Navigating the Path of Wisdom: A Transformational Discussion on Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, And Personal Growth

We talk a little bit about the Bible , we talk a little bit about leadership , how those principles over you know whatever word I'm looking for overlap in the world , and then we throw some dad jokes in just because that makes us happy . That's exactly right , and that's really what it is that makes us happy .

What is wisdom , you know , and how do we even get what's wisdom ? I mean ? Is wisdom that you have wisdom tea still and you have a lot of wisdom in you ? And what's the thought process here ?

You face that a lot in custom home building .

and how that that adds up and and I do , in the building business , you get them and doing this for you know , going on 30 years , there's a lot of knowledge , but at the same time , I wouldn't say that that the the wisdom part of it . There's a lot of builders out there in the world are more knowledgeable , more , have more wisdom , more experiences .

And you know and one of the things that I always use , this that some people you know possess , you know what they used to be saying you possess wisdom beyond the years , right , but there's a lot of people that they lack a lot of knowledge , that are way up in years as well , and and you know , and a lot of times we get that through experiences but at the

same time , there's there's more that we can . We can do that , you know , and if you can get a deeper understanding and and figure out how to utilize wisdom in your life and how you can grow it , overall it can become a much better for you as a human being , I guess .

But how do I apply that ?

But then getting out and actually practicing that and gaining an understanding is not just knowledge . I could read a book about golf or bowling or building a television or whatever . That doesn't mean I don't have the wisdom to know how to necessarily do that . But we can get wisdom based on our traditions . You know we read about that .

Let's just think about Christian history . There's a lot of wisdom that comes from the decisions that were made by our Christian mothers and fathers over the centuries that they've passed down to us . The other thing we can gain wisdom from is learning from our mistakes . We all make mistakes . Some are big , some have big consequences , some have little consequences .

But some people say , well , you can learn from your mistakes . Well , you can learn from your mistakes , and it's important that we learn from mistakes . We don't always learn from mistakes , because sometimes we keep making the same mistake . But wisdom to know , you know I tried that last time , or I've tried it three times .

It's not working , let me try something else . And then there's divine wisdom . I truly believe that that's a big part of the Bible that people made some decisions because they relied upon the wisdom of God to be imparted into their mind and their soul and their spirit and they made decisions on that .

So there's different sources of wisdom , but it is also understanding of certain facts and then being able to apply that , I think , in a healthy and constructive way .

You know I was just having this conversation earlier that when you start out in business and one of the gentlemen just came in one of my vendors came in to get a check a little bit ago and we were talking about that . He was getting schooled by this gentleman and my HVAC guy says so how long have you been in the business ? He goes well , five years .

I've been in the business and the guy looked at me like I keep five years . I wouldn't even cut my teeth in this business because he's been in this business even longer than I have . I've been going on 30 years and he was just like you don't know what you don't know , you know , you're trying to tell me how to do something , but you lack the knowledge .

You lack the wisdom , because that's something that's gonna develop over time and I think , a lot of people you don't know . And where my point I'm going to is sometimes you don't know what you don't know . And we were talking about you know , when we were young .

It's like we thought we had all the wisdom in the world , but really we didn't have the wisdom in the world . We , we , we thought we did .

courage to tell the story you know last week , yeah but it's very embarrassing , but it is true and it happened in my life many years ago . So but it's about the whole thing we don't know what we don't know and I and I think it has like going on to last week's podcast and this week it takes courage to admit , hey , we don't know this .

We need to understand , we need to learn so we can get the knowledge , so we can apply it in a useful , constructive way . So , many years ago , graduated from college , my wife Diana was in physical therapy school in Memphis , Tennessee , so I said , hey , I'm going to move to Memphis for the summer , get a job , which I did .

I worked at White Haven United Methodist Church on Elvis Presley Boulevard , Nice , Literally right down the street from Elvis Presley Mansion , and my job was youth director , assistant pastor . I lived in the house right behind the church , so one of my responsibilities was to go visit people that were shut in .

So one particular day I was assigned to go visit these two sisters that lived together and so I I crossed Elvis Presley Boulevard , went to their house . We visited for about an hour . When I came back , going back to the church , all six lanes of Elvis Presley Boulevard were absolutely packed . I thought , okay , there's a wreck .

I had to go down way south almost to Mississippi to get back up to the church . I walked into the office and I don't remember the secretary's name , but she was just crying her eyes out and I said what , what's wrong , what's wrong . And she said , through her tears , she said , well , Elvis died and and I'm thinking what she said no , Elvis died .

And I'm thinking , okay , who in the church name is Elvis ? What's Elvis and Elvis Elvis ? And then I realized , oh , you mean like Elvis , yeah , and and so I didn't know what I didn't know . I mean , I wasn't a big Elvis person . I grew up in Albuquerque .

I didn't really , you know , not a lot of his music , but that was a very embarrassing thing , and so I had to learn some things about that and learn some things about Memphis history and Elvis Presley and all those kind of things .

And I think that's just being wise and humble to say , hey , I don't know how to address this , I don't know how to address my , my , my kids that are out of control . I need some help to know how to do that . I need some wisdom and knowledge on how to address the situation of my family , or my finances , or my business , I know or my spouse .

I just need some help .

And the one woman said no , no , no , no , no , no , don't do that , give it to the other woman , give the baby to the other woman . And Solomon realized in his wisdom the guy was just absolutely a genius . I mean , you know , he wrote the provost . He wrote so many things that are just beyond human wisdom .

I think he just had such divine wisdom and he said no , give it to the woman , give it to this other woman , because the woman who didn't want the baby killed that's the real mother . And I'm just like , wow , how brilliant is that .

And so if we just take some time , we might not be a person that reads the Bible very much , but if we just read Proverbs and there's 31 Proverbs , you can read one every day there's so much wisdom on how to live life In the Bible that can be applied to any situation , any person , any age , Any perfect . It just just wise man , just a very wise man .

I talk about wisdom sort of in the emotional intelligence arena . When you're talking about Emotional intelligence and I don't know if , if a lot of people they might not know what emotional intelligence is , and and and I would challenge everybody to look at and other than me telling you exactly the definition of it .

But when , when you do that you're , you're sort of in the perceiving of others , right ?

You , you got to first perceive yourself and then you learn how to perceive others and if and if you get into emotional intelligence and , and I think back of when I was young , compared to where I am now , and you know I teach a lot in the leadership arena , a lot of my training classes . We talk about emotional intelligence and and we evolve over time .

You know , and and I look at things from from all the Present-day leaders to the biblical leaders how they evolved . I mean we you know that we just finished a big series on Noah and how much he probably learned over the course of a hundred years while he was doing that .

I mean just the wisdom that came out of , you know , following and being being true and and and following the Lord's word , and and and some of the things that you can get out of these , these stories that really pull out some of the wisdom of people that you know it is a developing thing and and but I mean it's , it's not a developing thing by age .

I think you get a lot of wisdom with age , but that's not the only thing that you get out of age and and experiences is living those experiences . And and If , once you go through I it's one of the one of the things I tell a lot of my , my real estate agents is , once you go through an Experience , you'll never forget it .

I mean , you're never gonna learn that in a book they don't write it down , but once you go through that certain scenario , then then you have all the answers .

We learned , obviously , and we learned a lot about Christian history and counseling and , you know , leadership in a church , those kind of thing , but there were a few things that we had to learn just from being a pastor and and one of the Quick lessons that I learned that I wish they had taught me in seminary is Sunday comes once a week , whether you're ready

or not .

Okay , I have to set aside so many hours a week for study and prayer Because I have this responsibility Coming up on this particular day and I have to structure my life and my time and my priorities so that I can fulfill that obligation . And I think that's not just true with being a pastor , I think that's true with being a parent .

You know I have a spouse that that needs attention , I have children that need attention , and , and how am I going to discipline my life ? What boundaries am I going to set so I don't do certain things so that I can focus on this people that I love ?

You know , because we talk about wisdom and wisdom is a tricky thing because you know , like we said , it's not knowledge encompassing but it is , to a point , a lot of knowledge you gain over the years .

But I mean there's more to that and from the wisdom I get when I'm teaching some of the leaders or if I'm doing coaching to some of my clients , is the personal growth . And and you know you were just talking about time management and that's what triggered me to sort of look at my notes .

And and when I'm setting up a time management calendar for people , we schedule their appointments but I always teach them to leave the white spaces in between their appointments . You know , the white spaces are really good for if you're running late you're not stressed out .

If you're back to back , if you're three o'clock to four o'clock and then four o'clock to five o'clock , leave a little white space .

But most of the time that white space is for personal growth and that's why I haven't put it in their calendar that I say you're driving across town and there wasn't any traffic , which you had 15 minutes of traffic built in there and you get to the parking lot . Well , that time isn't for checking email , that time isn't for making phone calls , for business .

That time is that you put in that white space is for personal growth . What are you doing today to better yourself for tomorrow ? Are you watching a YouTube video ? Are you reading a book ? Are you doing some kind of exercise ? And that's one of those things . If you can have that , I think that's how you develop a lot of the wisdom .

I know that I'm an information junkie . I mean I can , I can . I can probably count on one hand how many novels I've ever read in my life , and I know that you like to read novels . For me it's always educational . All my podcasts I've got 50 podcasts in there and they're all informational books . There's no novels or anything , and that's just .

I thrive on information because I'm always looking for that mindset of growing my wisdom , growing my knowledge and moving to the next level . I'm always looking for that growth mindset and that's what's , you know , that drives me to be me . But again , we were . You know , I know you enough that you love novels . You love that relaxation time .

You get a lot of knowledge out of those , but it's just different paths we take .

I leave time for things to go over a calendar or I need to have space for interruptions . So when I would meet with my staff and certain staff I met with every week I would meet with them for 45 minutes .

I would schedule an hour , but I would only meet with them for 45 minutes because I needed that space in between for exactly what you just said and so I think it's just wisdom over time it took me a while to figure that out is to set boundaries and to say no . I'm going to say no . I know one pastor that I learned a lot from .

He would answer phone calls within a certain , only a certain period of time during the day . Because the rest of his day was busy , either writing , reading , research , counseling or whatever , and so he wouldn't allow himself to be interrupted by every time his phone rang .

His assistant knew that he would return phone calls within a certain period in the morning , a certain period in the afternoon , and he set the boundary , but that was . He learned that from years of experience , and the wisdom was that he was so much more effective in his time because he was willing to set boundaries .

If my phone , I'll just flip it over on the other side because I don't have any notifications on my computers . Where emails pop up and then they bother me , I can flip the phone over . There's no buzz , no , nothing . I just keep it off . And when I'm ready and I'm done with thing , I can pick up my phone to look at . Now we're addicted to our phones .

I'm constantly . I can put the phone over on the corner of my desk and as soon as that screen lines up , my brain catches it and I instantly know somebody's calling . So I have to flip it over . There's no need to have a ringer on or anything like that .

And one of the things that adds on to you that made me think of this is if you turn off all the distractions , your notifications and your emails and you work in blocks and leadership , we tell you to work in blocks at least of an hour , 60 minutes , where you have no distractions , if you can pull that off and then return the phone calls .

I know a lot of people that have voicemails that say I'll return your phone call from nine o'clock to 10 o'clock in the morning and four to five in the afternoon . That's the only time they return phone calls .

And one of the things that in my seminars I teach is if you're constantly so you're sitting there working at your computer and you hear that ding , you know you got an email . So instantly you open up that email . So what do you do ? Well , you end up taking care of that email , right ? Well , you know what that email is .

That email is other people's problems , is what I tell people . So you're constantly solving other people's problems , cause that's instantaneous , we gotta solve their problem , I gotta get back to them right now . But then you never get your stuff done . Then five o'clock rolls around , then you don't have all your stuff done . Now you're working till eight o'clock .

You miss your family dinner . You gotta work late cause you didn't get anything done during the day , cause you're always handling other people's problems . That's why we put these white spaces in for personal development right . These is why we turn off the notifications to manage your time . That's where the wisdom came from .

It sort of ties into what you were telling me that you'd learned from that gentleman .

But everyone else , you know , I could take a message . I would call them back just because I felt that I needed to discipline myself to do what you just were saying , that I need to focus on a particular task . I had a list of things to do every day .

I had a pretty strict calendar and I knew that if I was distracted and I really enjoyed making phone calls right before lunch or right before I left for the office for the day just because I could do those very , very quick .

Can't think right now a gummy bear , a gummy bear , because it's wise , it's wisdom to take care of your teeth , because you don't want to be a gummy bear .

Reach out to us biblical leadership show dot com and we would love to Answer any questions you might have or give you some practical advice . I got somebody sitting here across the table for me . It's done a lot of that .

I do a lot of that From the executive and personal life coach and stuff and and this man has a lot of real-world knowledge with a lot of , lot of people out there in the world over his 40 years to respond .

So we appreciate you listening , we appreciate you tuning in today and we look forward to the next week next week .