to make your future bigger than your past. Then, Traci Morrow will join Mark Cole to talk about helpful ways you can apply this lesson to your life and leadership.
Our BONUS resource for this episode is the “Make You Future Bigger Than Your Past Worksheet,” which includes fill-in-the-blank notes from John’s teaching. You can download the worksheet by clicking “Download the Bonus Resource” below.
Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today John Maxwell is going to share five thoughts on how to make your future bigger than your past. John often says that the day that his current book is not his best book is the day he’s going to stop writing. I’ve heard leaders say that the day that their future vision, or their current vision about the future is less exciting than their past accomplishments is the day they’re going to stop leading. So today, my challenge to you as we listen to this podcast, is to make your future bigger than your past. Now, after John’s lesson, Tracy Morrow will join me to talk about helpful ways you can apply this lesson to your life and leadership. If you would like to watch this episode on YouTube, please go to maxwellpodcast.com/YouTube. And if you’d like to download the free worksheet that accompanies John’s lesson, visit Maxwellpodcast.com/BiggerThan and click the Bonus resource button. That’s all for now. Here is John. Let’s make the future better.
John Maxwell:
Always make your future bigger than your past. That’s a wonderful lifetime growth law. Always make your future bigger than your past. A bigger future is essential for lifetime growth. The past is useful because it is rich with experiences that are worth thinking about in new ways. And all of these valuable experiences can become raw material for creating an even bigger future. Approach your past with this attitude. Use your past to continually create a bigger future and you will separate yourself from situations, relationships, and activities that can trap you there. So let me give you some thoughts about the future. Just things that I embrace myself. Number one, the best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. That’s what I love about the future. You don’t have to handle a month at a time or a year at a time. You handle it one day at a time. In fact, the question is, how do you prepare for the future? The answer is one day at a time. That comes out of my book. Today matters what the secret of your success is determined by what your daily agenda? I think most people let the future really bog them down. And I think it bogs them down because of the heaviness of a lot of things. And in my simplistic approach to life, what I realize is, if I can just handle today correctly, there’s a high odds of tomorrow taking care of itself. People will ask me all the time, they’ll say, John, how did you start writing? I mean, they’ll say, I’d like to write a book. How did you start writing? And they hate my answer because my answer is, I started writing. I hate it when they ask these kind of questions because I would like to sound profound but there’s no profundity to it. How did I start writing? I started writing now I’ll ask people to say, you want to write a book? Yes. I said, well, have you started writing? And their answer, 90% of the time is, well, not yet. And I always tell them, Let me help you here. If you haven’t started writing yet, the odds are that what you haven’t written won’t be written. Now. Then I hurry very quickly. I hurtly. Go on and say to them, when I started writing, I want you to understand something. It wasn’t any good. I have no illusions of my writing. In the beginning, it was terrible. It was horrible. It took me a year to write my first book, and it was only 100 pages. Now, that just cracks me up now, into your book. And I laughed. I said, lady, I said, you have to understand something. I mean, it wasn’t like it was a brainchild. When I got to three pages, I was out of gas. In fact, you don’t have any three pages on some of the chapters was a real stretch. I had to put, like, a page and a half of filler in there to get three pages. You know what I’m saying? But how do you start writing? You start writing. The future is handled one day at a time. And what you have to understand is that you just have to take the day you have. And the secret of your success, or my success, is always determined by our daily agenda. In fact, again, there’s something that I think you’ve heard me say before. We are either repairing or preparing. If I could just pull anybody aside in life and talk to them for five minutes about life and success, I would again say, you handle the future one day at a time. And today you’re either preparing or repairing. You’re either setting yourself up for success tomorrow or you are setting yourself up for colossal failure. Morrow tomorrow is the scorecard on how you handle today. That’s all it is. It’s a readout. It’s a readout page about what has already happened. Yesterday, another future thought. It’s that time when you’ll wish you had done what you aren’t doing now. In other words, we get out there in that future and we think, boy, I wish I would have done that last week. I wish I’d done that last month. Boy, last year. Why didn’t I do that? We’ve all done that. I’ve done that. You’ve done that. Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse new things. The saddest summary of life contains three descriptions. Could have, might have, should have. That’s pure sadness, friend. Well, I could have done this. I might have been that. I should have gone there. Number three, we cannot rewrite the past, but we can write the future. People spend way too much time regretting yesterday. Every one of us have things we regret about our past. Every one of us wish we could go back and change something, but you can’t change something. So basically what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to focus on, okay, since I can’t rewrite the past but I can write the present, I can fill in this page today. So let’s start filling it in correctly. Number four there are two ways to face the future. One is with apprehension, and the other is with anticipation. Sadly, a lot of people spend their time thinking of the future with apprehension. It does no good for any of us to look at yesterday and say, boy, I wish I could have done this different or better or changed this or wow, I wish I had another shot of it. That’s nothing but pure unacceptable wishful thinking, because that’s never going to happen. But we can control now. We can control now. And what I have discovered is successful people understand that they’re responsible for now, and unsuccessful people want to talk about yesterday. Five steps to making your future bigger than your past. These are just personal steps I’ve used for many years. Number one, review. That’s very healthy to review. Number two, reflect. After you look at what has happened, begin to think about it. Number three recover. This one always brings a little bit of amusement to me because I’ve never looked at my past without recovery. I just never have. And if you look at your past and there’s no recovery, you haven’t looked at your past. Talk to your spouse. They’ll help you. But there’s always recovery. Isn’t that true? I mean, there’s always adjustment. Recovery, then rearrange. Okay, now I begin to rearrange things so that I don’t make the same mistakes. And then obviously recharge.
Mark Cole:
As a leader. One of the most tempting things I feel is the need to do it all. You’re probably like that too. We put this enormous pressure on ourselves to accomplish more today than we did yesterday. I want to earn more than I did last year. And somehow along the way, we want to be present and available in all of our personal relationships. But something has to give. Doing it all is a myth. Doing it all is a terrible myth in leadership. In fact, the best leaders are the ones who know their limits, operate in their strengths, and set others up around them to do the same. If you want to find that kind of freedom, BELAY can help. See BELAY pairs busy leader with highly vetted US. Based virtual assistants to save them from the administrative slog and to get that leader back to working on the things that matter most. To help you get started, BELAY is offering Maxwell podcast listeners a free download of their ultimate guide to working with a virtual assistant. This resource has everything you need to get started, to start growing, and to succeed with your new virtual assistant. Just text Maxwell to 55123 to download this resource today. That’s Maxwell to 55123. All right. Like me, let’s get ready to accomplish more and juggle less with BELAY.
Okay, podcast family, if you’re viewing, if you’re listening, let’s just let out an audible. That’s right, Tracy, because John finished that with his cliffhanger recharge, and all of a sudden he said that, and there was about 53 things I thought, man, I need to go recharge. And so, podcast family, the way many of you recharge is by listening each and every week, and we’re grateful for it. The reason I lead the reason I’m sure that you lead is because there is a belief deep down within me, Tracy, that the future is bigger than anything we’ve accomplished in the past. And so I’m very excited. Welcome, family. Tracy, glad to have you with us today as well.
Traci Morrow:
Well, I’m excited to be here. This is a great lesson. I scribbled down a whole bunch of questions for you, Mark, for us to kind of chew on this and drill down into it, and hopefully we will have enough time at the end to kind of dissect his last point, which was recharge. And I would love to have hear from you a little bit about how you recharge and how often. But before we get to that, I loved how he opened up, saying, use your past to continually create a bigger future, and you’ll separate yourself from situations, relationships, and activities that can trap you there. And I know that every person can relate to that, because a lot of times, every human being who walks this planet, I feel like, runs the temptation of getting trapped in situations, relationships, and activities in the present which keep us from engaging in our future. And so, number one, he said, the best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time. I love that Abraham Lincoln quote, but I wrote down the question, and I would love to hear from you on this, but how do you approach today considering the situations, relationships, and activities that can trap you in the now, but how do you approach today with Morrow in mind?
Mark Cole:
Yeah, I’ve been really studying this concept of offering certainty in uncertain times, this idea of offering clarity when you’re leading where you’ve never led before. And you guys on the podcast, you’ve heard me reference Andy Stanley. You’ve heard me reference this concept multiple times. Tracy, I’ll tell you where I am today. I work hard to get clarity for today so that I can have tomorrow’s step in an action item. So this is where we are today. What do I need to do today, tomorrow, to ensure I act on what we do? In other words, it’s a statement that, again, I believe so strongly that we’ve got to have wisdom as leaders, right? We’ve got to have wisdom, but wisdom is just one piece of it. When we get wisdom to know what it is that we need to do. There is a second element, and that is the courage to do it. It’s this belief, this certainty that, yes, we as leaders need to have clarity of where we are, properly assess it, properly articulate it, but then to challenge people to go to the next step, the next level, the next accomplishment. And as a leader today, I have found in all the uncertainty that we face in today’s leadership climate, being clear on where we are and being certain of what the next step is, is great leadership that people can follow. I don’t think people can follow a leader that doesn’t know, and often we don’t know. I don’t believe a leader can follow. I don’t believe people can follow a leader that is stationary. They can hang out with them. They can chill. We can sit around and talk about the good old days. But there has to be movement for there to be followership. So leaders, what I’m doing, what I challenge you to do, is get bedrock clear on where you are today and bedrock clear on the next step from where you are today to head in the right direction.
Traci Morrow:
I love that you say that, and I would love to hear you expand a little bit more because I’m thinking specifically about a leadership situation that I’m in right now, and I’m trying to get clear on some things, but it’s a little fuzzy, and I’m trying to gain clarity by what? Asking questions, right. And so John talks about daily, we are either repairing or preparing. And so when a situation is fuzzy and we as leaders are trying to gain clarity through kind of a hazy view, what are some steps that you take outside of asking questions? Maybe. Or maybe that’s just all that it is. The answer is but when things are fuzzy and you’re trying to gain clarity for the next steps, for tomorrow, for the team, how do you handle that?
Mark Cole:
Well, I think that sometimes I spent a lot of time over the last three years talking about we need to listen, we need to learn, and then we need to lead. Don’t lead until you’ve learned something. Don’t try to move until there’s something tangible applicable to put into action. And I agree with that. But I think sometimes to your question, sometimes today’s questions leads to an additional set of questions tomorrow. Right. But don’t ever leave an environment and say, well, I did good. I led today. I asked questions. No questions lead to conclusions, and conclusions lead to next steps. Even if the next step says, I need to expand the people I’m asking this question to, or I need to circle back and get more information. Never leader a moment where you take something in without putting and tagging an application step to what you took in later on in the lesson. I was going to talk a little bit about this, but every day. Every day. Tracy I’ve learned to ask myself two questions as a leader, what did I learn? How am I going to apply it? What did I learn? How am I going to apply it? And when you answer the question, what did I learn? Sometimes you can become a glutton for information. You can become obese with content and gold nuggets. The only way you’re going to stay lean and effective and healthy in your leadership is if you apply what you take in. And that is the key. It is learning. I’ve watched a lot of people apply, apply, and they need to slow down and learn something, but it is in tandem. Learn, then act. Learn and then act.
Traci Morrow:
I love that. I love how it’s always about being in movement, even if you have to slow your pace just a little bit, but it’s always putting it immediately into action. And so that leads me to the next question. And even though you’re asking yourself those two questions and you’re always clarifying for the next day one of the things that John has always said, and it’s from today matters, but John has taught about this for forever. And that is the secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda. And that’s there in your show notes and that you’re a little still in the blank. But what are five things that you do daily in addition to asking yourself these questions and clarifying today for the action steps for your team tomorrow? Are there five things that you do every single day as a leader?
Mark Cole:
Well, it’s in preparation. The five things may be different. The five disciplines are the same. The first discipline that I do is I wake up in the morning and say, okay, what is the greatest moment for my leadership today? And I’ll go through my schedule and I’ll identify, when is it? John says he identifies at the beginning of the day, when do I need to be at 100%? When is it okay for me to be at 70%? Well, I’m really spinning off of that and saying, I determine at the beginning of the day when my leadership chops need to be the sharpest, my presence needs to be felt the most. My focus needs to be as leader intense as possible. And I start the day off with that reflection. The second thing that I do right before I walk into that environment, whether it’s a meeting, whether it’s a conversation, whatever it is, that moment that I’ve identified is my leadership moment of the day. I take five to seven minutes and I just decompress what I am carrying so I can overemphasize what I need to carry. So what do I need to unload very quickly so I can make space to carry a little extra leadership intelligence into this conversation? Leadership direction, leadership observation. What is it that I need to sharpen in my tool belt before I walk into this setting. The third thing that I do is almost immediately, right after I do this decompression of what I just learned and say, okay, what’s the action? Because if I was at my best, I should get the greatest amount of return for it, right? If you are the leader that you’re supposed to be and you sharpen your focus, you sharpen your observation, you sharpen your input, then the results should be magnified. So to make sure I capture the results, I spend a little time debriefing that moment. Number four, I will always, at the end of the day, I’ll reach out to one of my inner circle, and I’ll say, hey, when was my leadership felt the most today? What was the moment that you observed the best moment of my leadership? And then always ask the question after that, what can I do to better it tomorrow? So I’m glad it was an A plus today, but how do we get an A plus plus tomorrow? What can I be effective at even better from learning from that. And then the final discipline that I do is, at the end of the day, I ask those questions that I did. What did I learn today? Because I believe every leader needs to be learning on a daily basis, and how am I applying it?
Traci Morrow:
I love that. And so when you ask those questions, when was I the strongest, and how can I be better tomorrow? Is that in every different meeting? So someone’s listening into the podcast or watching us on YouTube, is that after each meeting, or is that at the end of the day, are they different people for every thing that you’re a part of throughout the day, every meeting or gathering that you’re a part of, or is it just one set of people?
Mark Cole:
It’s not one set of people because I want multiple voices in my ear. So, for instance, I came down here to the studio just a few moments ago from my office upstairs here in Atlanta. My office is above our studio. So I came down here, and I grabbed Jared, who office is right beside me. You hear me talk about Jared on the podcast often. He’s our Director of Content. Executive vice President of Content. And I pulled him down. I gave him a scenario that I had just been working through, and I said, hey, what did you like about my leadership in that? Now, be careful, because we must always ask questions. Where am I? Struggling. Where am I? Worse. What should I have done better? All of those are good questions in context all the time. But each day, I create a discipline of finding out where I was brightest, because I believe our strength is what carry us to a better excuse me, a bigger future, not our weaknesses. I think when we work on our weaknesses, we can maintain yesterday’s results. When we work on our strengths, we can make things bigger, better, brighter in the future. And so the question the discipline is always around a strength observed, not a fallacy or a challenge that needs to be addressed. I have plenty of moments to ask that. It’s just not on a daily basis. On a daily basis, I asked the question, where was my strength most obvious, and how can I make that better? So on the way down here today, just a few moments ago, I grabbed Jared because he had overheard some of the conversation, and I said, hey, what did you like the most about my leadership right there? He told me something, and then I said, hey, how can I make that better tomorrow? And he actually gave me some brilliant stuff that I can improve on the strength that I had exhibited in that situation.
Traci Morrow:
I think that’s an important piece for leaders to be brave enough to hear the second part. It’s really easy to hear them tell you how great the great things that you did right. I think to be able to for them to feel the freedom to tell you this could have been a little bit better, that’s the only way that we’re going to get better is if they feel the freedom. If Jared would have felt the freedom to tell you, hey, this could happen. So I love that. That’s a great lesson to us all. Okay, let’s move on to number two where he talks about the future. Is that time where you wish you’d done what you aren’t doing now? So is there a time during do you have checks for yourself or times where you group with other people, or is this an inner Mark talking to mark thing where you’re checking to see that there aren’t things that you could have, would have, should have been doing right now?
Mark Cole:
Yeah, I had an interesting interaction. I think this was about a month, month and a half ago now, I was at Hobby Lobby headquarters for another meeting. It was altogether different, but the founder of Hobby Lobby, David Green, was having a little session, and so I got invited into the session and got to have a conversation with him. He made a statement that has stuck with me for now, what, six, eight weeks? And that statement was there was a transition in his life to where he began to lead with a prevailing question. Well, I’m on the edge of my seats. What’s this prevailing question? He said, It’s the day that I stopped asking, what’s the immediate impact of this decision? And it was, what will be the will this decision matter 70 years from now? He said, Now, I picked 70 years because at the time, I was 40 years old, and I didn’t think I was going to live to 110. He said, I think I’m going to make it to 100, but I don’t know about 110. And so what I was really doing is starting to answer questions based on what will this decision I’m making today be? What is the importance of the decision I’m making today after I am gone? And that was immediately what stuck with me. Tracy when John was teaching just a moment ago that said, the future is that time when you’ll wish you had done what you aren’t doing now. And I went, it’s exactly what David Green was saying. How can I best make a decision today so that it is not regretted 70 years from now?
Traci Morrow:
Yeah, I love that so much. And we can all do that, right? I can remember on a flight on Delta, and sometimes they have those little videos that you can watch that are like leadership lessons. And so I just watched one. It was a 15 minutes lesson, and it was talking about imagining your life when you’re a 90 year old and what do you want to look back on and be proud of and then come back to where you are today and reverse engineer and live that out today. And that’s really the same message of what do you not want to have done or what do you want to have done? Because you can still do that starting today. So that’s kind of a tongue twister. But anyway, I love that. Okay, number three, we cannot rewrite the past, but we can write the future. And then he’s talking about regret. And I was curious, how do you process personally, how do you process regret? Because every leader, every human being has regret. And how do you process that in order to write your future from a healthy standpoint so you can learn from it, release it, and move forward positively?
Mark Cole:
Yeah, I love this question, and I’ll tell you why. I have listened to a lot of leaders, very, very successful leaders. As I talk about often, john Maxwell has exposed me to what I think is some of the world’s best political leaders, business leader, faith leaders, education leaders. I’ve just been exposed and could go back and write stories of getting to meet some of these greats and spending dinners and leadership conversations with them. Everyone that grabs me and really resonates with me about this subject are the ones that say, I don’t think I would go back and undo anything because everything that I have experienced has led me to today. Like me, many of these leaders have had personal failure, personal tragedy that shaped them into what they are today. Others have failed. Businesses, went bankrupt multiple times so that they learn to be where they are today. And I’ve found the most healthy ones that enjoy and have excitement and peace in where they are today are the ones that spend very little time going back and wishing they could rewrite the past. So when I am making tough decisions, and I like all of you leaders that are watching or viewing or listening today, I’ve made a lot of tough decisions in my leadership. And what I always try to do is whether it is a series of decisions that impact the entire company that I’m leading or whether it’s a decision that will impact the future trajectory of the individual that I’m discussing. Every time that I make that decision and then share that decision, I always do my best to offer hope of how this will write tomorrow’s story, not as a consequence of yesterday’s story, but as a chance to rewrite or to write tomorrow’s story because of this decision. It goes back to what John Maxwell says, and that is leaders are hope dealers. Well, I think even in the most difficult decisions, the decisions of transitioning and reforming culture and transitioning a non performing team and all of the different things that leaders that are listening to me today have to deal with, here’s what I’ll tell you while you’re dealing with it. Are you trying to rewrite the past in this decision? Are you trying to craft a better future? And if you can answer, I’m making this decision so that I can craft a better future. Guess what? You are in the right ballpark of making a decision out of a hope filled perspective rather than a doomsday perspective.
Traci Morrow:
That’s right. Being a dealer of hope. And that kind of leads into number four when you’re as you’re assessing yourself where he talked about there are two ways to face the future from a different mindset. And one is apprehension, and one is anticipation. And John talks so often about how he anticipates. And I know that you anticipate, but for me this was a big shift because I feel like I had anticipation, but right up to the moment I would start to feel amp apprehension. And what I found was and I learned this from John I learned this from working it through with you was that I was thinking too much about me and what people were going to think of me and was I going to deliver it correctly? And how are they going to perceive me? And were they going to believe that I was being sincere enough? All of that is me. Me. I was thinking about me and not thinking about the other people and how I could serve them and how I could lead them well. And so I’m just curious, did you ever have this shift or was this something where you were always somebody who looked upon the future with anticipation or was there ever a time when you looked upon the future with apprehension?
Mark Cole:
Yeah, so I am by nature, I definitely anticipate. I definitely don’t have the apprehension piece. Now, I have filled several roles, even with John Maxwell here at Maxwell leadership, that required me to anticipate apprehensive things. What if this goes wrong? What if the challenge and I found that when I was anticipating apprehension, if you allow me to use both words. That I was anticipating what could go wrong. I found that it muddled my judgment. But if I went in and allowed my anticipation to exhibit hope and potential rather than destruction, opportunity rather than doors closing, I found that I exhibited better judgment over time. Let me illustrate this with a conversation I just had with my 17 year old, soon to be 17 year old. Macy was coming in, and she really does well in all of her subjects. But let me not be an overding dad. She has a couple that she is pretty good at, and she just over a period of time, she is 68, 10, 15 points ahead of a lot of people in her class. Yet when it comes, she’s finishing up 11th grade, starting as a senior in high school. When it comes test time, Macy gets very apprehensive. And what happens is people that she consistently throughout the year scores better than them by double digit points. They will score equal to her or greater than her on a end of the year exam. So we’re talking through that. I said, Macy, what goes on in your head? She said, what goes on my head is the apprehension of what if I forget something that I remembered is what if I don’t do well? And so we started walking through this, and I said, Macy, what if you took a test with the anticipation that said, this test is going to show what I know. This test is going to be able to demonstrate my knowledge rather than to perhaps demonstrate my ignorance? She said, dad, I have never done that with anticipation. I’ve never taken a test and went, watch what this test does to demonstrate what I know. I’ve always looked at a test to say, oh, my, it terrifies me at what I might not know. And I said, Well, I’ll tell you what. Now it’s summer, so we’ll see if I can recreate this lesson when it’s test time. But it was like a light bulb went on in my 17 year old’s mind when she went. I always look at test apprehensive at what I don’t know, rather than anticipating what showing what I do know. I think in leadership, many of us stymie or paralyze at best, or at worst, maybe our leadership, by being apprehensive when we walk into a difficult situation rather than with anticipation. Because let me tell you this, leadership is only needed in the difficult and in the uncertain if everything was certain and everything was easy. Leaders, you’re not needed it’s when things are difficult or things that are uncertain where leadership really is felt and needed. So, leaders, here’s a suggestion. Quit being apprehensive about the difficulty and start anticipating the difficulty so you can show off your leadership stuff. Go show your leadership and anticipate rather than being apprehensive.
Traci Morrow:
That’s right. And it all comes down to choice. It’s the same Macy. She knows the same information it’s the same test, it’s the same questions. She has the same amount of information, but it’s how she approaches it. It’s her choice. It’s a mindset. And we can do that too. And that leadership starts with leading ourselves first. Okay, last question. I said at the beginning we would talk about recharge. But first he hits on five steps to make our future bigger than our past. And he talks about reviewing, if you wouldn’t mind just kind of bullet pointing these because we’re closing out on our time. How often do you review? How often and with who do you reflect? He talks about recovering. What does that look like for you? If you can kind of bullet point those rearrange, what does that look like for you? And then recharge. How often and what does recharge look for you?
Mark Cole:
Mark Cole so I review every day there’s something to review. I’ve overstressed this in this meeting. What am I going to apply what I learned today? That is a review question. Reflection is very interesting to me. My leadership team, when they hear what I’m getting ready to say, they’re going to say the silent nod or some of them are kind of charismatic, so they’re going to say amen very loud. Okay, right. I’m a verbal processor. So oftentimes in leadership meetings, I am verbally processing my thoughts because I need to get them out and read the crowd and hear myself talk, which cracks me up and to watch how people respond to what I’m saying. So reflection for me comes in community. I am a verbal processor. Reflection is best when I am verbalizing what I am reflecting on. Recovery is very interesting to me. Recovery, I’m a borderline. If any of you have taken Myers Briggs personality test, I’m a borderline. I am an extrovert, but I’m borderline because I really recharge. I really recover alone. Every end of the year I go through a recovering. I call it an annual review. With me, there are many years that it is an annual recovery from me so I can go be a better me the next year. Right? Rearranging, I don’t rearrange probably as better as much or as effectively as some because I’m a law of navigation guy. When I set the course, I really tend to want to stay with the course. I probably should rearrange a little bit better. But let’s do talk for the next couple of minutes on recharge. I think that recharging is very important as leaders, and I think it’s becoming increasingly more important as the emotional fatigue that I see around the globe that’s happening with leadership in leadership for many years during the pandemic, I would say. I think that there’s going to be multiple facets of this pandemic, and I think the greatest, longest lasting one is going to be the emotional part of the pandemic. The realization that for months and months and years and years and decisions and decisions after decisions. We had no precedent to draw from. We were out front. We were taking potshots. Everyone was questioning leader because we were leading in unprecedented times, and that is emotionally taxing on a leader. I will tell you that I think this concept of recharging is more important now in leadership than it’s ever been before. Some people believe in a Sabbath. I know here at our company, I have instituted an organization wide Sundown Saturday to Sundown Sunday policy. No emails, don’t have work conversations. If you want to love on one another, embrace one another. Have some fun. That’s all good. Focus on your family. Focus on your faith. Focus on fun. Recharge. I think that others find recharging in golf. I like golf, but I don’t recharge because I get out there and think I’m supposed to be a pro or something. So I get mad at myself, and I’m terrible. So it doesn’t recharge me to go play golf because I get frustrated with myself. But I think for me, family is recharging. I think close, close relationships is recharging. Certainly traveling and talking leadership with John Maxwell is recharging to me. Here’s my point. I don’t think there is a set formula on how to recharge, but I think there is a universal need to recharge. So don’t make my formula of downtime or family time or golf, if that’s for you, but find something and get really systematic with it. Get really consistent with it and find a way to hold yourself accountable, because I think leadership in today’s economy is taxing, and that taxing you emotionally has got to be combated with intentionality around recharging. And that for me, recharging is for one reason. It’s not to take a break. I hate breaks. It’s not to sleep in. I despise sleeping in. Recharging is for one reason to me, because I want to make my future bigger. I want to make my future brighter, as we’ve been talking about this whole lesson. So recharge for the benefit of others. If it feels too self indulgent to you as a leader, recharge for us because we want, we need, we crave a future that is bigger and better than the past. Tracy as we close that, I just kind of thought of I love what John says. He says that what we focus on expands. And I just want to pause for a moment for you, and I want you to focus on a bigger future, a brighter future, a more effective leadership chapter in the days ahead. And as you begin to focus on that, I can promise you not only these five things that John has covered today, but you will begin to focus, and then you’ll begin to have faith, and then you’ll begin to have facts to back up the future being bigger and better than your past. I want to close today, as I love to do. With a listener comment, it comes from Joel. Joel talked about living Life usefully. That was the podcast. We’ll put that in the show notes living Life Usefully. And Joel made a comment that is just worth sharing with you. He said, decision is a goal. Decision is a goal setter and discipline is the goal getter. And that takeaway for Joel was everything. And Joel, I would agree with you. And in fact, I’m so moved by what you said, Joel, that I want to offer to you that’s watching today, the book Intentional Living, it’s a book about establishing intentionality today to accomplish what you want to tomorrow. We’ll give you a discount. You can enter the code podcast and we’ll give you a discount there for Intentional Living. Hey, thanks for joining us today. I hope that this podcast has inspired in you, if not reality, certainly hope for a bigger future than your past, a better future and a way to make those around you better. Because after all, everyone deserves to be led well. Our.
