Embracing Accountability: The Power of Our Choices 192

One of the absolute most necessary skills possibly the most beneficial trait to have in life, is accountability the ability to be accountable for one's actions. The thing about accountability is it must be a balanced equation. So you can take credit for all the great things in the world. You can take credit for all those amazing things that you accomplished. You have the right to take credit for all those beautiful things, as long as you also take responsibility for all the things that you have done wrong. See, accountability is the ability to appreciate, celebrate, encourage, express, share all those amazing accomplishments that you've achieved. But accountability is also the responsibility of taking and accepting all the wrongs you have done, for holding yourself accountable to the mistakes that were made and the lessons that were learned. Today, on Share the Struck A Podcast, we're going to discuss that balanced equation of accountability. Let me tell you something Everybody struggles. The difference is some people choose to go through it and some choose to grow through it. The choice is completely yours. Which one you choose will have a very profound effect on the way you live your life. If you find strength in the struggle, then this podcast is for you. You have a relationship that is comfortable with uncomfortable conversations. Uncomfortable conversations challenge you, humble you and they build you. When you sprinkle a little time and distance on it, it all makes sense. Most disagreements, they stem from our own insecurities. You are right where you need to be. That kind of time we can fight for this. We all take on one for life, too fast in our way to Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. What it do, what it do. Episode 192. I'm so excited, I'm so happy. I just can't hide it. I'm back with you and nobody can deny it. Episode 192, that's a hundred and ninety two consecutive weeks of me and you, and I'm so damn thankful for you. I want to make sure you start your day in a special way. I want to make sure that you start today knowing that I appreciate you. Unless you listen to this at the end of the day, then I want you to end your day in a special way. You know what I'm saying. I mean, you do what you do. That's completely up to you. I'm just telling you I appreciate you. Okay, get that awkwardness out the way, but I feel like it's important for you to know there's someone out there that truly appreciates you, because I do, because without you I wouldn't be back here, week after week, pushing record, sharing a story, spreading a message. I wouldn't be doing this without you. So a hundred and ninety two consecutive weeks is something special between me and you. If you're a day one, if you've been here since the first one, get your ones up. I acknowledge you as a loyal listener, a podcast peep, a personal member of the family. I appreciate you. If this is your first time or one of your few times tuning in, I appreciate you and I welcome you back to that loud, proud American podcast, properly, precisely, beautifully named share the struggle. Because we all know everybody struggles and in this day and age I think we all struggle our fair share right, more than our fair share. We are all struggling, we all are aboard the struggle bus, am I right? Oh, but to chew, that'd be a, that'd be a train, not a bus. But you feel me, you feel what I'm saying. Life's a struggle, but I think the more we share, the more that we're transparent about what it is that we're going through. We realize that we're not alone and that we can instead grow through things instead of go through things. And I think we touched on a key ingredient already here today, and that's that we are not alone. I want anybody listening right now to know you are not alone, even if we've never met and we've never had a personal conversation. If you're listening to this podcast today and you send me a message that says I feel alone and you want someone to talk to, I give to you my ear today. I'll listen. You are not alone, my friend. You are not alone Because I do feel like, as we all struggle through this life and as things tend to add up and to push us down, it's real easy for us to lose sight of all the positives in our lives. It's real easy for us to lose sight to everything that is right in our lives. I don't know where this little proactive speech came from this morning, but it's coming to me for a reason. So there's got to be somebody out there listening right now that needs to hear some words from me, some encouraging words from me that say you are not alone. Man, I got goosebumps. I don't know where that message came from y'all I don't know, but somebody out there needs to know you're not alone. I love you, we love you, we got you, we're here for you. That stuff's important, man. It's real easy in this life to let things pile up. It's real easy in this life to let things beat you up and, before you know it, you feel like you don't have hope. It's getting easier and easier this day and age to lose hope. If you paid attention to the beginning of the show, I let y'all know we're going to be talking about accountability and that accountability is a balanced equation. You're allowed to celebrate and enjoy and share all the amazing accomplishments in your life, as long as you're willing to take accountability for the mistakes in your life. So when I just had this little conversation this just hidden positive message that needed to be shared about the fact that you're not alone we discussed the fact that this day and age, it's real easy to be buried by life's responsibilities, to be kicked and pushed around and shoved down and to have things pile up and pile up on top of you. The key is to never have the mindset that turns to whoa is me. To never have the mindset that says why are all these things happening to me? You need to have the mindset of accountability. You need to realize that some of these things that are happening to you are happening for you and some of these things that are happening around you are because of you. So to better your situation, we often need to better our decisions. We need to take accountability for our actions, to accept the reality that's around us is something that was caused by us. It's real easy this day and age to instantly point the finger, to pass the buck, to assume the blame, instead of assuming the responsibility. Listen, I'm guilty of this too. Y'all Things start happening. I've been through some difficult times in my life as of late and I can find myself very quickly providing myself the excuse to telling myself hey, man, you've been through a lot, you can feel this way, it's okay and you're right. I'm allowed to feel a certain way, I'm allowed to accept and acknowledge the things that are going on in my life. But I have to be man enough to realize some of the things that happen in your life are because you put them in your life. Some of the things that are happening to you or around you are because of the decisions that were made by you. That is the powerful little topic on tap today for Share the Struggle Podcast. Good day Low Proud American is a lifestyle brand dedicated and determined to represent the American spirit, with an unrelenting commitment to provide made in the USA products. If you would like to join the 2% of Americans that buy American and support American, head on over to wwwlowproudamericanshop. Together we can bring back American manufacturing. All right, all right, all right, and just like that we are back. Big ol' shout out and thank you to our sponsors of the podcast City. Low Proud American. See what I did there, mm-hmm. Trust me, y'all, it's never been more important in this country to be a Low Proud American than it is right now. In this country, support American by American. You can also buy American-made Share the Struggle Podcast. Merch over to wwwlowproudamericanshop or find all things podcast related with a link to that shop over at the podcast page wwwsharetheshrugglepodcastcom. Yeah, all right, y'all, let's get this conversation rocking and rolling. Let's get this topic started. So if you guys have been listening, you know how my mind works, how my brain works. I'm always funneling things into it, whether it's an audible book or you know, some kind of YouTube video or a message or quote, whatever it is. I'm always getting topics and ideas that way, and then I blend a lot of that information into my everyday life and to things that I'm feeling and experiencing, and it's funny that these messages often come to us when we need them, right. These things come to you when you know you just need that kick in the pants and the pantalones or you just need that voice of reason, the words of wisdom. Sometimes these things just they come to you for you, right? So I feel like that's a screenshot into my life. Maybe I'm always searching for these things, or sometimes they just kind of fall on your lap. I love listening to motivational just messages and videos and speeches and such, and you guys have heard me talk about Simon Sinek, who started all the TED Talks, and I've listened to, you know, hundreds of TED Talks at my time. But because I've listened to a bunch of Simon Sinek stuff, I just recently had one of his videos just auto populate and feed into my YouTube algorithm and I was working in the office and listening along and then it just kind of hit me and it was really his message about accountability and there's a story in here that I've shared before on the podcast. But it resonated with me today and opened my eyes to life in a different way. So I just kind of want to share that with you today. But the whole message in the beginning of this podcast started with a message from Simon Sinek on accountability and he says you can take all the credit. You could take all the credit in the world for all those great things that you have in your life. You have the right to do that, as long as you also take responsibility for all the things that you do wrong in life. Think about that for a minute, guys. We love to share and celebrate all the magnificent things that we have achieved, that we have experienced, that we have earned. I mean, if we didn't like doing that, then social media wouldn't exist, am I right? If you didn't like posting pictures and celebrating that delicious T-bone steak that you just earned, if you didn't want to share you know vacation photos of yourself sitting in right field at you know the freaking most recent Yankee spring training game, if we didn't enjoy those dopamine hits from sharing those experiences, then social media wouldn't exist, right? We all love to share and to take credit for all those things that we've accomplished, right? So Simon Sinek's whole message is you can take all the credit in the world for the things that you do right, as long as you also take responsibility for the things you do wrong. It must be a balanced equation. I listened to this message over and over and over so many times in the past 12 hours. Let's say, just to kind of let it all sink in, to let it all settle in, because it's so true, it's so, so true. And, as I just mentioned to you, social media. If you think about it for a second and think about the wonderful, magnificent, beautiful lives that we all portray on social media, you think about the fact that everybody has the white picket fence, the beautiful family you know, the wife and kids, the husband and kids, the beautiful cars in the garage, the amazing vacations, everything's great, everything's on that Instagram filtered, fueled, post, right, it's such a fantasy world that we all live in and we're sharing all these things on social media. We're taking credit for all these amazing things on social media, but those same people myself guilty as charge as well aren't online taking responsibility for our poor choices, for our poor decision-making, for our mistakes in life. Now, I'm not saying to you that we need to make a rule here for every you know two great things that we post on social media. We must acknowledge two negative things that we've done in life. I'm not challenging ourselves so that we get ridiculed enough in life without burying ourselves, exposing ourselves to the world on social media when it comes to poor decision-making. I'm not encouraging you to go out there and being like, hey, y'all, I fucked up. Okay, I'll really after myself right here and I'm just gonna put it out there. I'm not telling you to do that. What I'm telling you to do is to acknowledge the fact that we need to take accountability for our mistakes. And the next time you find yourself comparing yourself to the Joneses, the next time you're trying to keep up with the Joneses, I want you to realize they're showing you all the great things in their life, they're taking credit for all the amazing things in their life, but they're not showing you the accountability that they have to take for all the poor decisions in their life, because behind that Instagram post, behind that picket fence, behind the filter and the new car and the amazing family, there's some decisions that didn't go the right way. There's some mistakes that were made along the way. If you're going to believe and achieve at the highest potential for your life, you need to take accountability for the mistakes and the wrongdoings in your life. In the words of Simon Sinek, it must be a balanced equation. The more I think about this. I think about my personal life, I think about the mistakes I've made that have led me to this point in my life. And the moment I started taking accountability for my share in a bad relationship, the moments I started taking accountability for my share in the arguments, I realized that I had faults too, and I realized that there's no benefit in just blaming you the fault lies with me too. The moments that I started doing that and realizing that it also helped me to move out of that situation and move out of that relationship, to take accountability for the fact that, yes, you might be coming at me overly aggressive, yes, you might have these things going on in your life, causing these things, and we might have these things in our relationship causing these arguments. But the moment that I realized I too have accountability for this relationship, for these mistakes, and that I'd also take accountability and the fact that if I continue to go down this road, it's gonna end bad for the both of us, I took accountability for my poor decisions up until that moment and removed myself from that relationship, from that equation. By doing so, accepting accountability, acknowledging my mistakes, it prepared me for a better relationship. It prepared me to receive a new relationship and a new opportunity, and thankfully I did that, because now, here I am, married to my best friend, and obviously every relationship has ups and downs, but in comparison to where I've been, it's it's. It's a completely different world than I am beyond happy and grateful for the life that I live. That's just one screenshot, that's just one screen. Share in life. That's just one example of that balanced equation of taking accountability. I think that we all tend to pass the buck, to push the blame, to shower the shame, before we assume some responsibility in our lives. So when I was listening to this speech from Simon Sinek and he started talking about the fact that you have all the right in the world to take credit for all those amazing things in your life, as long as you're willing to also take responsibility for all the the bad things in your life, the wrong things that have happened in your life, because I've built a life full of wrong decisions, thankfully, I feel like I'm out of point in life, for the right decision outweighs the wrongs and that gives me a life that I'm proud to share and to continue to live along right now. In Simon's video that I was listening to. He talked about something that spread throughout the 18th century, that spread all across Europe and made its way to America, and this is something that in our 190 plus episodes of podcasting, I've actually shared this story before. I can't remember what episode that might have been and I can't remember the message that might have been hidden in that story that was that was shared in that particular episode, but it's been some time in. This information resonated with me and I felt like it was a great vehicle to teach the lesson today. So in this video from Simon he talks about, in the 18th century there was this, this virus, this disease that spread across Europe and made its way to America, and it was called purple fever, better known as the black death of childbirth. Now, this black death of childbirth, this fever that swept across Europe, made its way to America. It affected women giving birth, because women who gave birth, they were all dying 48 hours after giving birth. So within 48 hours of childbirth, all these mothers were dying. This is that purple fever, the black death of childbirth, and it was getting worse over the course of a century and, as I said, it made its way to America and these things just continued to to spread and to and to become more and more of a problem. Some hospitals had a an actual rate as high as 70%. You imagine that there was a death rate as high as 70%. So these mothers are going in in giving birth and nearly 70% of the women and some of these hospitals were dying after childbirth. Can you imagine that? I know this is a really shitty story already, america, but hang with me here as we imagine all these mothers dying. This was the Renaissance time. This was a big time for science and for data. These were doctors and scientists. These weren't just, you know, people rolling up on horse and buggy and using the whiskey to numb the pain here. These were actual scientists. And these doctors and these men of science, they really wanted to study and figured out the reason why are so many mothers dying after childbirth. So these doctors and these scientists, they started getting together and they started to study all the corpses. They would, you know, go over everything, review these bodies and try to identify what it is it's actually happening. So they review these corpses in the morning. They do autopsy's on the bodies. In the afternoon they'd be delivering babies and doing their you know their final walk around just doing their rounds. At the end of the day, in the mid-1800s, dr Oliver Wendell Holmes realized that all the people that were conducting these autopsies, the same people that were delivering the babies, or the same people that are doing these rounds that are following up with their patients Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes realized all these people were not washing their hands. So he pointed it out and said guys, you are the problem. You're not washing your hands, you're doing autopsies, you're working with corpses and then you're delivering newborns into this world, you're taking care of the mothers, you're following up with these patients. It's you, you are the problem. And guess what? They ignored him. They called him crazy and they ignored him for nearly 30 years. Think about how many women died, think about how many lives were lost over the course of 30 years because these doctors weren't washing their hands. Finally, somebody realized if we just washed our hands and sterilized our equipment, not only could we wash our hands, we could wash away the problem. And guess what? It worked. The Black Death of Childbirth went away merely because they decided to wash their hands properly and sterilize their equipment. The moral of the story here is sometimes you're the problem, sometimes you are the problem. You need to take accountability for your actions. These doctors, these scientists are searching high and low, doing everything they possibly can to figure out what is the reason. Why are these mothers all dying when they needed to realize I'm the one killing them, because I'm not washing my hands, because I'm not sterilizing my equipment? Sometimes you're the problem. Take accountability for your actions. We talked a little while ago about sometimes in life, things just pile up and they build up, and they just pile up and they build up. And that's true. But oftentimes if you peel back the curtain, if you center into that core of the onion, you start peeling back the layers of that onion. You realize that you could be the problem, you could be the reason for some of these results. I'm at a point in my life where there's a lot of things that are stacking up on me. There's a lot of things that are weighing on me and I'm taking accountability for some of those things being because of me, because of my decision making, because of my actions. I in turn end the problem for some of these things that are weighing me down. As we already said, you have the ability to take credit for all. That is right, as long as you agree to take credit and responsibility for all that is wrong. It is a balanced equation. Wash your damn hands, think about it. We now have an entirely different level of importance on the ending of our show, when we come on here and say thank you for supporting American Dream, now wash your hands. You feel these savages. I think it has a new meaning now. If you hear the credits roll at the end of the episode today and you hear me sign off, I hope you're rushing Wash your damn hands. Think about the importance of that man Washing your hands. If these doctors, if these scientists washed their hands, they could have ended this plague, this crazy fever that was wiping out I don't even know how many innocent women, these mothers that are out there pretty freaking crazy. Wash your damn hands, man. Now there's another story that I heard from Simon Sinek. On this little montage video. I want to connect these two together and share some insight and some life experience on. Simon Sinek shares this story about going on a run with one of his friends, doing a benefit run type of deal. He describes going on this run, at the end of the run, when it's over, when it's over, when it's finished. These types of runs they often get a sponsorship. They have a company that sponsors the run and they donate breakfast or lunch or something. For my own experience, I used to do this benefit walk run with my family right here it's a couple of towns away, called Mary's Walk. That's got to have been going on for about 20 years now. We started off walking in it for one of my mom's great friends, her daughter. She lost a cancer when we were walking in her honor. Then we lost my brother to cancer. We made up these team shirts and we started walking in his honor. When Simon was describing this experience, it all really resonated with me because I know exactly what he's talking about. At the end of this benefit run walk this is a 5K at the end of it there's all these tables set up. One table has free pizza and another one has free ice cream, one has free Italian, one has free bagels and one has free water. All you got to do is stand in line. All you got to do is be willing to stand in line long enough to get the freebie. In this story from Simon, he said that he finished this run with his friend and the sponsor that day had donated bagels. There's this massive line of runners and walkers waiting to get a bagel. Simon says to his friend hey, look, free bagels. His body looks at the line and says, yeah, that's a big line. Simon says, yeah, but it's a free bagel. He says, man, that line's too long, but free bagel, I don't want to wait in a line that long for a friggin bagel. That's when Simon realized that there are two ways to see the world. There's two ways to see this world. Some say the thing that we want and some see the thing that prevents us from getting the thing that we want. All Simon's in it could see was the free bagel. All his friend could see was the line. He don't want to wait in the line to get the free bagel. As much as I love bagels, it goes beyond the bagel for me and I hope it does for you as well. I hope you see the message here that there's two ways to look at things in life. You can look at what you want in life you want that free bagel or you can look at the thing in life that's keeping you from that free bagel, which is that big ass line. Thinking about this actually makes me wonder. Do we come into life, are we born into this world with the skill set, with the fundamental outlook, to focus on what it is we want, to obsess about what it is that we want and go for it. Think about it If you're a baby, if you're a kid, you're a child and you're obsessed. You're fixated on that one thing. You never give up on it, right? You're always asking for it. If you want to go to the zoo, you're always asking to go to the damn zoo, right? If you see something on TV, you see that little toy, you want that Elmo doll. You're always asking about tickling me, freaking Elmo. Until you get Elmo, you're obsessed with Elmo. You're not thinking about what's preventing you from Elmo. You're not thinking about the fact that, hey, I'm a child, I don't have a job, I can't afford Elmo, I can't drive to the store to buy Elmo, I don't have the way to purchase Elmo, all these things. You don't consider those things. All you consider is Elmo. When you're obsessed about going to the zoo, you don't think about the fact that maybe you're town, maybe you're city, maybe your state doesn't have a zoo. You clearly don't have a license, you don't have the money, you don't have any means or opportunity to go to the zoo, but you don't care about that, do you? Those obstacles don't concern you. What concerns you is the damn zoo. So what happens to us, america? What happens to us? Is it these experiences in life that take that optimism away from us? Is it? How many times in life we try and we fail, and we try and we fail? How many times do we relive that cycle before we realize it's just easier not to try? At what point in life? How many negative experiences, how many failures, how many fuckups, how many mixups, how many mistakes have to happen before we realize there's too many obstacles in the way? Yes, I want to start my business, but these are all the reasons why I'm not going to start my business. Yes, I want a different job. Yes, I want a different career. Yes, I want a better relationship, but these are all the reasons why I'm going to stay here, because it's convenient. I'm going to stay here because I already have this, because I have a routine, because I'm comfortable. We look at all the pain. We look at all the reasons for hurt, all the obstacles, all the objections, all the things to overcome. We analyze those things instead of the end thing. We lose sight of the most important thing, the main thing, the only thing that means anything, and we start counting the fact that that's just too many people on the line for the free bagel. How and when did we lose the enthusiasm of a child? At what point in our life have we failed so much that we forget how great it is to get the things in life that we want? Man, I've sat back over the past couple of months since losing my dad and I've thought a great deal about my business and the task at hand. I've analyzed many things in my life, asking myself have you made the right decision? Have you made the wrong decision? I put myself in the most difficult position of my life and after listening to these messages, I've realized to take accountability for the position I'm in in life. I'm taking accountability for where I'm at and for how I'm feeling, because it was my decisions, it was my choices, it was my actions that led to this result, that put me in this place, that left me feeling this way. The question then becomes when you take accountability for the choices that you made, when you assume responsibility for the choices, for the decisions it's, then what do you do with it. After assuming responsibility and taking accountability, do I focus on the free bagel and get in line, or do I count all the reasons and all the obstacles that are going to keep me from that bagel? I've spent a lot of time with myself, asking myself, questioning myself, and my feelings and my emotions change from day to day for minutes a minute, because if you start to count on the responsibility in your life and you start to think about the direction of your life and you start to think about all that's weighing on you, all, that you need to be responsible for all the things that you need to be accountable for in life of trying to be a provider for your family and realizing you sacrificed security, you sacrificed comfort, you bet on opportunity, you doubled down on potential because you saw something and you chased something. I'm at that point now where maybe I'm in the middle of the line. If I'm in the middle of the line waiting for that free bagel and I'm looking at my watch, realizing I've been standing here for an hour, and I start counting the heads in front of me and you start to count the ones behind you and you're doing the math and you're asking yourself do I have an hour ahead of me or do I have two ahead of me? Is it easier for me just to get out of this line and, on my way home, hit the drive-thru and just pay the $4 for the bagel, or do I wait in line? I know it's a crazy little picture we're painting here, but it's what's gone on in my mind. It's the things that are in my mind that I'm experiencing in my life. I'm taking accountability for my decisions and I'm asking myself can I get that free bagel? Man? I'm not here to give answers. I'm not here to be the spoiler on this equation here, but I am here to say that I'm not willing to jump out of line. I'm not ready to get out of this line. I'm taking accountability for being in this line. This is getting crazy here. Am I getting too off topic, too off subject? Am I confusing you too much because we're talking about breakfast items? Should I just say the choices I made? Leading a career to chase a dream. It's weighing on me. Leading a career to chase a dream is pressing on me when all these things are going on around me and you realize that there's things in life that are out of your control. Even my dad is out of my control. Having things up and having vehicle breakdowns, having health scares and things come up, those might be out of my control, but there's a lot of decisions that I've made that have put me in this place. My dad being sick didn't make me broke. My choices made me broke. My choices, my decisions. Whether it's not being good enough with your money, whether it's buying the wrong products, whether it's investing in the wrong events, whatever it is, you need to assume responsibility for your choices. I'm here assuming responsibility for my choices and for my actions, that I had not worked hard enough, that I had not applied myself hard enough. These are all things you need to ask yourself, because if you don't ask yourself, if you don't take responsibility, you don't have that accountability, you don't have that balanced equation. Then you can't celebrate the triumphs, you can't celebrate the successes. I can't stand on the mountaintop and say Hallelujah, I did it, america, we made it. I can't do that if I don't choose to accept the responsibility and I am accepting responsibility for my life, for my direction, for who I am and for where I am. So you can bet your ass on the fact that I will take accountability, and I will celebrate where I end up. For the past few weeks, I shared with you some messages that I had picked up on, or some inspirational quotes that I got from the recent Arnold Schwarzenegger book, the Gummy Bear of Candy Colonia. Remember, you guys are probably getting tired of me using my Arnold impersonations from week to week on here, but I actually really enjoy talking like Arnold. It makes me feel very creative, so I kind of like using it, but I know it has to stop. This has to be the final week, at least for a couple of weeks. Right, talk about the gummy bear of candy colonia. Okay, this is the last time you're going to hear me say get to the chopper, at least for maybe two episodes. All right, poor impersonation aside. The last message I want to share from that book, and maybe one of the more powerful messages from that book, is one that Arnold had on new money and old money. And when he talks about new money and old money, he says that old money is that wealthy inheritance, that family that's always been rich. The money has been passed down from generation to generation to generation. Old money that's that inheritance, that wealthy inheritance. New money those are your lotto winners right. Maybe they bought a scratch ticket, a lottery ticket. They invested two bucks and they turned out to be a millionaire. New money and old money there's a great equalizer there. New money and old money never get the benefit of working hard for the feeling of making money, for us having money. New money and old money they never get the benefit the struggle of working to earn that money, being hard to earn that money, the feeling of working to make money versus having money. If you were born into it, if you inherited the money, you didn't work for the money. You had the benefit of making choices and decisions. Sure, you might be working your ass off and you might be taking risks, but you never had the benefit of working your ass off and taking those risks with no money in your account. The people that win lotteries you might say, hey, they worked their whole ass off to get to that money. They did work. Yeah, you might have been working your ass off. You might be working your 50, 60 hours a week at your day job, at your dream job, whatever it might be, applying yourself and busting your ass, but you invested $2 to make $200 million. You didn't earn that money, the money they hand to you you didn't earn. There's a different level of appreciation when you earned that money. Had your job decided to pay you the equivalent of that $200 million, that would have had a different feeling for you because you would have struggled for that money. You would have earned that money. You make choices and take risks. A hell of a lot different. When you realize my $2 got me $200 million, or when my great grandfather made me a millionaire, you might see, do and act things in a very different manner than if you worked your ass off for every cent and every dollar. Because there's something powerful in what the struggle produces New money and old money doesn't get the benefit of the struggle. They don't get the benefit of the feeling of hard work, the benefit of knowing that you worked your ass off for every dollar that you earned. There is something beneficial and something powerful that the struggle produces in you for what you do and how you do it. Now to wrap up today's episode. I'm really excited about the topics that we covered, the discussion that we've had today. I'm really pumped up about the message that's been put out today. But I also know that there's a serious undertone to some of these things. Today we're talking about big life choices. We're talking about, you know, betting on yourself and starting a business, leaving a relationship. We had the depressing topic of death on this podcast episode. We've had all these things. I want to make sure we don't lose sight of the fact that the messages of today aren't meant for just the biggest topics in life. They're not destined for just the biggest decisions we have to make. These practices, these ways of looking at life, the ability to take responsibility, to have accountability, that balanced equation, the ability to realize that these choices that we make there are choices, so we must deal with the outcomes that sometimes the problem is us. This doesn't need to be just focused on major life changing decisions. This is everyday life. If we adopt these things to everyday life, I guarantee you will have a better life. You'll have a less stressed life because, let's just put it this way, misery Loves Company right? We've all heard that saying before, and you all have that person at work that if you know you go to that person at work, they're just going to piss and moan and cry and complain, and oftentimes we stay away from that person at work because we don't want to piss and cry and moan and complain. If we adopt the philosophy of realizing sometimes we are the problem, if we have the ability to accept accountability, to take responsibility for our choices and our decisions, then we're never going to be that person at work that everybody stays away from. Y'all have somebody on your timeline, somebody in your friends' line, somebody in your family tree that you avoid. Do you hear me? There's always that one, debbie Downer, there's that one just Becky Bitchface, donnie Dickbag, I know what uses some graphic terminology for these people, but we all have them, whether it's your timeline, whether it's a family member, it's a friend, it's a co-worker. It's these people that they never take responsibility, they never take accountability, and we always look at those people and we try to keep them at an arm's length away. If you make the mistake of letting them into your life, that's the sucky bus that takes you down, that brings you down, and if you're not careful, it'll keep you down. Some of the most difficult decisions you're going to make in life is saying goodbye to those people in your life that are important to you, that play pivotal parts and roles in your life. But you realize, hey, I can't keep you in my life because you're ruining my life. I know we're getting a little deep here, but your daily actions and choices, they add up to these end results. So how you treat the small things in life, how you respond to the little things day to day, they compound, they pile up and, before you know it, that's how we go, from that little kid that just wants to go to the zoo to the person standing by the water cooler just spewing nonsense and shit out of our mouths all day because we're depressed and we won't take accountability for our actions. I have a really quick, dumb story to share with all y'all. To put this all together and I don't think I've already shared this story with you this happened over the past couple of months and I know I've shared it with some people in person, so I'm trying to remember if I've actually shared it and press record, I just had this conversation. So please forgive me if I've already said this and it's really just kind of a pointless conversation, but it kind of connects some of the things from today. So I kind of think it's funny. So a couple of years ago yes, I said years, I think it's been probably two years ago now we had an incident at home where something happened to the power in my garage. Something happened and we lost power to all the outlets in my garage and then eventually one outlet worked and it was the outlet that ran this garage heater that I have, so it has its own outlet. Basically it's like a 220 amp scenario or something, so it's got one of those big ass plugs. See, I don't know anything about electricity, right? So a couple of years ago something happened in my garage and we just kind of assumed that maybe my dad plugged the welder into something and blew out some power in my garage, because one day I realized that all the outlets in my garage weren't working and I realized that when my freezer died and started to smell bad and everything that was in this chest freezer expired on me and we had these big bags of soup and popsicles and steak and it was just a surefire mess, right. It magnified itself when I came home and I pushed the garage door open one day and the garage doors didn't open. So then I go in and realize, wow, there's no power in here at all. And what has happened over time is we've got accustomed to those things not working. So I run an extension cord from outside, from an outlet outside the house, inside the garage, to turn the freezer on to run power in there. I somehow managed to get the heater working in the garage, but nothing else. So the garage door openers haven't worked. So the benefit of actually having a power garage door open and goes out the window, because you are having to now just go and pull the door out by hand. This has gone on so much that my wife has a new car that doesn't have a garage door opener in it, because I don't even know where it is, because as long as she's had the car the garage door hasn't opened. Now I've gotten so damn busy that I don't think about these things. Most of the time I'm on the road I don't think about it. I see you get home and you're around and you're like shit, it'd be nice to have this, it'd be nice to have power, it'd be nice if the garage door is open All the obvious reasons as to why it'd be nice to have power in your garage when it's a finished, freaking garage. Now this has gone on for quite some time. I'm not an electrician. I don't know much about electricity. To be quite frank with you, I'm scared of electricity because I've zapped myself too many times to tell. Now I have a great friend that's an electrician Kody Electric Shout out to my man, chad, who might be listening to this episode. I know some of the boys down at Kody Electric listen to the podcast. Chad has come over and saved my ass many, many times Now. Maybe about a year or so ago Chad had an incident where he tore his Achilles and I didn't want to reach out over something this stupid. So I just put it on the back burner and say I'll ask Chad about it at some point. Fast forward to me having a conversation with my barber one day my brother from another mother, ed, at Main Street Barbershop, and he's talking to me about this new house that he got and how he had to go around and replace all the GFI outlets because one of those was bad. That right, there was the blinking light in my head that told me maybe you blew out a GFI outlet and that would be the reason why you no longer have power in your garage. So I started asking him about it and he says, yeah, that's probably what the situation is. And he says deal with a little YouTube in some time. I think you can figure this out yourself. Well, that built my confidence up a little bit until I researched it and I dropped the ball and I got busy and I forgot about it and I didn't try again. Now, instead of me thinking and focusing on the benefit of having power in my garage, the benefit of pushing the garage door opener and having the doors open, having the heat, having a TV, having the ability to plug in tools and whatever else you could possibly do with electricity, instead of focusing on that, I focused on that line to get to that and then focus on the bagel. I focused on the line. I focused on convincing a friend to reach out. I focused on do I look like an idiot asking somebody to replace a GFI outlet? Should I be able to do that myself? I focused on getting zapped. I focused on getting electrocuted. I focused on being transparent and uncomfortable enough to say I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I focused on the cost, on my opening up Pandora's box. This is going to cost me a bunch of money. I forgot about the bagel y'all. So eventually I got to the point where I must have just been hungry enough. I started restretching it and I got this epiphany. All of a sudden it hit me and I said to myself wait a minute, your house is pretty damn new. I bet if you go downstairs and you kill power to that breaker and you take apart that GFI outlet and you take a picture of it before you take all the wires off, you can probably go to Home Depot and find the exact same outlet. So I took a picture and I went to Home Depot and I took that and I matched it up and I, low and be told, I found the exact same outlet. So I grabbed it, I bought the three of them or four of them, whatever it was I knew to replace. I came home, I took apart that outlet and, one by one, I took each corresponding screw out, I took each corresponding wire out and I matched it up to the exact same screw, exact same location, exact same spot on that new breaker. Now, the most difficult thing for me in this whole equation was testing the power, was putting that tester in the outlet and scaring the bejesus out of myself that I might send myself halfway across the garage. That was that fear that was holding me back. But wouldn't you know, I just took, wire by wire, wire after wire, and I matched them all up and I put them back in the wall and I flipped the breaker and it didn't work. It didn't work and then I said maybe I should push the reset button on the breaker after I installed it and it worked. So the moral of the story is I now have garage door openers that work, I have heat that works, I get a TV in the garage that works, everything works in the garage. I fixed everything. So for a moment I was on my high horse. I was celebrating this victory. I sent a video to my wife, something along the lines of like can you guess who has garage doors that work? Can you guess who has power in their garage? You damn right, you guessed right. It's us, because freaking Grandmaster Flash over here swooped in. Superman showed up. Clark Kent is here. I fixed the power. Well, babe, I researched and I've watched YouTube and I took my life into my own hands. As long as I've grown up, I've had people tell me not to put things into light sockets Since I was a child. They said don't put a fork in an outlet. Well, me being as tough and as mainly as I am, I jabbed my fork into the outlet and I didn't get sent across the garage because electricity knows not to try me. I fixed it, babe. We're all set here, even to see here people. Tragedy avoided, you have power. I fixed it. I didn't have to look like a twerp and say I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have to spend more than the cost of an outlet. I am a man. Hear me roar. And the words of Tim the two man, taylor, wasn't it like huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, something like that. It's been a long time when, in actuality, when I drill down to it and I take accountability for my actions I didn't have power for two years. I thought about it. I told myself you worked around power for two years you didn't use a garage door opener. You pulled it up by hand. You got out of the car and pulled it up by hand. For a year it didn't have heat in your garage. You ran space heaters in your garage trying to get around it. You had zero power. You ran an electrical extension cord from an outlet outside into your house to turn on your freezer. You made all these poor, stupid decisions because you weren't accountable enough to fix the problem. It was very easy for me to celebrate the fact that I fixed the power when I needed to take responsibility for the fact. It took me two years to fix the power. You see, stories have a different impact and they have a different meaning based on the way we tell them. If I just came out and told you and my friends and my family, I told all of us yeah, man, we lost all the power in the garage. But I just researched it on YouTube, I figured it out. I went down to Home Depot, got the parts, fixed that shit myself. No electrician, I nailed it. I sound pretty awesome, right, I sound like freaking, you know hairy homeowner over here making shit happen. But if I told you, yeah, man, I was scared shitless to fuck with electricity and I was too damn proud to call for help. So I spent two years with no heat in my garage. I ran extension cords to get power in my garage. I had to open the doors by hand because I was too proud to ask for help. We far too often in life get sold the narrative that they want to tell, whether that's the media, whether that's the news, whether that's your friends, whether that's your family, whether it's your competition. We only consume the narrative that is told. We don't always know the truth, people don't always take responsibility for their decisions or accountability for their actions. I'm proud. I fixed the power y'all. I'm ashamed. It took me two years. I'm allowed to be both. I'm allowed to experience both of those feelings. This whole message today, the meaning today, the story today, I hope it makes an impact today. There's something in here for you today that makes a difference, because I know it made a difference on me. If you found something of value today, please share the show with someone that you know. Help it grow. Hit a review, hit, subscribe. Let's grow the tribe. I think we got a positive message here that we're continuing to grow. Because of that, I want to thank you. I want to thank each and every one of you. Thank you for supporting my American dream. Now go, wash your fucking hands, you filthy savage. Wash them. Wash your damn hands. If you learn anything today, it's to wash your hands. That's it and that's all. Biggie Smalls, thank you, a big old thank you to the boys from the Gut Truckers for the background beats and the theme song to this year's podcast. If you are enjoying what you're hearing, you can track down the Gut Truckers on Facebook. Just search Gut Truckers. Give them motherfuckers. I like to. I truly thank you for supporting my American dream. Now go wash your fucking hands, you filthy savage.