There's plenty of talk everywhere about what to do when you're scared, but whatever happened to strength that's this week on the badass agile podcast, greetings team, welcome to the badass agile podcast. I'm your host, Chris Williams, Greetings friends. And welcome back this week. I want to talk to you about something that's really important to me, which is creating heroes, developing your strength, your grit, your resilience, especially in times when you're afraid and governed by negative
emotion. But first, let's take a moment to remember why we're here to create an elite tribe of leaders who truly serve their clients and communities by doing what matters and what works relentlessly chasing value in excellence, like a badass. There's so many resources out there about what you need to do to be agile, but we're focused on who you need to become in order to lead teams. So let's hammer down those fundamentals to create a truly unique and powerful
force in this industry. And remember, if this helps you, please share it with your friends. You can also find me in the badass agile listener lounge on Facebook. And don't forget to sign up for my new premium podcast. The badass agile entrepreneur, all the links are in the show notes below. We'll tell you what I get to spend an awful lot of time meeting people, hearing about their challenges and problems. More importantly, hearing about their ambitions, their desire for greatness.
And that's really how this whole thing started. Five years ago, I wanted to do something that helped expose everyone's inner hero. Starting with myself. I came from a place of being not confident enough, not certain enough afraid and hindered by my
emotions. Now years ago, with the help of some experts in the field of managing fear, I was able to overcome many of those challenges and it was overcoming those challenges that I think enables me to speak to you with authority today, but I'm noticing a trend and I think we're all noticing it. I spent a lot of time on social media and between those that I coach those that
I help and those that I don't. I see a lot of dialogue out there, people talking about what triggers them, what holds them back. Most importantly, how it's very, very important to be patient with and gentle with yourself. And I agree, but something's missing. Being gentle with yourself might help you to address and avoid facing the things that are difficult for you, but it doesn't help you grow. I'm certain that awareness, empathy and self care must be balanced with strength,
resolve and resilience. Some people have had really, really hard experiences in life. They've gone through things that most of us never have to go through. So I'd never want to discount somebody's experience and say that your fears or your challenges are not valid, but I will say this. I've never seen anyone grow their success by avoiding the things that challenge them by being sensitive to the words, thoughts, ideas, and expressions of other people and asking them to stop doing it so that they
can feel safe or comfortable. I say this a lot, but safety is not something that others grant you. It is something that you must claim for yourself. It's fine to acknowledge your experiences. It's understandable to experience suffering and to struggle to move past that suffering. But what won't work is leaving it that way forever. And if the only negative impact was to the sufferer, that would be one thing, but this is becoming a bit of an epidemic.
It constrains what we feel free to think and to say, to contribute and to offer. And it forces most of us into comfortable agreeable language thinking and routines more and more we're feeling boxed in. And in some cases, anyone who Daress to say otherwise is subject to attack and repercussions themselves, self righteousness, and the power of anonymity arm. People on both sides of the debate. And all you see is not diversity of viewpoint, but dissection and division.
We're more focused on being right in our own realm than we are about being great, being good, making society, better, making our community better, making each other better. And I believe we're better poised to help each other. When we are strong.
This means we need to be as good at facing our challenges, leaning into the difficult feelings, choosing to accept, embrace, and attack the hard things as we are at listening, being empathetic and being kind to ourselves, nothing in nature exists without balance. You can't go all the way, one way without expecting some kind of diminishing return. Remember that inherent in my vision statement are the final words to create heroes.
I was put on this earth to help people find the best in themselves to gain courage where they need it to build certainty and to make progress in every dimension of their lives by choosing to do what others won't. So let's talk about strength. I realize that not everyone can be strong every day. And I realize that not everyone will be ready for this message when you hear it. But let me offer this strength is not about ignoring. What's difficult for you.
It's not about just shouldering the hard times for the sake of shouldering them. It's about being self-aware enough to understand the things that are difficult
for you. It may be about understanding past pain, or it may simply be about understanding your unconscious patterns and beliefs either way, knowing what holds you back, knowing what causes you to procrastinate, to avoid, to reject, to dismiss, and then understanding that without strength, you will never make time or find energy to address the things that are holding you back so that you can break through and get different results. Everyone listening to this wants to be a better leader,
wants to be more powerful. Internally wants more confidence, wants more courage, wants more certainty, wants to be more influential. Now, if you want those things, you have to recognize that the natural order that is to say what's printed in our DNA is to reach, is to stretch. Look around you. Everything grows muscle doesn't build until you tear it as a human being. You start out small and weak, and then through constantly pushing and expanding your limits.
You build the necessary muscle, the necessary intelligence, the necessary size that's required to survive in the world. Strength is not about angrily pushing through challenge and difficulty. It is in fact about first acknowledging what scares you. What's difficult for you, but then making the conscious decision to learn from it and to grow into it. Go back to my episode, where I interview ex Navy sealed David Rutherford, and he reminds me that fear is not something you conquer or eliminate.
It is simply something that you learn to live with and to manage. And for each of us, that's done very much in our own way. We begin then by asking the question, what are the things that I wish I had? If I'm being honest, I truly wish I had not because the world expects me to not because my parents told me I should not because the education system told me that's what makes me a good person, but what are the things that I truly want somewhere in each of us' that
desire to fulfill and to serve. If you're an agile coach or a scrum master, it's not unlikely that you are designed to make impact on people that you want to help others grow and reach full potential. Hell. If you're in this business, you are probably helping companies or clients reach outcomes more specifically. You're probably trying to help them reach outcomes more efficiently, or with better reliability or better quality than they ever have been able to before.
So you are designed to help your teams or help others expand and grow, get better, improve, be more right. But before you teach others to do that, you are gonna have to help yourself do it because you need some experience in becoming limitless and overcoming challenges and boundaries. How else do you expect to be truly empathetic and a servant to others if you've never gone through it yourself? So what is it that you really desire that you really want, that you wish you were better at?
What is it that you wanna serve the world with? And how are you doing on those goals? You might decide that you need to be a better facilitator, better presenter, better negotiator, a better speaker. Maybe you need to influence team members more. Maybe you need to deal with rejection of change with conflict, with differences, in opinion, maybe you need to be more confident expressing your unique viewpoint. Maybe you want to be in better physical shape. Maybe you wanna learn more.
Maybe you wanna go back to school. Maybe you want more respect. Maybe you just want more income or a better role within your organization. Whatever the things are that you really want. What's keeping you from getting them look specifically for the things that you wish you had, the things that you need to do that, you know, you need to work on that. Then get caught up in a loop of procrastination and avoidance.
If you need to lose a couple of pounds, you know, you need to go to the gym or get moving. And every day it might be in your plan might be in the back of your mind that you have to, that you must, and yet it doesn't get done. I heard this one the other day. What about your teams? Maybe your teams know that they need to get better at communicating with managers and expressing how blockers are holding them up and screwing up the dependency chain.
And yet we never do the difficult work of addressing that problem face on having the hard conversation, right? These are the easiest and clearest signs that despite having a desire to go somewhere, that you're not yet willing to do the difficult work of getting there. And in that realization must be some element of avoidance or fear, procrastination, excuse making, and general failure to show up full out like a hero and do what must be done. Here's the simple truth.
Anytime you have a challenge to overcome, the solution is usually finite. There's something that if you do it and do it consistently, you'll see progress. You might not see instant results, but you will see positive change and progress. So once we've identified what the problem is and knowing that there's a finite number of solutions that could work all that's left for us to do is to boldly experiment and say, I wanna be better. I wanna be stronger.
I wanna be able to navigate the tough times and come out victorious. I'd like to beat this. I'd like to crack the code. And then we say, but starting tomorrow. And then tomorrow becomes the next day. And the next week. Now we all have things like this in our lives while it's fine to acknowledge them. I think it's a mistake to celebrate them. There's no need to beat yourself up about your failure to wrangle a nasty, gnarly problem. Look, I have a bunch of them. Fitness is one of my big ones.
So is a consistent songwriting and creativity practice. I'm happy to say that in the past year, I've made significant dents on both of them. These will always be a struggle for me because deep down I have a fear that I'm not good enough to get the result. I'm worried about what would happen if I show up as a writer, as a songwriter, as a producer and as a quote, unquote, healthy athletic person. And I can't do it. What if I'm not strong enough? What if I'm not creative enough?
What if I'm not clever enough? What if I don't have it? What would that say about me? Would that not shatter my self image? Would that not destroy my future dreams and ambitions and highlight myself as someone who's not capable of reaching for my dreams? Now that stuff is scary. At least to me. And the only advice I can offer, the only way I've been able to transform it is to say, because it's difficult. I must all caps must.
And earlier in my life, I thought that the best way to influence myself is to say it is a must or else. Here is a list of all the negative consequences that will occur if I fail to act. And sometimes that worked and sometimes it didn't more recently, I've learned that it's helpful to see this as a must because I want the outcome more specifically. I want the master skill of taking the hard challenges and being good at facing them head on and wrangling them to the ground.
The ability to work with my challenges, to stay the course, to do the hard things and to find success in it. Because once I've done that, I have proof positive ingrained in my soul that I can that even though things will scare me, I know that I'm capable of summoning the courage and leaning in just a little bit at a time, just to start just something to make forward momentum. Once you've done that, you realize that nothing actually stops you not permanently.
And so when I see myself avoiding difficult situations, doing the accounting, having a hard conversation with an employee or a coworker, a manager, a boss, or anyone who's getting in my way or violating my boundaries or not playing at the level that I need them to, or they themselves need to. I can realize I can be aware that I'm avoiding the conversation.
I'm avoiding the tough action. Then I can say, but you must, you must because this is the person that you most wish to be someone who faces their challenges head on and learns how to make progress, how to work with the fear so that I can be an example to other people who are trying to do the same. And in that respect, it's possible that our strength becomes a beacon to others who truly need it. You know, you hear a lot that it's never beneficial or helpful to say,
well, just be strong. Just stay the course, hang in there. Be tough. I agree. That's probably not helpful, but I think most people are looking for an example, a mentor, an inspiration, someone who can show them that strength is possible and that sometimes strength is necessary. And I believe that if we can do this for ourselves,
we can give it as a gift to others. And in giving that gift, we could transform the world, starting with our teams, real humans, who no doubt are struggling with all kinds of fear and experiences and background. And then we can radiate that light out to the rest of the world. And I'll tell you something really important friends. I think it's never been more important than it is right here. Right now.
We need the gift of true courage, true grit, true strength, not the kind that comes from bullying and arrogance, but the kind that comes from balancing our fear and our desires to create a moment of realization, a realization of where our gaps are and then the resolve to address it one tiny step at a time. Now what could be more agile than that? My friends, I hope this one inspired you. I appreciate you tuning in as always. You can find me@badassagile.com.
You can check me out on Instagram at badass agile and on Twitter at badass underscore agile. I look forward to seeing you next time and until then stay badass.