Be a Team Player | DFS 329

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, and today I want to play off a little bit

of Emily Hawkins episode from last week. This episode is

called Be a team player. When I was in corporate and government

work, I volunteered. I was smart. I learned what I needed

to do. I got my work done, and when I had extra time, I

volunteered. I volunteered to help other employees with their

stuff. I volunteered for extra projects. I felt like if I kept

learning and growing and learning more about the field I

was in, it would be better for me in the long run. And it was

right, like I was right, it was right. It worked really well for

my career and everything I had going on.

I

i I love learning new things. And the interesting thing is,

it's it's still true today. I love to learn. I love to be a

part of new things. And I was just having a conversation with

my nephew, and we were talking about showing up and doing the

right thing, even when it's quote, these are air quotes.

You're not seeing them, but they're air quotes when it's not

your job. And here's the thing, we had a deal in the federal

government, which I spent the majority of my career with the

federal government, and it was called other duties as assigned.

So you had the things you were required to do to meet the

minimum requirements of your job, but then it was other

duties as a sign. Now a lot of people would complain about

other duties as a sign. I don't know how many times I heard, oh,

that's not my job. And

I always felt like if I had the

time and the ability I should do it. I should volunteer. I should

help. So now fast forward just quite a few years. I'm an

entrepreneur, and I heard a story recently of a woman that

was in the same mastermind that I'm in. She hired me to do some

energy work with her, and it was really awesome. And I was super

grateful to have the opportunity to work with her, and then I'm

working with her again. And she made the comment that she like

weeks ago, that she was waiting for a bid to get some things in

order for her business.

And

then she said, I got the bid, and it was way more money than I

could spend right now, and I knew instantly who she was

talking about. I didn't know how much the bid was, but I was

pretty sure I knew who had given her the bid. So I said, Hey,

let's just talk, because I want to help talk you through what

you actually mean, not just you have to have all these things.

So we finally were able to connect on Saturday morning,

which, no, I typically don't work on Saturday morning, but

this was kind of helping a friend out, right? This wasn't

necessarily working, working. And we get on the phone, and she

starts telling me what has happened in the past, right? You

have to, like, lay the groundwork. Some people don't

have to lay the groundwork, but if you're like me, I'm a

storyteller. I want to tell you what happened and why we're

where we are right now, and she's a little bit that way too.

So we have this conversation, and we're working through what

she wants to happen. And because I've been an entrepreneur for a

while, because I've spent a whole lot of money trying to

follow the guidance of the group gurus, and it didn't quite work

out, like they promised or implied, however you want to

look at it, I have some experience like I'm I'm well

versed. We kind of lay out what she needs. We find out that she

has way more already in place than she realized, and with a

few really strategic and great moves, she could just take off

like she's just right there on the verge of greatness. And as

we're having this conversation, she was like, Wait, I didn't

know that. Wait, I didn't know that. And it was like, Yeah, you

don't know what you don't know till you find out you didn't

know it, and then you're like, crap. I wish I had known that.

That is where that volunteer comes in. I probably was on the

phone with her all total maybe an hour and 20 minutes. Part of

it was chit chatting, and part of it was like. Holy crap. Only

look what I got myself into. But the bottom line is, I hung up

that phone and was ready to go to lunch for yet another

birthday celebration with my husband and some friends. And my

husband was like, Well, are you done? And I was like, yeah,

actually, I wasn't. I had one more call, but that's okay. But

with her, like I was finished, and I felt really good about it.

She doesn't need to spend any more money. She had spent 1000s

of dollars for, I think, almost a year on a platform she never

could get up and running number one and number two, she never

freaking needed in the first place. But how do I know this

from my experience? I went through this, I did the things,

I bought the stuff, I kept beating my head against the

wall. Yep, I get it. I get it. I felt so good about myself, about

what I've learned, about how I've learned to share what I've

learned with other people, and I was able to volunteer my time.

And I'm super hopeful. I told her the next time I talked to

her, I can't wait to find out what she's built like we have

step by step. What are her next steps to move forward? And it's

kind of funny, because I was working with a coach at one

point, and she named me, like, just kind of, I'm going to say

willy nilly, but it was actually based on a lot of content she

had seen of mine. And she was like, you're an intuitive

business coach. And Saturday, I honestly felt like one like

intuitively, I knew what this gal needed for her business, and

I coached her through it, so I was super happy about that. So

volunteer, whether it's volunteering at the food bank

over the holidays, whether it's in a kitchen, whether it's at a

food pantry or a food toy drive, or whatever. Volunteer. It just

makes you feel good. You need to do it. Volunteer. The other

thing about being a team player, and again, with this gal I was

working with, I'm going to say we're on the same team because

we're in the same mastermind together, right? Like she was

one of my team players. We're on the same team. We're both

players. Your attitude is everything. I'm going to say it

again. Your attitude is everyone, everything. And you

have how much control over your attitude, how much I'm going to

call out my friend Donna Renda, because she taught me this. I

was like, holy, crap. Holy, look at that. Yes, if you assign a

number to each letter of the word attitude, it adds up to

100% Guess how much control you have over your attitude. 100%

100% you can be in the worst mood ever, and you can stop you

can take three deep, deep breaths. You can look around you

and find three things that you're grateful for, or show

appreciation for, or or appreciate the beauty in it. As

soon as you go from a pity party to gratitude and appreciation,

bam, everything changes. Everything changes. Just

instantaneously. I was very upset. I was probably, I don't

know, 1920 years old. I was home for the weekend from college,

and I was very upset about a little family situation that

happened, and I was not going to let it go, ladies and gentlemen,

I was hanging on for dear life, and I was hanging on to that bad

attitude. And there was a church event that night, and I had

quite a few friends that were going to be there. And I said,

I'm just in too bad of me to go. I'm just going to stay home. My

dad, in his infinite wisdom, Bob daggers, I miss you terribly. He

said, that's when you need to go the most. And I went, What if

Luke's could kill he probably would have dropped dead, because

I cut my eyes around, I'm sure, and I said, What? And he goes.

When you don't want to go the most, that's when you need it

the most. And I think you should just get your car keys, get in

your car and drive to church and go meet your friends and go to

church. And at the time, I would have said, I regretted to tell

you he was right. Now, all these years later, I could say, Oh,

thank god my father was right. I went to church, I hung out with

my friends, I got a little bit of that gospel in me. And. And I

did feel better, and I quit being pissy and pissed off and

all the P words with me being upset, you have control over

your attitude. You can choose how you want to look at it. I

will say recently, a friend of mine said, you know, you really

do a really great job when something doesn't work out of

just going well, you know, I'll get it right next time. And I

was like, Well, I've had a lot of years to practice that. I'm

glad somebody noticed, because I don't even notice when I do it

myself. But your attitude is everything. Everything is

energy. You sit down at the keyboard of your computer with a

pissy attitude, just start to notice how many times it locks

up or something doesn't go right. We're impacting

everything with our energy and our attitude. There are some

people that anymore I limit my interactions with the level of

happiness and gratitude in them is pretty minimal, and I want it

to be maximal. I want to be happy. I want to enjoy. I want

to see the good things are bad. Things can happen. Yes, Jack

Canfield calls it the E plus r equals O. You have an event, you

have a nano second to decide how you're going to respond, and

until you get good, that nano second needs to be expanded to

like 10 seconds, because in that nanosecond when you've got a

history and a commitment to being pissy and ugly and

negative, that's what you're going to go to because that's

your habit. But if you will pause, it's all in the pause.

The power is in that pause. If you will pause and choose to

respond like an adult, not a whiny baby, and with integrity,

the outcome will be different.

E plus r equals O the event, plus your response to it equals

the outcome. I've shared this in various ways in various talks.

One of my funnest ways is we had ice and snow in Oklahoma, which

doesn't happen like some years we really don't get any. Other

years, we get a little bit more. The problem is we can't have and

maintain the amount of salt, sand and equipment that we need,

because it would be in the millions of dollars for like,

four days. Just shut the city down, let it melt. We're not

going to stay cold for long, right? It's going to burn off.

So a friend of mine got to work, and before she left the house,

she would put on her GPS, her address to work, and it took her

on an alternate route, so she went very slowly because the

roads were bad. She got to work about 30 minutes later than she

normally would. A colleague of hers came in, like, two hours

late, and walked in and said, Oh my gosh. Did you know the

highways completely backed up? I sat there for over an hour. I

couldn't get here. How'd you get here so early? And she said,

Well, I put in my GPS and and it told me to take this alternate

route. And he goes, Well, I'm not from here. I don't know all

those alternate routes. And she goes, my GPS told me where to

go. Is that a habit of yours? Do you put in your GPS? I was going

to a friends to pick her up for a thunder game. Oklahoma City,

Thunder. Get thunder. And my GPS kept saying, Turn left. Turn

left. I get to the next little street. They were like a block

apart, but there were no lights for like half a mile, but then,

but there were all these little side streets, and it kept

saying, Turn left, turn left. And I was like, la La,

girlfriend, you don't know where we're going. I don't need to

turn left. And lo and behold, I did not turn left. My GPS told

me to turn left. I thought I was smarter. I got to the highway, I

turned left to get on the highway, and I saw a sea of red

tail lights. Lola new there was a whatever hold up ahead, and I

should have turned left otherwise, and I could have gone

around and missed it. But did I know there was an event, there

was a backup, there was a response. Lola told me to go a

different way. There was an outcome. I didn't listen. That's

kind of your intuition too. You can overcome your intuition.

Your intuition is like Man, my GPS probably knows best, but

nope, I'm not gonna listen that attitude. I. A it's a thing. Pay

attention. Pay attention to your attitude and make a choice.

Because 100% you 100% 100% control over your attitude. The

third piece of this I'm going to throw out there on being a team

player is take care of yourself. You can if you choose to accept

this assignment, you can say yes to the point that you run

yourself in the ground. You feel completely downtrodden. You feel

completely abused. You feel like no one notices or respects you

for all the hard work you put in. And then you become very

resentful, and then become very hateful, and then you've got a

pity party, and the pity party goes on way too long, and then

you have a bad attitude, and then you don't want to

volunteer, because you volunteered too much and you did

too much. Set boundaries. Set boundaries. If you're in a

corporate or government or nonprofit type position, you

work for somebody else. I heard somebody call Are you a w2

employee? Do you get a w2 sometimes it can be a little

harder to say no, but sometimes you can ask questions, and I

urge you to Can somebody else help with this? Is there anybody

else that can be on a team to get this done with me? Can we

extend the deadline? Because I have these other deadlines

coming. Ask questions, be inquisitive, and take care of

yourself. You don't need to be the martyr.

I

It cracks me up when I hear all that people do for the holidays,

and they resent most of it, and they feel that they have to do

it, and it's required. My mother used to say things like, my name

would be mud if I didn't and would your name be mud? And if

so, do you really care? Is it okay if it's mud? I have only

ever made dressing with Pepperidge Farm, Herb dressing

mix, and it's herb season bread. You can also get the cornbread

one, and you can mix them if you want, do whatever you like, if

you don't have the time to make cornbread, and then let it out

for three days to dry, and lay all your bread out for three

days to get all dry, because that's what they had to do in

the olden days. Do you know why they did that in the olden days?

Because Pepperidge Farm had not created herb dressing mix. And I

used to have a number two pencil and a big chief tablet. And you

know what I have now? I have a Bic pen and a spiral notebook,

and I have a laptop and I can type, and I have air

conditioning. I remember as a kid when we got our first

refrigerator that had an ice maker in it, that was the

biggest deal ever. I still love an ice maker. It's still a big

deal because I want a lot of ice all the time. I'm in the South

Oklahoma. Are we south? Are we southwest? Are we a prairie?

Nobody knows. We don't know what we are. But I'm in Oklahoma, and

we all put a lot of ice in everything we drink. I even put

ice in beer sometimes, because it's fun. Life changes. We

evolve. Is it hard? Sometimes, do you have to choose to make

everything hard? No, put on your big girl panties, your big boy

shorts, and make a decision. It doesn't have to be hard all the

time if you want to see how you can make your things less hard

or easier, whichever way you want to do that, grammatically

correct, click the button, book a discovery call. Let's talk

about what's going on with you and how you can make it easier,

how you can be a team player, whether you're volunteering

within your mastermind to help somebody that would have cost

them 1000s of dollars and you took an hour of your day. What

if you need that attitude adjustment? And, no, you don't

need a butt whooping for it, but they could help. I mean, you

know, if you're a kid, when I was a kid, that was a thing, and

you got to take care of yourself. Book a call. Let's

talk about it. I'm Jennifer Takagi, and I look forward to

talking to you soon. I.