Humility And The Rain Barrel
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Audio Transcript:
What role does humility play in flourishing? Especially when you feel like you've failed at something you preach. The first reviews I guess I'm podcasting are a powerful thing. So if you've been listening along and value what you hear, man, we really appreciate a rating and a review so others can find us and join in. All right. Now on to the questions.
Yeah man. And we just had this right. So, with with a little bit of a health issue we were at a couple of couple weeks ago, where I just, I drove myself into the ground and, and I preached not to do that. So that's a tough one. And I got to tell you, you can be authentic about all kinds of things when you're dealing with your team.
And again, everybody's different. I try to be authentic. I don't I don't share everything, but everything I share is is genuine. And I think that as a baseline is really important. And that also means humility has got to be there. I mean, I just think you're setting unrealistic expectations and also there's got to be disingenuousness. I mean, when I see folks in influencers online, you know, life is always great for them and everything.
So I'm like, yeah, that's that's not really genuine. On the flip side, it's like, oh, that's it's for me always victim. That's different too. But this level of humility where it's like, I may not have it right, guys, I may not I may not have executed well here. and this but this is what I'm going to do in response, I think.
So for me, humility is a big part. It plays a huge role in flourishing. I don't have all the answers. Even when I'm talking to you guys. I think you hear I mean, I this is what works for me. I can't tell you what is going to work exactly for you. I can't tell you. You know, I love the here's the five things you must do now, I, I can't stand that stuff because I just don't know what you must do now.
And really, I think even as a leader in an organization, it's easy for you to think you know exactly why somebody is doing or not doing the thing they're doing in your organization and you think you know exactly what they should do. Man, you may not even be close. And, yeah, you you may be really insightful. You may have great high EQ, high IQ, have all that stuff be be aware what's happening in organization, but you still don't know what's happening inside the head of that person or in their life or whatever else.
And that can be huge to the impact to thing. So, humility is huge for me, both in my own behaviors and in how I lead. And I've found it honestly. So you fathers and mothers and guardians out there, I found humility is one of the most powerful things for for our kids. for for me to behave that way.
Not that I walk around hat in hand all the time, but I'm not saying that. But like when I mess up. Yeah, it's it does so many. There's so many things on the other side of being honest and being humble. When I mess up and I can cover it, it does two things. One, it disarms the kids a little bit that they they don't have this expectation of of the needing to be perfect.
You know, there's a lot of that out there. But on the flip side of that, it also teaches them how to how to be humble and how to to to recognize and not just hold the ground because, oh my gosh, we've got to be right and we'll die. You know, it's and so I think humility is important across the board.
You know in the community it's it's a little tougher I guess. But I mean everybody feels like they've got the answer for what should happen in your community. And the reality is almost, almost always the, the, the, the actual solution is much, much more complicated. And you can see that play out on social media every day.
But, humility, I think still super important part for all of that. So, you know, hopefully that that answers that question. next question. yes. how do you know when stress is helping you grow versus when it's about to overflow your rain barrel? You know, I mentioned in the last episode that, you know, there's just lots of things that pour into this stuff.
And obviously my barrel overflowed not too long ago, and, Yeah. So. So how do you know? Okay, back to the earlier question. Humility. I don't I don't know, I think there's a couple things. I, there were signs and those signs are physically, mentally, emotionally those things. You know, I'd like to think I'm tied in pretty well and tapped into who I am and how I'm feeling.
But sometimes the idea, it's, well, an easy example. It goes to working out, you know, if you're let's say you're doing resistance training and you're, you're pushing weight. there's a difference between strain and injury. And, and you just have to honestly and unfortunately, sometimes you gotta injure yourself some to know where that line is. And I'm not I'm not I'm not advocating go out and hurt yourself.
I'm just saying that I don't know if you could just know. I almost feel like you have you have to you have to break it a couple times. And that's a it's terrible advice. I don't I don't want to be telling you to go do that. But in my experience, man, how you know where the limit is until you hit it.
And so, that's dangerous. That's risky. Again, I'm not telling you to go. Go push yourself until you explode or hurt yourself or anything like that, I guess. But, when you're when you're when you're trying to push yourself to do to do great things, I just don't know how you don't you don't bump into the limit sometimes.
So I think it's it's paying attention indicators and learning over time what you can push and what you can't. And I have unfortunately, recently not not been paying close attention and I was able to I, I hurt myself injured, I went through I went over the limit and so I think, you know, you could try to reduce stress in all kinds of ways for sure.
But that indicator is, is really listening to yourself. It's listening to your body. It's listening to your emotions. And I think to do that, and this is an important piece, I think to do that, we have to stop for a minute and and listen, even right now, I'm running my mouth the whole time. But the pause, take that pause, take that pause and think.
So whether that's, you know, as, as a, as a founder, a father and a friend to my community, those, those are busy roles. And in your constantly being engaged. And so you got to carve out some time for yourself to just assess, self-assess what's going on here. I'm not saying you got to climb to a mountain and go monk mode for three days.
I mean, that would be. That's awesome. And that's a valuable experience. I would encourage you to do it. But just a walk, a quiet moment in the chair, standing, you know, even just just anything to take a moment and assess it. Maybe you're doing a brief meditation or prayer, whatever it is that you do, take a moment for a body scan and and kind of go through what what am I feeling where we're things at and I think that can help.
So again, I hate to say you don't know the limit to hit the limit. that's kind of that seems like terrible, terrible advice. But the reality is, for each of us, our limits are going to be different. But I can say take that time to assess. And I'll also add some ways. Sometimes you can push really hard at work.
And if you aren't doomscrolling and and eating terribly and all that kind of stuff, you never reach the limit. You know, you're not you're not. You'll be fine. And so there is just there's this notion of, of the rain barrel comes there's a lot of sources of, you know, you have multiple gutters running into that rain barrel, if you will, and if you limit the trash from one, it's, you know, as long as you have good habits.
Otherwise you can you can maybe not hit that limit. and that's okay. So I don't know. This is not great advice. I'm sorry. There's humility. I don't have the answers, but I assure you that for each of you, it's it's it's a it's a moment where if you really, truly are assessing how you're feeling on a generally routine basis, you're going to you're going to see it, you're going to see it come and you're going to feel it.
It's when I put my head down and ignore that stuff. That's when. That's when I find myself and hope. I hope that's helpful, man. If that feels like just a terrible answer. all right, so last question. You mentioned a company wide Sharpen the Soul week. How do you create buy in for something like that in a high performance culture?
this is a great question. We have tried some of the craziest things at Mount Leverage over the 20 years we've been running this company. And even still to this day, we'll we'll go to try something. And people are like, that's crazy. What a why are we even doing this? Well, this is a this is an internal facing thing.
We got to be external. There's all the things. And you know what? Those are all good arguments. And sometimes they're right. Sometimes. Oops, that was a mistake. We don't we don't hit every one of them out of the park. and even show up in this all week. There were people that were that there were a couple people had fit issues that were like, well, how could we ever do this?
And how can we ever, you know, but but mostly even even people who are completely 100 aligned are like, how are we going to pull this off? And is this going to bring the value we want? And you want those questions you want? That's not not buying in. That's somebody actually, I, I find those kind of questions often you can tell the spirit, you can tell us where somebody is and ask these things.
But I often find those things that's totally buying in there really. they're trying to assess how can we do this thing? Crazy guy that you're asking us to do. and it would be valuable. What value is going to come from it? So you want that challenge? but but there there still is. These are these moments where sometimes it just gathered together and it's kind of a disagree but commit, you know?
Okay. So I get your concern. Let's do this. And, and then the other side see where it goes. And I think for us there's just a long track record of trying things and and being open to them and many of them working more often than not working. and it creates a culture of exploration and innovation. So I guess that's the thing.
If you've never done anything like that at your company and you just pop and say, hey, I want to do this big grandiose thing, I don't know how much mileage you're gonna have for that. It's taken years and years and years of implementing layer after layer after layer of an organization that's willing to test and innovate and correct and iterate and just keep going.
And we've we've been doing that since day one. And you will hire employees over time that are that are more inflexible for all kinds of reasons. And they will grow with you or or potentially they're their folks. You need your organization that can keep reminding you that, hey, you know, you're you're in, you're in echo chamber, bub. This is going to cause a lot of problems for us.
And this is why, obviously, you want you want to get as much culturally aligned. But culture line does not mean homogenization. It doesn't mean everybody's on board with everything all the time. And it's a bunch of yes men and yes women. That would be a nightmare for me. So you want the questions, you want the challenges. But ultimately, at the end of the day, the buy in is important.
So I think the hard answer for for anyone who's thinking about doing these kind of things, at least from my experience, is it's just going to take a long time. And I have a track record of of you honoring these things because lots of companies like try stuff, you know, fart in the windstorm kind of things. And it just it doesn't go over well or it's not sustained and it's challenging.
And we've got, we've we've got a record of those too. But we have a lots of lots of history where we've, we put these kind of things together and they've been beneficial or where they haven't. We've made changes for the next time. And you know, so I think it's, it's a, it's a mix of things. There's a follow up on those changes.
but if you want to try something I'd say start small. and go from there and get some wins, get some momentum, get some confidence from the team. Not that they will, without question follow everything you say, but that they will be intrigued. They will be curious. They will want to invest. They will want to ask the questions they want to implement.
They want to look for the outcomes. That's the that's the culture that allows these kind of things to pull, pull together. So yes, you have high performers. So I think about a sales get sales guy or sales gal saying, hey, there's no way I can come off the road and do this thing. It's just not going to be valuable.
or a developer saying, hey, I can't get it. I've got to finish this system. How can I do this thing? And I think you could just take the same argument to someone, you know, a logger who's cutting trees and saying, hey, I just can't stop and sharpen the saw. I've got to keep going while you watch them grinding a dull chainsaw into the into the wood.
that's that that looks just as silly as the others do. But that one, we can look at that and see how silly it is. But I think, you know, using those examples, playing it out, getting some some actual track record of it, working that all that all kind of plays out makes it better. So anyway, those are those are the questions again, I don't know how well I answered them.
Hopefully you hopefully there's some value for you. And you can see I'm at least genuinely trying to go after it. I am going to have to think more and more about this whole knowing when the stress barrel is full, stress, rain barrel. And, you know, maybe that's something we'll talk about in the future. I'd love to hear how you guys handle some of these.
You know, if you guys answer these questions or you have other questions related or not, with your experience of trying to flourish, I would love to hear them. So send us an email flourish at random and.com that's flourish at r e n e m a n.com. And I'll answer as many as I can on the show. So hey, thank you all.
I hope wherever you may be, you are flourishing.
Alex Reneman is the founder of Mountain Leverage and Unleash Tygart and host of Flourishing w/ Alex Reneman. For 20+ years he has worked as CEO of Mountain Leverage, honing the concept of flourishing and experimenting with it in the business. In July of 2024, he decided to begin to share this idea with others, which led to his podcast, social content, and the plans for other initiatives in the future.
