Ep 13 - You Don't Have Integrity, and Neither Do I

0:02 Welcome back to another episode of the MRM Podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we discuss business, life, and legacy. It's business time. Yolo, my friend. Those tacos were so good. Oh gosh, they were good. Yeah. I hit the taco bowl, if you will. There's so many directions to take that conversation. It's called pozole. It's called pozole. That's probably a far better thing to end with. It's good. Than taco bowls. Yeah. So I don't know what to call this episode yet. So maybe let's just see where the conversation goes. But I had a reflection the other day as I was leaving the office, walking back to my car, I'd had a really good day.

0:45 And I was thinking about why did I have a good day? You know, like what categorized it? Yeah, what was good? Yeah, exactly. What was what made it good? And why do I feel so good? Just kind of reflecting on that. And what it came down to was I'd had a really disciplined day. Mm hmm. I had some things that were within my power to push off. I mean, cause you and I were partners, we're the boss, we're each other's boss, but nobody is holding us accountable, right? And so I had a couple of these tasks, some documents I was trying to finish, communications for something we were doing, and I felt like putting it off to tomorrow.

1:26 I was like, you know, I just, it was about 5.36 o'clock as I was finishing these last couple of items. I'm like, you know, I just want to go home. I just want to go sit on the back deck. And I powered through and I was just reflecting on the act of me powering through and not sloughing it off. Now, the other part of the story, of course, is I told you I would have it done. So I knew you would be watching 40 in your email. Yes. On pins and needles, mind you. Yeah. And so that was certainly part of it was this was something that I said I was going to do. And so I'm thankful in the moment I chose to just do it. But I think that's a struggle that I think we have as owners and leaders sometimes is it's well within our right, I guess, if you want to say it that way, to just leave something on our to-do list, to just go home before that thing that we set out to do is done.

2:18 Because... Well, who's going to say anything about it, right? One of your downline leaders, they're not going to call you out on it unless you specifically train them to, which is a whole other podcast topic. Right? But let's just face it. There's all these little moments where we can push things off, cut a corner here and there, and probably no one's going to call us out on it. So as I'm thinking about this, I'm like, okay, what was my last really kind of cruddy day? And it was just a few days before that. Yeah, or in my case, the day before. You know when you end the day and your baseline level of anxiety is just higher. Yeah. Your frustration level, whatever. Whatever you're taking home to your family, I could quickly remember, okay, yeah, that was Tuesday.

3:02 It was a rough day. And what was it about the rough day? Well, ironically... It was exactly the opposite. I had things that I just struggled to start. And then I got to the end of my day and I checked a few boxes, but I just had a lot of things undone because I just failed to really start to just commit to doing the thing. And how crummy that felt at the end of the day, having these gaps. And I remember on that Tuesday, I don't remember the specifics, but I remember one of them was one that I said I was going to do. We were really trying to get it done that day. And I didn't. I was like, I just got to hit eject. Just one of those days where I kind of gave up on my plan. And so I'm thinking all of this is happening. This was Friday afternoon, Friday evening, I guess.

3:44 As I'm walking out of the office and heading to my car, I'm thinking all these things. And I'm thinking about integrity. It's funny to me how we in business, but particularly in service companies, we love to throw integrity around. We're looking for people of integrity when it comes to hiring. As a company, integrity is one of our core values. I'm a person of integrity, this kind of stuff. We get so used to hearing that and saying those things. And I thought to myself, well, that Tuesday of last week, when I just sloughed off on the plan I'd given myself, Did I have integrity? I don't think so. Because I'd set out to do something and then I allowed myself to not do it.

4:28 And it was conscious. It was like, I'm tired. I'm just having a hard time getting in the groove. One of the areas where I struggle the most with this is with writing because it's such a creative endeavor. And when I'm not feeling it, quote unquote, or I just, the words aren't coming to me as easily as I'd hoped. I delay it. I push it out. And then it's 430 in the afternoon and I said I was going to do this thing. Yeah. Right. And that's where the rubber meets the road. It's like, okay, somehow I got to find a way to do this creative thing because I said I was going to. And I realized looking back over my career, I don't know, I think there's a theme there. When I'm living a disciplined life, now working with clients, right? When I'm living out the leadership behaviors and the practices and the routines and the time management strategies that we're teaching to our clients, I feel so much less stress personally.

5:19 Yeah. Like when I'm actually doing, basically I'm walking the walk. Yeah. Even though nobody else knows, what I'm noticing is it affects me. Like it affects the way I see myself, my emotions. On those days when I just kind of slough off, I cut corners because I can't, because nobody's correcting me. This is our game. This is my role, right? When I get lazy and I allow myself to finish lazy, that's when all of that anxiety, that imposter syndrome, those negative emotions. stories start to cycle in my head. Yeah. But when I'm, there's just some kind of powerful effect there. When I'm working the disciplines, when I'm really conscious of commitments I've made, not just to others, but to myself.

6:02 And when I make those things matter, even when it's a pain in the ass, even when I'm tired, even when I can, and I could easily just go home and enjoy myself on the back patio. But when I stick to the discipline, there's something really important that happens there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I know exactly what you're saying. There's almost like this element of like we feed, like life is challenging in and of itself. Like I don't think there's anybody listening that wouldn't agree with that. There's going to be plenty of ups and downs. Our businesses, right? They're kind of caged chaos at times. I mean, there's all sorts of things that affect that. And then we just compound the effect of those things when we don't do the things we can control.

6:47 Mm-hmm. But I don't always do a great job of preemptively thinking through that. Like a lot of times, like you were examples are great because it's easy for me to look back with some hindsight and say, oh, yeah, no, I see what you're saying. But it's hard for me to live that out consistently and proactively remind myself like I'm faced with a choice right now. Remember the impact of this when you make the wrong choice. Not necessarily assigning good or bad value to it, but it's just like, what happens? What are the natural consequences of deciding A or B on this? I think the other thing too is this conversation, I think, that has popped up in pieces in other episodes. And I think there's just kind of this common theme about a lot of the things that we discuss over time.

7:28 But it's this idea of building trust with yourself. Because it, who was I talking to? I was actually having a really lengthy conversation with somebody about this the other day and how basically ourselves have already experienced years of us not following through on different things. I mean, honestly, we have some amazing people in our sphere of influence. Amazing people. People I'm humbled to spend time around. And the reality of it is, though, is they're still humans. And the humanity of them is making a lot of mistakes. We're all the same, right? Right? Yeah. I mean, these are high caliber, high functioned people. And we still have lots of little scenarios where we just, over time, over the years, have not started something on Monday when we said we were going to start it on Monday.

8:11 Not committed to the exercise routine we said we were going to commit to. Not made that appointment with the doctor over and over and over again we told ourselves we would, right? So there's these literally years of built up opportunities where yourself, and I think this is really hard for people to understand, is that we have two selves that are constantly at odds. One is this thing, this person that we're building, that we want to move towards. And this one that's kind of in the background always going... Tugging at our sleep. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Right? Oh, you're going to do that? Just like the last five times you didn't? So at times, I feel like that then just becomes one more thing. Like when I check out early, when I don't follow through on that commitment I made to you or myself, it's just one more thing getting piled into this account of, I told you you wouldn't follow through for yourself, right?

8:59 It's another thing that's feeding that untrusting part about yourself. And so I think an element of what you're talking about is, the more diligent we are getting these little wins of, I mean, it's even, we see something, we just pick it up, throw it out, right? We say that we're going to go fix the gate. So we just get up off our ass and go fix the gate. It's like every time we do that, there's this opportunity to celebrate, like to look back at yourself and say, yeah, take that. I told you I'd do that thing, right? And we can start mounting all these wins that support who we're trying to be. Like we begin to believe ourselves so that when we talk about executing at this level or achieving these goals, we can actually do them.

9:41 And what's funny is if we're honest... How many times a day are you actually functioning in congruence with that? You really are aligned with this person you're establishing that you're trying to commit to being more times probably than you're not. Yet those little failures carry so much weight because there's almost like just that thing that's just waiting to be like, I told you so. Yeah. So I think the way I'm relating to what you're talking about is I just want myself to be so confident in me when I say I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. And so I'm desperate to get these wins. Like it's really important for me to throw another W on the board because I want to be able to look myself in the mirror and say, hey, I'm going to do X.

10:23 And myself immediately goes, damn right, go get it. Yeah. Right. So I don't know if that's where you're starting, but that's where my mind immediately goes as you explain this idea of... At the risk of sounding like I'm kind of navel-gazing and just picking at the lint of my belly button, I've been thinking about this for the last five, six days because I see all the areas of my life this touches. So I had a funny story. I was waiting to share this in a future episode. So we launched our podcast here this last week, and one of our clients texted me and said, Hey, the new podcast is really, really great. Of course, my ego is like, Oh, right on. People like it. We're good. Whatever.

11:04 And I said, oh, that's awesome. And then, I don't know, a few minutes later, he responded back and said, yeah, episode eight is really connecting with me. And I had to look back at the list and be like, oh, yeah, episode eight, leadership and self-deception. And then immediately I started to go through, okay, what was in that episode? And so instead, I brought it up on Spotify. My wife is sitting on the back deck with me and we start listening to it. And I'm a little bit, I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but I was actually enjoying listening to myself in the podcast. I'm like, I'm actually getting into our own podcast almost as much as I would some other ones that I follow, right? Like I've heard this before. I came up with it, you know? And my wife is kind of going along with it. She might've thought it was pretty nerdy at the time, but anyhow, then I, all of a sudden I get rocked because we're listening to this part of the podcast and I know what I'm about to say.

11:51 I'm like, oh crap, I've been caught. And here's what I mean. So in that pod, if you haven't listened to episode eight, you got to go back to it. It really is good. It's so good. I like listening to it myself. No, it really is. But I talk about this book, Leadership and Self-Deception, and how it's discussing this concept of we know, call it our conscience. For those of you who are religious, maybe you call it the Holy Spirit, whatever. We have these things that we're presented with that we know we ought to do. And it could be in our business. It could be, hey, I'm asking my team to upload documentation of our client interactions and notes. And I talked with this client today. I didn't put anything in Dash or Gazingle or anything else, right?

12:31 It's just little things like those things that we know we ought to do. And then as simple as, you know what? I know my wife gets really stressed when the kitchen's a mess. And we got three kids, all school age. The house is, it's a constant state of pickup and disarray, you know, at this stage of things. And so for me, it reminded me of when I first read that book and I thought about the dishes in the sink. It's a total thing for my wife. My wife's not high maintenance. She doesn't complain and nag me and all that kind of stuff. But I just know from experience that if the kitchen is clean, tidy, no dishes in the sink, counters are clear, my wife just feels better. Like she's got a different look on her face, different gleam in her eye.

13:12 And so for me, every time now that I've made that connection, when I walk through the kitchen and I see dishes in the sink or on the counter and I don't do anything, the book Leadership and Self-Deception would say I'm betraying myself. Like I'm committing the act of betraying myself because I know in my own head, nobody had to tell me. It's not my wife scowling at me. It's just me internally. Like I know if I took three minutes and did this thing, it'd be meaningful to my wife and I love her. And so therefore I should do this good thing. I can and I should. Once I made that connection, Now when I walk past those dishes, there's this marker in my brain. You can't unsee it. Now, lest you guys think I'm some monk that's just like Mr. Self-improvement, kindness all the time, whatever, whatever, hippie, foo-foo hippie.

13:58 I don't know. I'm not. I do make the choice to walk past the dishes. And I did earlier that day. So we get to the moment of this podcast when I'm literally about to bring up my wife as an example and me, you know, doing the dishes went blah, blah, blah. I realized, oh my gosh, I made dinner. I left things all over the place. All I wanted was to go sit on the back deck and I did. And the sink full of dishes and I just, I had this oh crap moment. And I literally paused the, I literally paused it on Spotify. I was like, hey, I got to go do something.

14:39 And she's like, well, are you coming back? I'm like, yeah, just a few minutes. Because it did. It only took me like eight minutes to load the dishwasher and wipe the counter down, right? But what was funny is when my buddy texted after I... Well, our client. After our client texted me after I finished cleaning up the dishes in the kitchen, I texted back. I'm like, hey, have you finished the episode? Because I don't think he heard that part yet. And he said, no, I'm only about 30 minutes in. And I said, oh, okay. Well, when you do, I've got a funny story for you. Listen, we're all the same, right? We all know these good things we ought to do. And you can apply that to any area of your life, right? There's good things that I know. That word of encouragement when I come home from work that I know I should say to my kids, like pausing instead of going straight to the back deck and having a finger of whiskey or having a cigar or having a quiet time, right?

15:25 Like I have that inkling of I should stop, I should connect with the kids, see how people's day's gone, right? We have these inklings all the time. And I remember back when I first read this book, man, integrity is a moving target. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like just like how I opened the show, we love to talk about integrity. And I think what I learned from that book and what I'm reminded of is we're choosing that. integrity every moment. Yeah. Like a company's only as full of integrity as how the people operated today. Yeah. Last small decision. Your last small decision is a reflection of your level of integrity that you have. And I think that's true of us as people, as leaders.

16:06 I mean, you don't have to be a business leader for this to resonate. Well, you got a sphere of influence. Yeah. It all applies, right? Families, friend circles, associations, groups, doesn't matter. Even as employees. Yeah. Right? Like we, an integrity piece is a personal journey, you know? And so it applies to anybody and everybody. Yeah. All right, let's take a minute to recognize and thank our MitResto Mastery sponsor, Accelerate Restoration Software. And I'm fully aware, by the way, that when I say those last two words, restoration software, that that instantly creates heartburn for some of you out there, right? Because we probably all fall into one of two camps when it comes to software.

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17:41 And the essential piece there is there's gotta be a mobile app experience. And in our experience, the solutions that were previously out there were just too cumbersome and tricky to use. Yeah. Imagine guys, how your business would change if your entire team was actually consistently using the system. Do yourself a favor, go check these guys out at xlrestorationsoftware.com forward slash MRM and check out the special offers they're providing to MRM listeners. All right, let's talk about actionable insights. Owners, GMs, you can't be your business's expert on all things estimating. You might've been three years ago when you were writing sheets in the field, but the industry's always changing and so are the tools.

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19:11 A 3,700-plus page database of Xactimate templates I don't know what else to say here other than don't reinvent the wheel. It's already available. Download it, copy it, use it, bam. Database of commonly missed items. I think this is huge. So many of us can change the numbers by just moving the needle a couple points. And those commonly missed items can make all the difference in the world. So go check them out at value.getinsights.org backslash FCG. How do you, I'm totally resonating with what you're saying right now, but how do we do this though?

19:52 How do we look at this without it becoming yet another thing just weighting us down? Because I know from personal experience, this has probably come up before too and certainly will again. There's this element of, I do want to get better. I naturally like the idea of identifying an area and being able to grow in it. it doesn't really bum me out, right? I like that pressure to a certain extent. But I also know I'm kind of high on the, I don't know what the sense of responsibility, you know, measure, I guess. And so it can be easy for me personally to have yet something else piled on that I should be working on or yet something else that I'm not as good as I'd hoped or whatever.

20:37 It just gets this weighty, unmotivating thing versus unawareness. And then based on this awareness, now I can make some different decisions or I can be more proactive. Even your example with the dishes, the cool thing about all of that is that there is this kind of awareness that's there. That's not so subconscious that it's a blind spot anymore for you. It's a thing. You're not always perfect at it, but it's a thing. It's relevant. It's upfront. You know about it. You can talk about it. You can identify it and you can make different decisions because you're aware of it, right? So how do we remain in that space as leaders, as individuals, but not necessarily it be something else, just waiting the crap out of you?

21:21 Yeah, you know, I wish I'd figured all that out. I think... You know, here's what I'm experiencing. Even in the midst of this conversation, I actually feel more optimistic about myself. I feel better about myself having this realization. I don't feel the burden of... Because again, I have talked to others too that feel that it's just overwhelming because there's all these areas we can improve. Like we're always falling forward in every single area of our life. Yeah. But I think what I noticed is in that moment where I did have that awareness, I thankfully because of a podcast that I recorded 48 hours before or whatever. I, I, Like that's the kind of person I want to be.

22:04 Yeah. And so when I choose, because I didn't make the right choice the first time. Yeah. Right. But as soon as I became aware of it, I was able to do something about it. Yeah. Now it's possible, right? Like my wife would have already cleaned up the kitchen. Like, and that happens sometimes. I leave, I just walk through, I've got my head in the clouds, I'm doing whatever I'm doing. And my wife cleans up the whole kitchen afterwards. And well, there's no way to really salvage that. Like once it's clean, it's clean. Yeah. But the fact I was able to recognize it and then go do it, it felt really good. Yeah. Yeah. I felt really good about myself. You know, dude, you just used the term falling forward, which I know I think we learned a lot. I didn't come up with it, I wish. I love that term though. You know why I love it so much? It feels very accurate.

22:45 Yeah. Right? It doesn't take away. Yeah. It doesn't belittle. the effect or the fact that we're making forward progression, but it also doesn't hype it up into this something that's overly romanticized. Like it's something that it's not. We're legitimately good people are legitimately falling forward or the goal is to fall forward. Or a lot of people use the term fail forward. It's like if we're making mistakes, if we're making modifications and we're tweaking the system, if you will, as we move forward, it's not going to be aggressive forward momentum all the time. It's going to be a lot of two steps forward, one step back, but you know what?

23:26 You still are forward, right? You still, I just, I love that, especially in the text of this conversation because that in and of itself feels like a pretty solid way to look at these things, to have that kind of perspective, you know? You know, the other thing that's been helpful for me is you and I, I don't know, somewhere about the two year mark or so, I think we had a really close working relationship. It took us a couple of years to really build trust with one another, right? But like once we got to that point, I remember, well, this conversation has happened a bunch of times now. But I remember the first time it happened was a real moment of truth for me. And this is what it was. You and I, and I forget the context, but there was something that either you asked me to do or it was a group project or something.

24:08 And somehow after the fact, we were talking about how we thought it went, whatever. And I don't remember if it was you or me that was really honest, but it was some version of, you know what, honestly, I feel like I phoned that in. Like where's the moment of honesty where it's like, you know what? Yeah, I didn't give my best to that thing. I know what you're talking about. And it was you. You assessed yourself. You called yourself out. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't remember what the context was or when the time it was. Since that conversation, we've had several of those honest moments. But at that point, I think I trusted you enough that I could just be honest. Kind of makes you wonder just how honest you and your people are on any given day. Like, do you really know what's going on in your business?

24:48 Well, that's a whole nother... That's a whole other topic, right? But we say we know because of what people are telling us. But we had a couple of those honest moments like, you know, I didn't get my best on that. Yeah. And I don't feel good about that. Yeah. Did you know that? And the funny thing is, you could tell. You could tell. And I think some of those moments just really, God, it rewired me. Because I realized that when I, as a leader, who I don't have many people, it's been a long time since I've had somebody I reported to. I mean, obviously, I reported to you. I've had bosses. But as a senior leader, you have a lot of autonomy. Oh, yeah. You have a huge amount of responsibility. And with that comes a lot of autonomy and freedom and freedom. your ability to control your schedule and prioritize and all that kind of stuff.

25:32 But when I had those moments with you and I was able to have those honest moments, I'm like, you know what? Everybody can tell when I'm phoning it in. Just like I can tell when my colleagues are phoning it in. Right. Yeah. So if we just all get honest with each other, we can get more in touch with that and work on that integrity piece because it really was an integrity issue, right? I can get away with turning in this level of work because it's good enough. But did I actually give my best to it? Well, not always. Not always. That's an integrity issue. Yeah. Yeah, it's a blurry line. So a couple of the terms, right? It's been integrity, discipline. It's a little bit difficult to determine chicken before the egg.

26:12 kind of deal or chicken or the egg with those things. But I think the physical practice is discipline or requires discipline. There's this mechanical commitment to something that has to take place, which in my mind, I almost would see falling under this definition of discipline. But then the integrity aspect of it is this, it's defining whether or not there's alignment between our everyday behaviors, attitudes, and actions with who we want to be. Yeah. Where we want to go. That, because I think we have two kind of aspirational goals. Like we have this image we're trying to portray for others. I don't know if any of us ever gets away from this entirely, right?

26:52 Our ego really wants to be seen a certain way. Yeah. And you put in the adjectives like I want to be, I'm a person of integrity. Like we have a way that we want to be known of. And then we have this internal thought track of who do I want to be? Like when am I proud of myself? And those two things might be a little bit different, but I feel like... I don't know. I don't know what the answer to this is. I mean, to go back to your earlier question of, okay, so what now? There's part of this that feels overwhelming where we could just always be self-analyzing. Yeah, right. And then I can also hear some people hearing this and being like, oh God, I suffered for a lot of my career under perfectionism. And this sounds like that. Like you've just got to be all right, all the time, always on.

27:36 And that's actually not what I'm talking about either. No. It's like, because it's definitely not about perfectionism, but I think it's more just being honest with ourselves. It's noticing and it's not coming down on ourselves. It's like, it's just modifying the behavior. So like with the dishes, I noticed in that moment, I was out of integrity. It was fixable in this case. Now, if it hadn't been fixable, I would have just, I'd like to think like if my wife had already cleaned the kitchen and then I was just aware of this integrity gap, like what I'm trying to do and what I did, I'd like to think that I would have just continued listening to the episode and then pause it and actually owned it. Like, honey, I really do aspire to this and I'm curious even better. I'm curious, honey, how often do you experience me as prioritizing this?

28:17 Or like being in alignment, you mean? Yeah. Like how often do you roll in the kitchen when I'm home and it's a shambles and you know I've been through the kitchen. You can see the signs. I'm curious how I'm doing on this from your perspective. Yeah, that's interesting. Because I guarantee you, here I'm talking about like... being a person of integrity and having these disciplines and all that. But you know what? I don't, I don't know what my number is right now. Am I 50%? Is my batting average 500? Yeah. I don't know. But anyway, I just, I want to be that kind of person that when I say something is important to me, that I monitor that. I don't wait for somebody else to call out the fact I'm not doing that or call out my bad behavior. I want to call myself out.

28:57 Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, I think... So I'm going to push... I don't know if I'm pushing back or what. Yeah, push back. Maybe I'm being defensive. I don't know. I'm feeling like I'm being a little bit... I'm going down a rabbit hole. No, I think you're right on point. Here is something I think I wrestle with. on this same idea. And that is, I think we think that in order for us to have crossed that line, that it's just going to someday just be natural. Like these are the things that will just always happen the right way because we're so committed to having integrity and we're so disciplined. And I think the opportunity here for people is to understand that this stuff ain't sexy. Yeah. This alignment that we're talking about or more often doing the right thing than not really comes down to really lame, boring stuff like put a reminder on your calendar, block out the time for that, have a mentor.

29:50 or an accountability buddy. Talk to your spouse in such a way where you say, hey, here's the thing that I want to work on. Will you help me be accountable to doing this? And be kind. Don't jump down my neck the first time I fail because this is hard for me, right? But none of that is, that's not YouTube. That's not TED Talk crap. It's because it's boring little things that we do that help us actually execute on a more consistent basis to find that alignment between what are we doing right now and how does that marry up with what we, our vision of ourself and where we want to go and how we want to be. And so I think maybe there's an opportunity here for people to just hear that of this isn't second nature crap.

30:35 And if it's not, you know, if you're not doing it subconsciously, then you're a massive failure. If that's happening, there's a strong chance it's a blind spot and you're just not aware there's something you need to be working on. Right. And so I think that maybe, you know, dialing back to how do we do this without it just being this heavy weighty thing is let's just start by pick one or two things. And then put some mechanical things in place to assist you in making that transition. Yeah. And don't get all bent out of shape about it. Like don't make this a life or death thing because let's have fun, right? Like let's make this something that we can enjoy doing. Being in change, being in transition, being a person that's growing as an individual. That's a lifetime journey.

31:16 Totally. You know, and if everything's based on a sprint or if we're not doing it naturally, or if we're not gifted at that thing from day one, then we scrap it or throw in the towel. That's pretty crappy. And I think what I've noticed is the reward comes immediately. Like on those days, like I was describing those days when I'm answering correctly, when I'm living in integrity and I'm making these little choices. Maybe not all of them. Yeah. It's like I cut the corner. I take more time for lunch than I'd planned on. You know, whatever. Like we're never going to have the perfect day. But what I've noticed is when I am being thoughtful, when I am being thoughtful about honoring my own plans, my own commitments, it really has an energizing and stabilizing effect.

32:01 I feel less anxious at the end of the day. Yeah, right on. And I think one of the reasons for that is... When I'm cutting corners, I know there's something left on the pile that I'm going to have to deal with. Yeah, you've just pushed it down the street. I just kicked that ball further down the street. I'm going to have to go get it at some point, right? And that's, I think, where a lot of the stress comes is when I'm ditching these little commitments here and there. Like, you're going to ask me about that podcast guest brief again. If I don't send it to you tonight, like I said I was, I'm going to have to deal with the pain, the sting of you saying, hey, dude, I thought you said you get that done before you left the office on Friday.

32:42 And so if I'd have waited, then I'd have had the whole mental gymnastics of coming up with an excuse where I don't sound like a total lame ass. And I'm probably going to lie and I'm going to feel poorly about myself for lying to my business partner about something stupid that I should have taken 25 minutes to do, right? I have all these thoughts that I have to deal with. Dude, that's where that anxiety and stress comes in. So then I go home and I want to sit on my back porch and just enjoy time with my wife, listening to a Spotify playlist. And it's like, you can't though. But in the back, there's this thing tugging at the back of my shirt. Yeah. Like you never followed through and sent that session recap to your client at three o'clock.

33:24 Right. You could have just done it in 20 minutes right after, but instead you walked to the coffee shop and just sloughed it off. You got all these things. I need to do that now, Saturday morning. And it just never ends. Right. And then it's completely hijacked your mind. So this whole relaxing thing that you were going to experience is gone. You know, I've had the same thing happen to me often. Like we were talking about this last weekend. you know, certainly not brain surgery, but I had some yard work I had been putting off for a while. And we had a pretty interesting week. We were on the road. We did some client visits and it was long days. We were pounding pavement and I was wiped out, man. I was really feeling my age. We're not 25 anymore. No, gosh. It was kind of embarrassing. But it was the same thing like Saturday morning, I woke up with this intentionality of getting XYZ done in the yard.

34:09 And you know what? Honestly, man, I just gave up. Like I'm not going to lie about it. The only thing I want to do is just sit on the couch and watch the movies. And it is true, though, like physically I wasn't active. But the reality of my mind was really not resting. Because I was thinking about this thing. And then you start unpacking the whole like, how many times have I told my wife I got to get that yard piece done? And I was going to do XYZ. And I've drove by it a million times. And it drives me bonkers every time I drive by it and it's not done. So you're not relaxed. You're not really enjoying this freedom that you intentionally said no to something and created this moment. So no, I'm with you. But again, I think the struggle for me on that is, I'm really good at looking backwards and going, oh man, I was totally not relaxed.

34:54 I totally should have just sucked it up and went, got it done. I would have enjoyed the rest of my day more. So easy to see afterwards. The tricky parts in the moment. Oh, geez. Yeah, there's no doubt. Like, and, you know, I'll say it again. We're fellow travelers, everybody. Yeah. Like, this is just what's been on my mind is this issue of discipline. And I, for other fans of Jocko Willink, you know, you and I listen to some of his stuff. Beast. Discipline equals freedom. Yeah. When I walk in that, I'm always better. Yep. Absolutely. I mean, I'm just like disciplines. It's like every time I layer in any kind of discipline into my life, my life gets better. My relationships get better.

35:35 I have more fun. Yeah. We have more rest. Yep. The more disciplined I've been, even just, you know, I've talked a little bit about going to the gym. So I like going to CrossFit gym. And just the discipline of knowing, like I said, a goal for my, I'm going to work out four days a week, no matter what, hell or high water. Even if I got to do a workout in the hotel room, because I'm not at CrossFit, but just four sweaty workouts a week. Making that discipline, I do it in the morning. And once it's done, like I just feel more rested at night. Because, you know, it's like I did my work of the day. I worked my body. I really don't have anything I need to be doing right now. And I can really rest. I can really rest. This reminds me of a story. Another story. I haven't told you this story.

36:15 I don't think. One of my insurance buddies, he was telling me about a weekend retreat he did with some other business buddies of his, business owners. One guy is a pastor. Or a priest or something. I think he's a priest. A little bit different. Like he's like a monk priest. Like, wow. I don't know. Somebody write us and tell us what the difference is. But I think he's like a priest with a white collar thingy, you know? Anyhow, they were all talking about sleep. Because as we get older, right? It's harder to sleep. For all you youngsters out there. Like this is something we like struggle with as you get older. Yeah. amongst all the other things. And they were talking about just how hard it is for them to sleep. Insomnia and all this stuff. And this one priest guy who they've been friends with since childhood, he's like, you know, honestly, I lay my head down.

36:57 I'm out in 30 seconds. Every night. And all of them just looked at him wide-eyed. Like, basically, how in the hell do you do that? Yeah, how is that possible? Yeah, priest boy. You know, like, how does that work? You know? You're in the people business. How do you just go to sleep at night? Because we're all in the people business and, you know, whatever. And he said a one-sentence answer to them. He said, I have no regrets. I have no regrets. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Now I'm trying to wrestle with that. Think about that. Think about that. Now, listen, I don't know. I don't know if that guy was just kind of being clever. I don't know how true that was. But I think there's a principle there that's pretty interesting. Yeah. And I think it ties in with what we're talking about, right? Like when we're prioritizing being true to ourself, and having integrity, being aligned with what we're saying to other people about ourselves, what we're saying we value about our company, what we say, this is the kind of husband I want to be, the kind of father I want to be.

37:54 And we're actually making these little choices throughout our day or week that are aligned with that. I think it's possible to get to the end of the day and not have regrets. That doesn't mean... Because to me, that's how I think about regrets. It's things left undone. It's like broken relationships. That's where regrets are, right? It's like I've left a relationship in a broken state or I've left this task undone that I said I was going to do. And it's like there's something off kilter inside us. Now, I know there's people that just struggle with sleep. Maybe it's hormonal or there's other stuff, but that's not true for me. And that's not what we're talking about. And that's not what we're talking about. Yeah. So, yeah. Dude, that was... I got to tell you, there is some drive on me to want to continue to poke at that.

38:37 But that last story actually is pretty dang legit. And I don't know... We don't know the story, the backstory behind that. Yeah. But based on what we're talking about right now, that is serious, man. This idea of the more times you follow through, the more times I follow through, with the things that I intended to, when we get to the end of the day, how many less regrets do we have? And I think those less regrets, maybe not no regrets, but less regrets certainly changes the way that we're feeling about ourselves. It changes the weight, the anxiety. Yeah, that's going to hang for me a little bit. I think I'm going to have to wrestle with that story a little bit. I think the other part of that story, it's funny where our head goes sometimes on certain things, kind of spider web out.

39:23 I think one of the optimistic or really positive things, because this obviously can go to a heavy place where it's like, man, I haven't been... really conscious of this or mindful of this. But what's great is, is that in a moment, you can change gears big time. Like my example with the podcast, like, okay. Now, of course, my motivation was I don't want to look disingenuous or like an idiot with my wife, but she's going to hear this. She's just going to look at me funny because she walked through the kitchen. She walked in the kitchen 15 minutes before that and she knows it's a mess. So just the cognitive dissonance of that would have been uncomfortable. But I had an opportunity to fix it. Turn it. And then it was not, it wasn't a regret. It wasn't an incongruency. It wasn't a moment of disintegrity.

40:04 Right. I fixed it. I saw it. I'm out of integrity. I need to get back in. Yep. It also reminds, I grew up in like church, you know, going to... Sunday school and all that kind of stuff. And I, it reminds me of, I don't remember the principle exactly, but basically if you're like praying in church and you remember that you sinned against somebody, like you did something bad, you're supposed to, I don't know, I think it's in scripture. Like you're supposed to leave the altar or leave your prayer and go make things right with that person. Then come back and talk to God. Oh God. Right. Like comment. You know what I mean? Do you remember what I'm talking about? I think so loosely. Yeah. Yeah, like, hey, like we're having a spiritual moment. We're talking to God or whatever. And we realized, man, I really offended that person. I need to make that right. Like the scripture says, like, literally go now.

40:46 Yeah. Get up, go make it right with that person and come back and do your prayers. It's kind of like that same thing. It's like once you're aware of it, then that's the moment of integrity. Now that I'm aware of it, am I going to do something or not? That's healthy. Yeah, for sure. I don't know. Hopefully I didn't lose people with that church reference, but there you go. No, that's dialed in. I like it. What do you think? Are you going to wrap this up? Why don't you do the... You think so? Customary summary here. All right. I was actually looking for a summary vacation. Well, you know I'm happy to pipe in and just extend the podcast if there's something I feel like should be added. There's no way you'll let me get away. Okay. All right. So here's what I heard from you today.

41:28 It's kind of two principal ideas, but they're so symbiotic. They're so interconnected. It's this idea of discipline and integrity. Discipline being defined as the actions, the behaviors that we're taking. And then this idea of integrity being in alignment with where we wanna go, who we wanna be. Are we acting out on the things that we're saying or telling people? And so, and then there's this idea of, A, we want to be in alignment. When we're not in alignment, there's this added weight that we almost intentionally put on ourselves. It's extra anxiety, it's extra stress, it's the- Things undone. The things undone. It's the mental gymnastics we go through. Like, how am I going to address that?

42:08 How I'm going to make up for it? All the things, right? And then there's kind of this idea, though, that that doesn't have to be a negative, like this principle, this idea, this awareness doesn't have to be a negative thing. And it doesn't have to be picture perfect. It's this idea of, okay, as we become more aware of this... As we set goals for ourselves and we start actually trying to achieve those things or change certain types of standards or behaviors that we've had for ourselves, there's got to be this positive awareness that happens. This posture of saying, okay, I'm aware of this. I understand it. Now what am I going to do with it? And then the best part really for me is this idea that it could change tomorrow. Yeah. Like, right, you make the mistake today. Okay, let's not hang ourselves. Let's go fix the situation. Let's hit reset on it.

42:49 Let's make the different decision tomorrow. And the fact that we can literally do that every hour, every minute, every day to hit reset, realign, get back on course, we have that choice and we can make that choice at any time, right? Yeah. And then the benefit of this is this idea of the more times in the day, the more times, the more elements of our life that we begin to align with what we want to experience with who we want to be. It's like the life's weight, the uncontrollable things become more manageable. The weight is a burden that it's easier for us to bear because we're not piling this other stuff on it. Dude, that's good, man. Dude, your summaries, here's the risk. Your summaries are so good.

43:30 I know some people in the audience are like, okay, I could spend 40 minutes on Nordyke or I can just hit the fast forward 15 seconds, like 30 times and then just get Brandon's recap and then move on with my day. Hey, you know what? We recap really intentionally because some people need the recap. Like I'm that person. I have to have the recap. All right, bro. Good one. That's good. Later. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of the MRM podcast. And if you got something out of it, share it with a friend, hit subscribe, hit follow, leave us a five-star review. Thanks a lot.