Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to imagine the possibilities. I want to talk about motivation, but before I do so, I'd like to just tell you a little something that I believe to be true. What we input will equal what we output, period.
[00:00:15] The things we read, be it the bible, are a book about killers, be it the Declaration of Independence, the constitution, and the bill of rights, or the the communist manifesto and Alinsky's rules for radicals, be it, oh, the place you'll go, the ultimate gift. Chaucer's tales are measure of a man. All of them do affect the way we think, believe, and see things.
[00:00:42] The people we associate ourselves with, positive or negative, will have an effect on us. The things we do and the places we hang out will also have an effect on us. And we have to take all those things into consideration. When we talk about motivation, the first thing, when we talk about motivation, the very first thing I believe to be true about that is you can't associate yourself with negative people. Now, I'm not saying you can't attempt to motivate negative people, but I'm saying you can't associate yourself on a continual basis with people that are negative. They will drag you down eventually. I don't care how motivated you are, that will happen, and you'll have to work through that. And you'll find yourself spending more time trying to keep yourself motivated than you are trying to get them motivated.
[00:01:30] As an example, getting this podcast up and running, you probably heard the story. If you listen to episode one of this whole thing, the first episode I created, I explained the self doubt I had and everything else. And the one thing, and I've said this a couple times, I think, in podcasts, Brenda, my wife, was my greatest motivator. She was my greatest support every time I got down in the dumps. And if you listen to that story, and it's true, it took me over two years, or right at two years from the time I decided, hey, I'm going to, I ran around here hollering, hey, I'm going to do a podcast.
[00:02:07] And two years later, I finally did my first podcast. And during that time, if you listen to podcast one, I was up and down. Every time I was down, at some point Brenda would start talking to me and I would get energized and remotivated. I start doing something, and then time would pass, something would happen, a trigger or whatever. Hate that word. But it is a word we gotta deal with in today's world. I would lose focus and stop doing what I was doing, and then I would go sometimes a month, two, three months, and then Brenda would keep talking to me, talking to me, and all of a sudden I'm back, ready, and I start doing things again. And then something else happened, and it literally took me two years to get to that point where I recorded that first podcast. And if I looked at it, it shouldn't have taken near that long, maybe five or six months, maybe, maybe less time than that. But I would have had to stay focused and motivated through the whole thing. And since I didn't have, that's what stretched it out. When we talk about reading or we talk about motivation, I think reading is really important. I, on average, read a book a week, and I try, at least every third book, I try to read something that's motivational, not just a novel or not just a self help kind of book, something that's truly motivational. I look through books and I have a quite extensive library, and I'll find books online that, oh, that's, that looks interesting. Or I've read one book by the author and he's got a new book out. So I buy that book, and it's truly what I expected. It's very motivational and it really helps me. And I always go back to what Charlie tremendous Jones said to me, and that's, we're the same today as we, as we'll be five years from today, except for the books we read and the people we meet. And I think that's so true. So I encourage everybody to read. There's all kinds of ways today to read. I mean, you can read with a kindle device, which is what I use a lot of times. But in the last year or so, I still like to read on the Kindle device, but I missed turning the pages of a book. I missed the feel of a book. And so a lot of books, even though I may have them on my kindle device and also have an audible copy of them, I buy usually a paperback edition of it. So if I want to read it again, once I've read it, if it's really good book, and there's a lot of them that are, you know, and I want to go back and read it, instead of using Kindle and audible, I sit down with a hard copy and read the book. And I just enjoy that so much, turning the pages, reading it, and I found myself reading slower, and I think I absorbed more of the book. Maybe it's just because it's the second time I've read through it, but I like that. So I've started buying more paperback editions of the book than I had before. The other thing that I find motivational for me is music, and I listen to every kind of music.
[00:05:12] If you went to imagine the possibilities, life and look, that I want to talk about me, you'll find a list of the kind of music I listen to, and it's pretty much anything that's music wise.
[00:05:23] And there's some music that, for me, is almost. It is spiritual in nature. I love gospel music, and I love some of the new gospel stuff, and I appreciate that. And I still like some of the old time gospel. I'm 77 year old. Hey, what the heck? I listened to all of it. So that's a good thing. Music's a good motivator, and I think we all should look to do that more. Another thing I think you can get motivation through is seminars. When I was younger, I attended. I lived in Atlanta for 28 years, and I would almost bet. I don't think I missed one. Maybe I did. But every time zig. Ziglar came to Atlanta, I attended his seminars. And I got to meet Zig a couple times, and I just found that he motivated me. He inspired me to do stuff. And I have several of his books autographed that I've got on my bookshelf, and I've always loved books. And it was just one of those things that he did stuff in such a way. I think he was a very authentic person. I think he really cared about all the people that were in the crowd. And some of the events I went to had a lot of people. But I think he spoke to everybody almost individually. I don't know if. If you understand what I mean, but I think he did. I felt. I always felt like he did.
[00:06:47] Another way is spend time with your family and friends. I think to stay motivated, that's an important piece of it, because we've got to learn to balance our personal life and our professional life and our spiritual life. But too many times, we get focused on one and we forget about the other two, and we need to spend time with our family and friends.
[00:07:08] When I say spend time with them, I'm just talking about spending time. Sit down, have a nice family dinner, enjoy a movie with your spouse and your kids and stuff. Go to a ball game that your kids are playing in, that kind of stuff. They're into sports or whatever. Do something with them and let them know how important they are to you. I talked in one podcast about a friend of mine, Bob, who. Who, after knowing me for only two weeks, decided he wanted to mentor me and he did that throughout most of my adult life. After we met, I was have to think about it, but I was probably in my mid thirties when that happened and he took me under his wing and taught me so much and he was a big influence on my life. But there was one thing that Bob taught me and I guess it's part of motivation, but it's a whole lot of things I think combined. But every time I went in to talk to Bob about something or he, we needed to have one of our motivation meeting or one of our mentoring meetings and he called me in the office after hours and whatever, and we were sitting there, I noticed one thing that Bob did and it made such an impression on me that I carried on when I became a team lead and a manager and a director. I always did the same thing every time I walked into Bob's office. Bob, he had a secretary. Bob would pick his phone up as soon as I cleared the door and tell his secretary to hold all of his calls. And then he had a laptop sitting on his desk. He would close that laptop down, shut it off. He would make sure that his undivided attention was focused on me. Now, I know Bob did that for everybody. I know he did it. Every person that ever went Bob's office, he did that. But with me it made an impression because I thought, I'm important enough. He's not going to take any calls. And whatever he was working on, maybe it wasn't him, a scheduled meeting, maybe I just walked in his office. But whatever he's working on, he's quit working on it. He's focused on me. So I started doing that and have tried my best to continue to do it. And if you do it with your spouse and your children when they're growing up and when they're adults, it makes a difference. I see people sitting around and I'm guilty of it. I'll admit it right now because I lose focus every once in a while, but I see everybody sitting around in the living room watching a movie and there's ten people in the room and ten people are typing on their phones or looking at their phones or playing a game or doing whatever. Nobody is. There's a conversation going on, but nobody's attended to that, attentive to that conversation. So put all those devices, shut them off. Especially if your kids or your spouse walks in a room and says, honey, I need to talk to you, or says, dad, I need to talk to you. That's the time you need to take your phone and turn it off. Turn the screen off, turn the phone off and pay attention, because for them to come to you and want to talk to you about something is really, really important. So it works perfect and it's easy to do. And when it's over, you can turn your phone back on, see if you missed any calls, messages, or whatever. So that was something I learned from Bob that I think is ultimately important, that we all pay attention to it. For my, for me motivation, I still go to the time has come and I still don't participate in a lot of conversations.
[00:10:45] And I really can't tell you why. It's just me. But I watch other people encouraging each other and trying to help each other through something or with something they're working on. And for me, that's enough. Seeing other people do that really motivates me because I'm like, okay, we're in a good place. You know, people are helping each other. I can, I can see their conversations going back and forth, and that's really cool. And that's what I wanted to do. That's what it's always been about for me, is helping other people. And that was the whole motivation behind starting imagining possibilities was to simply help other people. And hopefully I'm doing that. Everybody that has been with me on this journey to create this podcast understands the passion that I have for doing this. And because they understand it, they are always encouraging and motivating me. And it's great. I feel like I'm in a sea of pure, positive and powerful stuff. I turn around and somebody saying something about something I'm working on, or even my wife knows that I'm going to be in my room in the where I do my podcast and record them. But she says, don't you need to go do a podcast? Weren't you working on a podcast? Do you need to go in and record some on it? I'm like, yeah, I really need to. Well, go ahead, that's fine, I understand. So her understanding is very important to me and it does give me the opportunity sometimes, because a lot of times I get these, I get thoughts turning in my head and I need to go get them on, not on paper, but get them recorded so that I can create a recording based on them. So that's another thing. There was a period of time that I was a transition director. The company I worked for put in help desk and transitions were generally about twelve weeks long. And I had to do everything from the introduction to the first to the start of the transition to the final meeting with the company's management team and turn over basically the keys, if you would, to the help desk. And the whole time I did that, I always came in under budget, and I was never over the time allocation to finish the job. Some of my Excel spreadsheets. The project plans were somewhere between twelve and 20 pages long because I had to do everything from hiring help desk analyst in every level that was required. I had to hire a manager, put in the furniture, put in the network, put in the equipment. All that stuff had to be purchased. And I worked with the customer to get through POS so we could order stuff for them and everything. So it was always fun, though. And during those times, there were some days or months, mostly nights, that I'd call home and my wife Brenda could tell that I was a little bit down and she would just start talking to me. And by the time we got off the phone, I was pumped up again. I really appreciated those times. I'm not sure she knew how much I really appreciated it, but I did anyway.
[00:14:05] Another way you can stay motivated, which I actually think is pretty cool, I'm 77 years old. You already knew that because I've told you that several times. I may be the oldest podcaster today. I don't know that, but I may be. At least I'm probably the oldest that just started a podcast.
[00:14:25] That may really be true. Anyway, the house I live in is older than me. It's 84 years old. It's an old farmhouse. It's fixed up, but it's an old farmhouse that's in the middle of basically this year, I believe, a cornfield.
[00:14:41] It's an acre lot, and we're pretty remote. Our closest neighbor is probably somewhere between a quarter and a half mile away, so we're kind of by ourselves. But the thing is, this 84 year old house is a smart house. Most everything in the house is controlled by Alexa devices. Every room has at least one Alexa device in it, and three of the rooms, the living room, the, the room I record in, and our bedroom has echo shows the device has got a screen on them. And everything that we do, everything that I do, I can tell the Alexa device to motivate me is one of the things I can just say, motivate me. And she'll read me my positive affirmations if I say that. She also does that when I say good morning or good night. So that's a big deal. And just to give you an idea, I read all my positive affirmations to you just so you can and this is easy to do. I'm actually going to, I decided I'm going to type up the instructions to do this and put them on imagineimpossibilities, life on the website. So you should be able to find them on there. And I'm assuming that most any of those type of devices, smart devices, will have the ability to create routines and, and speak words back to you. So when, when I say motivate me or good morning or good night, it starts out with faith is not hoping that God can, it's knowing that God will give it to God and have faith, because that's. If I say good morning especially, that's the first thing I want on my mind, that everything's taken care of. God can take care of everything. I don't have to worry about that. The second one is, I'm designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed by God with the seeds of greatness. And that's a quote from Zig Ziglar. Then I have one. I will have the courage to encourage others and to seek encouragement for myself. I will strive to always be moving forward. I believe in myself and my ability. Where some see challenges, I see opportunities. I take full responsibility for my life and my actions. I'm strong and will lead my life with courage. I will become better. I will become a better version of myself one day at a time. I will not let what ifs dictate my attitude. I will not let others impose their limitations on me. Now think about that one. How many times have we let somebody get in our head when we know we can do something, but we listen to them and maybe don't do it at all? Or if we do it, we wind up waiting, procrastinating, not doing it, not being sure of ourselves when we know good and well we can do it. So don't let people influence you when you know you can do it. Don't let them impose those limitations on you. Anyway, back to my list. I trust myself to make the best decisions for me. Only by helping others can I truly help myself. I will be kind to all those that I meet. I am at peace with who I am. God made me, and God don't make no junk. I will not limit myself by creating my own roadblocks or doubting my abilities to accomplish remarkable things. And that was the stumbling block I had when it came to creating this podcast. I had to get through that self doubt, and I had so much doubt. And like I said, brenda got me out of it most time. But it took a while, took way longer than it should have. This adventure is mine, and I'm responsible for it. I own it, and I'm going to enjoy it to the fullest. And then the last one is skip. Remember, your future belongs to you. Stay humble, be kind, love deeply, and laugh often. You will have a super day, and God will bless you in a super way. And that's my positive affirmations. So every time I either say good morning, good night, or motivate me, I hear those and I can close my eyes and listen to them and say them back. I can leave my eyes open and mouth the words or whatever, but they do motivate me, and it's a cool way to do it. And there's so many smart houses and smart devices out there now. It's really easy to do. One of the other things I have on those devices is daily goals. I have five daily goals that are really simple. And when I ask for my daily goals, I get them repeated to me. And my daily goals, like I said, are simple and they're goals anybody could do. But the five daily goals is, I will do something to help another person today. I will do something that will put a smile on God's face. I will do something that will make me better than I was yesterday. I will be present. I will live in the moment, not in the past or in the future. And lastly, I will put 100% of my effort into everything I do today. So that's the daily goals I have. And I listen to those every morning after I listen to my positive affirmations. And most days, I'm successful in reaching those daily goals. So that's a good thing. I mean, I really do believe that to be a good thing. One other thing I have on it, I wrote a piece about a candle's flame, and I have it on there. And when I say, be the light, she reads me back what I wrote, and it's. And I think this is really true, and I think we all need to think about it because we've all heard that song, let your little light shine.
[00:20:18] We should be the center of a candle's flame, the brightest part. We should do this in our personal life, our professional life, and most importantly, in our spiritual life. We really shouldn't just let our little light shine. The fact is that in all facets of our life, our light should be a beacon of hope, unconditional love, and encouragement to all those around us. Another thing I do to keep me motivated is I have personal conversations with Jesus. I explained about my prayer and praying and that I don't pray like, I guess the average person prays. I don't know. I pray. I have a conversation, a two way conversation. I feel like that I'm actually truly having a conversation. And I've told several people that, and they said they understand. So I am, as far as I can tell, I'm having a conversation with Jesus. And we talk through stuff. And at the end, I may not get an instantaneous answer to everything or what I'm asking for may not occur instantaneously. And there's times I feel like he said, I'm working on it. Give me time, you know, because my patience, I guess sometimes he. He has taught me a lesson, patience. And I'll re. I'll record a podcast with that because it was really funny when it happened. But anyway, have a conversation with Jesus. Prayer is a powerful thing for us to have and use, and a personal relationship with Jesus is really, really important.
[00:21:46] I have a best friend, probably everybody has a best friend. And my best friend and I have been best friends for a long time. Neither of us would probably. Glenn and I have been best friends probably since Brendan and I got married or shortly before or after that. I can't pinpoint. He can't either. The exact date we became best friends. We knew each other for a little while before that happened. But anyway, we have chats now. If you ask our wives, they would tell you that we're both crazy, because unlike most best friends who pick the phone up, call each other and talk for 30 minutes or whatever, hang up, and they're good to go for a week. We occasionally pick up the phone and call the other one, but when we're gonna have a real conversation, we schedule it. We agree on a time and date, and the day of the week doesn't matter to us because we're both retired, but the time is usually around 07:00 p.m. so we schedule our conversation. Now. We've been using signal lately because in signal, you can have a video chat, and so it's more fun now than it was just having a phone chat. So we use signal to do that. But like I said, our wives think we're crazy because we start at 07:00 precisely and we don't have an end time. But I don't remember a conversation we've had probably in the last four or five years that we've got off the phone before midnight, maybe 01:00 in the morning. The one thing I can assure you is that over this period of time, we have solved every world problem at least once, in some cases two or three times, and a lot of problems with the country itself. So we should probably both be millionaires, multimillionaires, with all the things we've fixed and solved over the years. But when we have these conversations, one thing occurs, and what occurs is the fact that we can at some point agree to disagree and table the discussion for another day. Sometimes those have even been multiple sessions where we've agreed to disagree. And the next time we talk, we bring it up and we talked for 30 minutes or an hour, and we agree. We're just gonna stay disagreeing on it till we come to the conclusion or resolution at some point in time. We've started lately, which is really cool.
[00:24:14] We pick a book, he gets to pick a book one time, and I get to pick a book next time, and we both get a copy of the book and we read it. And then when we talk, we take an hour or 2 hours, whatever it needs, and we talk through that book of what we both got out of the book, what we find as highlights in the book, what we found motivational in the book, if it was a motivational kind of book. And the good thing about it is neither one of us has ever got off the phone. And next day we'll usually send each other a message or something, or an email. And every time we send those messages, it's like, that was really fun last night. And we're motivated, we're highly motivated from just those chats and stuff. So. And we also believe that every time we've had the conversation, we both learn valuable information. And the odd thing is, we are polar opposites in at least one way, and yet we can get along and we can agree and we can have fun with it, and it's a great thing. And like I said, we always seem to be learning something valuable from each other. I think that most of the podcasts I'm going to be doing moving forward are going to be very positive. They will contain some motivational information that things I believe in. Like one thing I believe, and I think I've said it in maybe all the podcasts, I may have missed one or two, but I truly believe that people that listen to this podcast and think about it and apply their God given talents with a positive attitude can accomplish remarkable things. I believe you're one of a kind, you're special, and I do truly believe you can accomplish remarkable things in your personal life, in your professional life, and in your spiritual life. So keep that in mind. And like I said, I do believe that. So in closing, if you get a chance, go over to imaginethepossibilities, life and check things out. Hopefully by the time you hear the podcast, I will have the directions on how to create routines on the Amazon devices so that you can have your devices in your house help motivate you through the day or when you're down, or you just need a little push or of a morning. Like I said, I love saying good morning and hearing my positive affirmations. I love asking to hear my daily goals and hearing those. And I can. It gets me motivated and gets me focused on things. I need to think about that in the morning. And I talked about people not being all fired up on Monday mornings before and I don't like that. And I never was like that. I think that the fact we have jobs and stuff is cool. It's important. But anyway, just if you get a chance, go over and check that out and see if there's something there. If there's something I can do to help you with the electronic part of motivation using Amazon devices, let me know. If you look at the if you look at the routine that I'm giving you, how to do the routine and you don't understand it, let me know. Write me back and tell me how I don't understand this step in it. Tell me what you really mean. I'll be glad to answer your question. Anyway, in closing, I want to sincerely thank you for listening to these podcasts. It's really important to me.
[00:27:45] Helping people is my focus. That's the thing I'm doing now. Like I said, I had a great career, had a great run, enjoyed it tremendously. And part of that was because I was able to help a lot of people. I still have people, which really warms my heart. I still have people occasionally tell me that they appreciate the help I gave them when they were in their twenties or thirties or whatever, and they're still very successful in what they're doing. And I find that very humbling. But I do enjoy it when I get to read those things. But just remember that your future belongs to you. Stay humble, be kind, love deeply, and laugh often. I hope you have a super day, and I hope God blesses you in a super way. Thanks again.
