A great book is a shortcut to where
you want to go. Friends have recommended books to me
on a number of occasions and expert people, advisors and everything. I
can think of one situation where a buddy recommended a book called Leadership and self
deception probably 15 years ago. That
book was just what I needed at the time. It was a shortcut to where
I needed to go or I wanted to go. And I founded
Decide youe Legacy to help people make shortcuts to
not get stuck in traffic.
Can you relate to this? Can you think of a book someone recommended to you?
And it had such a big impact that you said, wow, I just
saved so much time. I would have made so many mistakes had
I not had the insight from this book. Do you remember who recommended the book?
Share with us below. Tell us. Share your story.
One action, one book, one
phone call, one encouraging comment can make
a huge difference.
So welcome to the Decide youe Legacy Podcast. Today's episode is on
seven powerful ways that you can encourage
other people. This is part one of a two part series you can
learn today. You will learn today how to help your co workers, your family,
your friends, your neighbors, even strangers.
And the third
way you can encourage people is going to shock you. There's going to be something
there that I promise you. Listen, you're going to find it to be
extremely surprising. So do me a
favor and subscribe. Give the Decide youe Legacy Podcast
a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. It helps it to grow
organically so we can help more
people. So I'm your host. I'm Adam Gragg. I've been a family therapist for
over 25 years and a coach for over for
doing that for over 15 years as well. I founded Decide youe Legacy in
2012 and we're a corporate development
firm and a coaching organization. Provide legacy coaching
is what I like to call it. So I'm the chief legacy
coach and I have assistant legacy coaches. So our purpose
is to empower every person and organization to live courageously. And by
the end of this episode, I can almost guarantee you that
you are going to recognize different ways that you can help
people around you. And these are simple. I'm going to simplify it. Practical
ways that you can actually encourage other people. And more than that, you're going to
be motivated to want to do this because you're going to see some special
benefits that you didn't see before when it comes to
helping other people out. So as I do every episode, I want to start with
an action. So here's an action I took recently that was fairly
uncomfortable. And I share this because nothing's more
important to your mental health than living
courageously. Don't play it safe. I reached out to somebody
that I hadn't spoken to in over five years, and I was
nervous, didn't know how it would go. There was no beef between me and this
person, but I just hadn't talked to them in a while. And I mean, in
my mind, that noise was saying, they're not going to even, you know, want to
talk to you. They're not going to remember, you're going to interrupt them, you're going
to annoy them, whatever. But, you know, that interaction actually brought a lot
of awareness to me. It showed me some opportunities I didn't actually see
and it spurred on further interactions. So
reconnecting. So here's the action that I want you to take
that may be uncomfortable. Well, hopefully not. But it's to actually go
after this course to the shatter proof yourself light, hit the link below
and watch the video and fill out the worksheet. It goes along with this
content. That's your challenge. So the
reason why do we want to help other people? I mean, why do we want
to not live selfishly? Well, I think there's, I mean, a lot
of reasons for that. For one, it gives you purpose in your life. I mean,
this kind of sounds selfish, but it builds connections with other people. If you
leave and you make it a purpose to leave every interaction with the other person
more inspired and encouraged than when the interaction began, it's a great
goal. It gives you peace of mind to give back. It shows you your
abilities. It shows you your uniqueness. It's a way to
inspire other people. I mean, it's super inspiring to see somebody else take an
action and then you realize that at some level you
were able to encourage them, help them, challenge them.
And when I think of encouragement, I think of giving somebody else courage. So
encourage to encourage somebody else. These are
these. I'm going to go over four of them today, and then I'm going to
go over three in the next episode. So this is seven. This is episode
one. This will be episode number two. So the first
simple, amazing thing you can do to help other people out, it's
a powerful way, is you can help them find clarity in their life.
You can help them clarify a vision for their future. You can help them set
goals. You can help them to actually see their potential in
the process. A vision, when somebody has it, it's going to keep somebody
focused. I See, transformations happen in my office and
in meetings. When somebody can grasp that something good can happen in their
future and they have a reason to pursue it, they see it as
being possible. It gives them courage because they realize that that
is possible and I'm going to do what it takes to get there. And they
know they're going to have traffic and turbulence and
setbacks, but they're wanting to do it. They're willing to go forward because
they have grasped the fact that this is a possibility in their life. I like
to make it ideal. So you're thinking really big. I mean,
ideal means it's realistic. You're never going to exactly hit
it because it's not perfect. It's never going to be perfect in the process, but
it's big. It's really big. They see that they have something
to focus their attention on. So an example that inspires me,
and I love this one because as I think of these,
I can think of the people sitting in my office and where they were and
where they actually are today. So Alyssa, she's a
core executive at a large company and her
very successful in her career. Yet also she had an extreme
level of insecurity, like it could be taken from her at any moment.
She had never come to terms with a very challenging,
traumatic childhood. And she did whatever she could
possible, really, to not face it, to not even acknowledge it, that it was a
big deal, up talking to me, because, you know, it had
gotten. Caused some problems in her relationships and even
caused her problems with some addictive behaviors.
So workaholism mainly. Yeah, that was impacting her.
She was numbing the pain that she didn't want experience
through approval, through performance approval, meaning
people pleasing her. Workaholism was impacting her life.
And she, through this process of just talking about it
and seeing what she had outside of work, she started to grasp
the fact that things could be really good, not only
professionally, but more so professionally. Well, even better
professionally, but also with her relationships and her impact on other
people and the opportunity to help other people as well. So her
future became brighter in the process. And it was questions
that I got to ask her that you can ask other people that helped her
to see this. She accepted her past. She started to. And
she stopped blaming herself for it. She actually
chose to have courageous conversations with people, letting go of
the outcome, even if it didn't go well. She halted or
at least tempered greatly her workaholism in the
process, and she started to see how her story could help other
people. And she started to share it with other people. So you,
you can do something similar. I mean, how. What do you do with
this? Exactly. So if you ever have, if you've downloaded the Shatterproof Yourself
worksheet shadow for yourself light worksheet, you're going to see that there's actions
with each of these seven steps that I discuss. And one of the actions I
call your, your one year, your one year
dream. And basically it's what would your ideal life look
like in all seven different areas, in all the different areas of your life
in one year, ideally. And you ask somebody that question
or you ask them about their goals over the next three months, or you ask
them about their goals even this month and you get them talking about it and
you get curious about it. They might be awkward, they might not like it
at first because they're not used to thinking that way. But you're being a
friend, you're helping and encouraging them, knowing that it's always good when someone
starts to recognize where they can be in their health, in their marriage, with
their kids, with their finances. And
it's always positive when you see the health, when you add health to those areas
in your perspective and your attitude by, and your attitude towards that
area. So you can find though, that some people have
trouble articulating a vision because they're stuck in the past.
And that vision isn't possible because they've been hurt before and
they have trouble even going there. That's why you get that resistance. But it's still
a worthy activity. So you're going to help them not only articulate a
vision and realize that they can get there, but you're also going to help
them to face the junk in the
trunk. Face the junk in the trunk. Like face
your past, basically. Okay, so look at it and say I
be able to analyze it and say, this is the
reality of my situation. So a lot of people will go and see
therapists and if I have friends or family and say I'm going to talk to
a therapist, I want to deal with stuff, I will. And they say, what should
I do to approach this the right way? And my whole thing is, you know,
open up, tell them the whole story, don't leave anything out. The stuff you
don't want to share is probably the stuff you want to share.
And start fast, like jump in there, because this person
here, you'll see quicker if they can help you. It's not going to be a
one and done type thing, but you want to open up about it and just
the process of Talking to somebody safe about it, which is a
therapist's job, is to provide safety, psychological safety. You're
going to realize that even hearing yourself discuss starts to
lose its power. It starts to become externalized. So you can help people just by
talking to them about what they've been through. I've seen this happen many occasions where
people open up for the first time from something that happened 50
about something that happened 50 years ago. Amazing
stuff. The insecurity starts
to dwindle because they see, and that's really
the second you're helping them face their past. They see that it doesn't have
to be tied, their confidence isn't tied to what happened in the past.
And it's amazing stuff. So I like to have clients actually do a life
timeline. They go back to like their first memory and the good
and the bad and write it down. Then I get to ask them about it
because that's going to start triggering in them some stuff that they haven't actually processed.
And it's really fun because it actually leads to content that you can discuss with
your kids. If people do that and they look and they remember something that happened
that was very positive in their life and they've never actually even shared it with
their spouse because it just didn't come up, you
know, that something that they, it was a good memory and something they wanted to
share and it opens them up to actually having a good positive
discussion. Great example of this is, you know
what times in my career I've supervised new and up and coming
therapists and oftentimes there's some
insecurity involved. And when somebody becomes a therapist, in fact, the reason
many people become therapists is they have unprocessed stuff that they want to figure
out. They haven't figured it out. So they find that profession very appealing.
If I figure this out with myself and understand myself better, I can help other
people and use it to help other people. So they're inspired to do that. But
oftentimes I will find that people feel, and it's a feeling,
it's not the actual truth, but that they don't have much to offer because they're
brand new in the field or they don't have the
specific training in a specific area that they need to actually be able to help
other people and they're holding onto that. They're not actually willing
to let it go. They have this thing that can be related to the
past, but it's coming out in this content, this drama that they've stirred
in their life. Like I'm not enough, I'm not good enough. And I want to
figure out where that comes from. So one individual that I supervised in the
past, he had this fear of clients
not wanting to reschedule with him and then fear of
them not being happy with him, this people pleasing mentality. And I
would challenge him and say, hey, you have a ton to offer, but
when you're trying to please somebody else, they're going to lose trust in you because
they're not going to believe that you're going to point them in the direction regardless
of their resistance, which that's how you build trust with somebody. You're honest with
them about what's going on. It's not just fluff. So I challenged
him to make a list of how he adds value
as a person, not as a therapist. It wasn't the books he read or the
certifications he had or the degrees he had. It was him as a person, his
passions and interests, his life experience, his personality, his character
traits that he can bring to any interaction and even challenge him to look
at that before he goes and sees clients every day to make that
list. It's a great list for anybody to make. How I bring value to the
situation. And it helped.
He realized in the process too, he had abandonment issues from his past that he
had been triggered in these current situations with potential,
whatever you want to call it, rejection with a new client or not feeling helpful
or them not rescheduling. And he was able to tie that to the fact that
he had some abandonment, real abandonment as a kid that he was
able to connect it to and then was able to process it and talk about
it and add light to it and realize it didn't have to impact him now
as long as he recognize it. So you can use this same
stuff with your friends and family and co workers and it doesn't have to be
so deep and weird and all that. It's simply asking
them, like people like to talk about themselves and you're going
to get a little more pinpointed in your questions. So I love to say
and ask people what challenges they've had in their past. What were some of the
biggest challenges you've had in your past? You know, what were some of the biggest
wins you've had in your past and you get them to think about it and
if you figure out that there's some area that they could
and they want to talk about more, it could be a show of
trust, it could just be scratching the surface. But you can go deeper
Later. So on the Shatterproof worksheet, the question and
the activity is. The activity is a life
events, okay? Impactful life events. This is the name of the act. Power Action.
So what events or circumstances from your past have impacted your life today? And
that can be positive or negative. So that's something for you to write as you
go. Write down as you go through the worksheet, encourage you to do it. And
it's going to be. It's going to be fuel right there for
you to help other people. So then the second part of that is,
how do you think it might impact you today? And you can get some clarity
on that. And no longer has the same power in your life. So you figure
out your vision, you help other people do that, then you help them unpack their
past. And then you're going to realize, and people realize that the past
impacts the way we view ourselves,
positive or negative, because of what we've been through, then we're going to view
ourselves differently. So if you have a real positive business interaction, you're more
apt to go into the next one that you have the same day and say,
I can do this. This can be really good. Because you're energized. You're like, I
can do something here and now. If you've had some negative stuff in your past,
it's easy to go ahead and carry that in those other similar circumstances and say,
it's going to be bad, Things aren't going to go well. Third
power you have is that you can
help other people understand their value,
understand basically what value they bring to the
situation. Have you ever been able to
encourage somebody and surprised yourself
at what you shared? It just came out the right way.
It's like your subconscious mind knew what to say at that time. And then
you realize they were encouraged by it. And you surprised yourself because
you were able to add life and light into their life,
helping them see their potential. It's a powerful thing.
It'll give you fuel for a whole day. When you get to do that, you
see their potential potentially better than they see their potential.
It's pretty amazing. And that happens again and
again.
They realize in the interaction that their value, and this is what I see people
giving to somebody when they're truly energized is they start to see that their value
doesn't come from performance. It comes from who they are as a person. It's not
something that they have earned, it's something that they've been
given that they can add their sense of humor,
their courage, Their charisma, their
attitude, something there that is never going to be
taken away from them. And their goal is to let it out more. And they
may be in situations where they're not able to be themselves or they're
criticized for being themselves, but you're able to help them talk it through
and see it and even maybe challenge them to make a list like I
did with the guy I supervised. It's a really healthy thing to
do. So I'll give you a great example here. So Vince, he
had, and I love giving these examples so I can see the person,
you know, like right now, but he had a tense anxiety about
retiring and he felt like at least he approached it with
me, like the best was behind me, you know, what do I do now? It's
not going to be good. And this, his fear, a lot of it was triggered
by a coworker of his, a longtime coworker who had retired and
then shortly passed away. So he was afraid that
it just wasn't going to be good for him. He tied that together for some
reason, reason. And he had at the time like few
connections, few meaningful connections outside of
work with friends, you know, he had connections with family. But some of those
relationships were strained. And his self worth, he
identified, was just highly, highly tied to his
performance. His performance
was, was a big deal. And so you can see for someone like that, like
letting go of this, of this job was going to
be a blow, you know, because I'm already, I'm letting go of this area where
I have security and going into this area where I got insecurity.
And through the process, what I saw with him
is he started to gather courage, to reach
out. He started to repair
some broken relationships. He started to build in
person connections with other people and spend time face to face with other
people, sharing, opening up. And this is the
shocker thing about self worth and it's actually the shocker thing
about helping other people is when people see, this is what I want you
to glean from this number three. When people see what they have to give
back to other
people and they start to do it, they take action on it to
give back. And they're afraid, they're terrified, they
have these emotional reactions to doing so, like it's going to go bad and
they ended up avoiding it and avoiding avoiding it, but they actually do it.
And then they see, even if it goes bad, that I can do this and
then sometimes it goes good and I can help people and I can impact people.
Their sense of value in themselves is going to skyrocket because they've
gotten out there and done something and realized they had an impact on
other people. In this case, he realized.
Vince realized that he had been objectifying people. He had
been seeing them as vehicles to getting what he wanted
and not getting to know them. And that shifted for him because in the
shift came when he realized that although he
had worked with them and in many cases been their boss,
he now had a chance to build a completely different relationship
by seeing them as valuable and treating them in a way
where he wanted to get to understand them and know them. And even in cases,
maybe help them. It could be helping them find a new job
potentially, but with a totally different heart. And what I saw in his sense
of self worth, his sense of value skyrocketed
because he saw what he could give back. And we're designed that way. I mean,
I've seen that we're designed to increase
our mental health as we. And to care for ourselves better as we
give back to other people. And it can seem overwhelming, like, I don't have time,
I can't do this. But you say yes doesn't mean you don't take care of
yourself. It doesn't mean you don't. In fact, you are taking care of yourself
when you are giving back. So the fourth,
the fourth power that you have because,
well, and by the way, just tell you here, so before I go to the
fourth, you know, when you help other people show up for
themselves, you're helping them see their value
and you help them determine what could get in the way of them showing up
for themselves. Who can you. And this is the, this is
the, the power action worksheet action. Here
it's called little wins. And the question is, what two ways can you show up
for yourself in the next 24 hours? And
it may be giving back in some way. It may also be doing something fun,
like making a list of the hobbies that you want to engage, which is something
I've loved to do with clients and friends and everything. Because you get refreshed
when you do that kind of stuff. It builds the sense of worth and value
in yourself. When you go ahead and do the stuff that's actually fun and energizing,
especially when you don't feel like it. You just trust that's going to actually help
when you engage in it. And when you
prove your value, what you add to other people's lives, your
perspective starts to shift as well. And your perspective is
your outside view of the world. Have you ever heard of a
Rorschach test. Rorschach test is also known as the
inkblot test. And
psychologists therapist puts it in front of you and says, hey, what do you see?
They don't tell you what it is, what it's supposed to be, and then you
tell them the first thing that you see. And in some of these situations,
somebody, two similar people, one person, same exact
inkblot says, hey, I see. I see a guy shooting
people and there's blood all over the place. And then the same person, same. I
mean, that different person, same inkblot sees. I see a family picnic. You know,
they're running around having fun, same exact situation. It's their interpretation of the
situation. That's the value of that kind of thing. It brings out somebody's
perspective so you can identify what it is and
then make some changes to it. So why'd you see that
perspective can change so incredibly quickly.
So weekend a week ago, I had a gal
reach out to me that I hadn't heard from in like two or three years
and said, checked in how I was doing, and
somebody I've never met, so. But there's been some interaction, you
know, professionally and everything, but. And I just texted back, say,
oh, oh, so do you want to meet me in person now? He said,
yes, I do. And I was like, cool, you know, because.
Cool person. I felt like it was, you know, that's fun. Obviously you're listening
right here. I'm single, so it's not. She's single and all that, so it's all
healthy stuff. Well, I don't even know her yet, but
that changed my energy level because I was kind of down and discouraged. I get
this one message on Facebook, which I'm not advocating being
on Facebook, but I got it on Facebook, just be honest with you. And it's
like, oh, wow, this is cool. And the rest of my day, I had some
energy, so that's how quickly our perspective can shift. And you can help other people
do that pretty cool stuff,
help them get out of the fear cycle where they're focusing on fear and what
can go wrong and see the hope. So here's a great
example. Okay, so Josh, Josh, he
went through years before a bankruptcy,
and he had lots of noise in his head, like, you know, you're
gonna fail again. He took some business risks. It didn't go well, and then
he ended up having to close his business is basically what had happened.
And successful guy had never gone through that kind of blow before, but went through
a blow. And from his perspective his
view outside. He had failed people. He had let his
family down, he had let his employees down.
And he was
consumed by the sense of failure. Anxious thoughts
of, hey, my current business
situation is going to fall apart left him frozen
in analysis, paralysis. I mean, frozen in depression,
at times, frozen in anxiety. And through his
own hard work and his family. And just
by helping him see that there's a different way of looking at
things, two different perspectives about the whole
thing, his energy level started to shift over time. You know, he
learned to actually experience his
emotions. So when he felt this fear and insecurity about
his new business venture, he learned to experience them and
not suppress them and not just react to them and take
orders from them, but actually feel them, figure out where they're coming from, figure how
they're connected to his past, figure how they're connected to things that aren't
necessarily true. And then that was helping him to actually make the shift
that that stuff's not necessarily true. I can actually use this
past experience and be propelled by this new
perspective that he started to develop to actually
face challenges that he has today to run a business
and learning what he had learned in the past in a different
way. And he started and has started to live
courageously in amazing ways. And seeing
results from that whole process by this one shift
that he was making, realizing it didn't define him, realizing
it's only one part of his life, not his whole life, his job, that is,
realizing that he had all the good stuff ahead. It's like waking up one
morning and, you know, you go to bed at age 80 and you wake up
and you're age 40. You're like, oh my gosh, what happened? I have 40 more
years ahead. I mean, imagine the perspective shift you would have. So if you want
to help other people shift their perspective, well, the power action in
the Shatterproof Yourself worksheet is called fear awareness. So you write down
some anxious thoughts that you might have before
doing something positive and productive yet
scary. What are the thoughts that you actually have? It's
scary, it's uncomfortable, that kind of thing. What are the thoughts? When you go
to meet somebody new in a business situation and you're anxious
about it, identifying those thoughts
helps you to see where your perspective is off and helps you to
make a shift in that perspective. And there's questions you can
ask yourself to help you make the shift, like, is it true? How
does this thought benefit me? How does thinking this thought benefit negatively impact my
life? Who would I be if I didn't think this way? How would I act
if I had 10 times more confidence in this situation? How would I
engage it differently? What's a healthier
perspective? What advice would I give to a friend in this area? Those are all
perspective shifting type questions that you can ask to help
other people. It's like mental verbal
journaling. You're helping them journal so they can see clearly what their
perspective is telling them. That may not be true
because much of it is lies. You're breaking down the anxiety
for them and that perspective
shift
impacts everything else. So on the
next episode, I'm going to share with you those three other ways that you can
powerfully impact other people. Three
ways you're not going to want to miss because you've gone into this content. You
got a cheat sheet though. If you've downloaded and walked through the Shatterproof
Yourself light worksheet and video and take
this stuff and start practicing it, you can take it right now and start practicing
it. So let's go ahead and review
briefly. Well, actually what I'm going to do is encourage
you again to go into shadow, proof yourself light and
subscribe. Because. Because it's going to help you to see
other practical ways, some journaling questions that you can engage
in yourself, and more detail
on how to actually help other people in all these areas. You'll be inspired
in the process. So hit the link there. And by shatterproofing yourself, what I'm talking
about is building resiliency, building mental
toughness in your life. And I think of three things when it comes to building
mental toughness into your life so that you can help people better
is that you are realizing that you can have a hopeful
approach versus a fearful approach to situations that you face.
You realize you can make it through those situations and get
to the other side. You have this mentality that I can get to the other
side. And the third aspect is you start to grasp the actions you can take.
So the practical stuff that you can engage in to actually get there. You're
becoming psychologically shatterproof in the process.
So what's your takeaway from the episode today? What resonated with you the
most? So by the end of the day today, do something
with that insight, talk about it with somebody,
put it on your to do list. Take an action. Something
that gets the ball rolling inside
is less than 20% of change. You've gained insight
today. Action is 80%
plus of making change in your life. So make a
good plan today, right now with that one thing and then act. Because a
good plan that you act on is a hundred times. A
hundred times better. Greater than a perfect
plan you do nothing with it. Makes sense, doesn't it? So
there's no positive change until you decide to change.
Decide today. Your legacy depends on it. To
decide means to eliminate other options. And your legacy
is the impact that your life has on others.
Do me a favor and forward this episode to one
friend. Share it and say something like, this episode was helpful.
Check it out. In closing, live the life today
that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone.
You decide your legacy. Nobody else. Either. You will
decide your legacy, or fear will decide it for you. I
appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.