¶ Books: Shortcuts to Personal Growth
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
¶ Overcoming Insecurity and Trauma
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
¶ Effective Therapy Communication Tips
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
¶ Overcoming Self-Doubt in New Roles
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.
¶ Confronting Past Abandonment Issues
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
¶ Overcoming Fear Through Empathy
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
¶ "Self-Care Through Giving Back"
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
¶ Shifting Perspectives to Overcome Anxiety
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
¶ "Building Psychological Resilience"
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.