EntreLeadership - Don't Do This: "If they would just..."

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

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Hey, this is Alex Judd, and this is a bonus episode that our team recorded specifically to bring you hope and practical action items that you can use as a small business owner to tackle this whole coronavirus situation. So here's Daniel Tarty with Ramsey personality, Dr. John Deloney. Hey, guys, Daniel Tarty and the Entree leadership team here at Ramsey Solutions. And I'm honored today to be joined by Dr. John Deloney. You're honored? I'm semi-honored. We'll see by the end of this, if I'm honored or not. Dr. Deloney is a Ramsey personality and has been with the Ramsey team for a few months now,

but we've had a relationship that preceded that. He came in and started doing devotions for us here at our office, and just an incredible human being specializes in, well, I'm not going to tell people what your specialty is. You can, but the things that jump out to me from some of your stories is, crisis management, jumping into really intense situations where there's been some kind of crisis with the family and you show up on the scene and you're bringing the voice of calm and reason. Obviously, you know a ton about neuroscience and psychology and how we deal with stress and anxiety. And it's all the stuff that I don't really, I'm not smart enough to talk about, but I follow it.

And I'm fascinated by how it all works. I got my info on Wikipedia. It's good. Thank you. This is great. No credentials at all for both of us at this point. You know, it has been a blur. The last few weeks have just been like this time warp for me. And we're talking to a lot of business owners out there who are just going, every day is a grind. Every day is trying to respond to this latest disruption, fear, panic, anxiety. All these things are real. and they're more prominent right now for business owners more than ever. I think our audience is really going to enjoy hearing from you

because I know you have a lot of practical tools to offer. But before we get to that, I appreciate that. Thanks, man. Take us back to Lubbock, Texas, which is where I'm from. I thought you were going to say West Philadelphia, where we were born and raised. You spent a minute in Lubbock, Texas. I did. Tell our people what you did there on the...

Were you on the police force? No. You partnered with them? I was part of a, it was called the Victim Services Crisis Response Team. And it started by... Victim Services Crisis Response Team. And it was started by an old psychology professor of mine that I haven't was an undergrad. A really remarkable guy and mentor for me. His name is Dr. Andy Young. And he was a counselor that loved working with police officers and SWAT teams.

But the goal of this team was, let's say, I've got a four-year-old and a 10-year-old. let's say my four-year-old, the middle of the night passes away suddenly. When I woke up in the morning and we found her, I would call 911 and the police would show up and they work that scene homicide back. What's the worst thing that could have happened here to, like, what's the, what's the, that's not helpful to a grieving man again. Essentially you're saying they assume one of these parents may have killed their child. Everyone clear out of here. We're going to look at the facts, take pictures. The whole, yeah, it's a really, it's a really clinical and heartbreaking process.

And so what we would do is I'd get a text and it just said 1087 and an address. And so it would be the police code for someone who has passed away. That's 187. 1087. Often didn't know how old. How old could be a young child. It could be an old person. You know.

And then we'd show up. And then you were just there to sit with the families, help them get from this moment to the next moment and that moment to the next moment and connect them with services and with connections and family. Tell them what's going to happen. So it was a, it was a, I call them holy moments, not not in the moment. a traditional church kind of way, but like it's when someone's darkest. They've got nothing right then. It's their darkest moment. And it was a beautiful moments with folks. In that kind of a moment, is there a lot of dialogue? Are you trying to talk them through it or you're just kind of there? Like, what's the goal? I mean, if you can even have a goal for something like that.

No, and I think we've, I think we're all experiencing that now, which is a culture that thought we could solve all of our problems by thinking about it and get more degrees and more information and more certifications. And then all of a sudden, this virus from a small little community on the other side of the world kind of wipes us out. And there's nothing to say. What is there to say? Other than we're just talking to somebody. Their wife got the email yesterday.

We don't know if there's any checks beyond this one, right? Like, what do you do with that? And that's where presence and relationships and vulnerability and feelings, these things that we as a culture have just shoved away for years and years and years. Now they're surfacing in a pretty robust way. But no, when you're sitting with a mom who's lost their child, what can you say? There's nothing to say. And that's where this gift of presence is so important. And the gift of being clear and gift of here's what's going to happen in this moment.

Here's what's going to happen in this moment. Just gentle facts. And really bringing some calm and collective grace to those moments. What do you do with that urge? You know, whether you're a parent that just lost their child, God forbid. I mean, I can't imagine. Or you're a business owner that's losing their company right now. Or you're an employee who, you know, you don't know if the next check is coming in

and you're thinking about basic things like groceries. We have that urge to fix it. We have that urge to not let worst-case scenario happen, to fight, to bow up against it and to start coming up with solutions or to deny that it's real, right? To kind of block it out. What do we, why do we have that impulse and what do we do with it? I think the impulse is like a natural, that's part of our wiring, right? Our body sounds our alarms and we usually fall into a pattern that we've been following our whole lives, right?

Some people say it's because of birth order, some say it's because of your trauma history, whatever. But most of us have been solving problems the same way for years and years and years. Some of us by curling up and blowing up and crying about them, that's how we get attention. Some of us by bucking up and fighting the system, and that's how we solve problems. But eventually your coping mechanism runs up against a problem that you can't address in that way. And that's where... When we're doing those things, what are we trying to accomplish? Are we trying to avoid pain?

It depends, right? Often men show that they're scared, for a clinical term, men show depression by curling up in a ball or bucking up, right? And so you can look across our world right now and see all of the bravado going on. That, to me, is a sign that someone's really struggling. That tells me somebody's hurting on the inside. And it's not helpful. And in fact, it can be painful. Is it because it's not, like you can tell it's not real?

Or is it a facade? Like, why can you see somebody's putting on the bravado and say that's a sign that they're hurting? The analogy I will give you is the time I ran into Chuck Liddell, the UFC fighter, years before he was Chuck Lidale. But I was an underground, obsessive fan. And I ran into him in Las Vegas, and it messed me up for the weekend. dude. And here's why. Because the lights are blinking in a Vegas casino and it's loud and it's noisy. And I stopped him and said, hey, you're you're chuckling. All right. And he spent some time

with me and then he took off. And he had this aura act. I never met Yoda, but that's how I had to, it was this aura of peace and this aura of you're the only guy in this room right now. And we shook hands and I talked about what a great fan. He took a picture with me. And it messed me up all weekend because that was he's a tattoo on his head mohawk he's hardcore and then i thought oh wait a minute that guy's got nothing to prove he can beat up every person on earth except for like two right and like you and me maybe yeah like and we'd be the two yeah right um and so but it was this idea that the louder the bark uh the more someone's compensating right those who are comfortable with who they are have solid relationships that they are anchored into right now have a faith and um

some kind of spiritual sense that's bigger than them, those are the ones calling their employees right now saying, hey, are you okay, right? Call me if you need something and are thinking, how do we get through today and how do we get through tomorrow? And can we pivot our business that are commonly going about solving their problems? It's not the ones getting up there being like, does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. It's when I see that, my first instinct is to go grab somebody by their face and say, you're good enough. Let's get quiet and let's grieve this, right? Because what we had is gone, and let's figure out what we're going to do next in a controlled, gentle way.

Someone who's hearing this right now going, oh, my gosh, that's me. And I've been that person. As of I, as of I. And maybe even yesterday, if I want to, you know, it's a moving target. Is it something they can just identify and say, oh, I just need to stop compensating and I can just make a decision? I mean, how do you, if that's all you know. The signal for me is when you start dividing the world up in us, on them, that's when you know you're not well. And so when you start saying things like or thinking

things like, if they would jest, if the sentence, if they would jest, I don't care who they is and I don't care what the just is. This situation is so complex and so many interwoven economies and so many disparate medical models and so many different communities trying to solve this in different ways, there is no just solution to this, right? There is no if they would just do that. That is not how that works. But when we get scared and we begin to, our brain starts to cycle and this is my anxiety spin here, it really starts to go, I just need to do something. I need to solve this problem, right? And we get real obsessed with action, doing, doing. When you feel yourself say, if they would just, that's when you know you've pushed over that line. And that's when you got to stop.

Because that's when you start finding people to blame. And when you start blaming people, you start judging them. When you start judging them, then you have to have somebody to punish. And that's trajectory doesn't end well for anybody. So when you're when you're going if they would just is I guess the problem with that is because the problem's outside of you, right? Like the reality is you can't deal with. Yeah and and dude like I got two PhDs and I've got some friends across the country from Harvard to little Christian schools that are real smart people like brilliant thinkers and none of us are viralologists or epidemiologists. I always say that we're, we're, we're we're wrong. None of us have the skills to do the macroeconomic domino game that we're all

trying to play here, so the whole thing doesn't fall over. And so the reality is anything that comes out of my mouth, Daniel, I'm making it up. And we're not good at that. Right. Any news channel I click on is just telling me what I want to hear. Any website that I click on a couple of times is going to continue to cycle back what I want to hear. It's going to reinforce me. My friends are carefully curated group. What is that? What do they call that confirmation bias? I mean, you search for the answers that you want, right? You already have a position, and then you find the data, allegedly, that kind of backs up. And now that we've got smart news and smartphones that just reinforce that back to us.

And so the reality is we don't know. And we are not built on, to handle uncertainty. And so we start grabbing for certainty. And usually the most certain thing is, I'm right and you're wrong. And that's the easiest default setting to go to, right? So, you know, business leaders, like, this is a tough conversation. because we're wired for taking uncertainty and then, I don't know, making it certain. Like we're taking chaos and making it concrete, make it actionable, give it to the team,

crush forward, deny your fear, bow up in the face of uncertainty and like make it happen. Bravado. That's what we do. And Dr. Deloney's sitting here going, hey, we're not wired for that, and that's kind of a facade. So then what do I do? Like if I buy into this whole, like maybe that's not the healthy response, which I'm probably still skeptical if I'm the typical leader out there, what do I do instead?

Like what is healthy? Who gave the speech? Never, never, never, never, never give up. Churchill. Okay. And so we often take what Churchill said. And we extrapolate it to, I've got two kids and my wife's working full time. And my new suburban needs new tires.

and my business is really gung-ho, and I'm thinking about investing somewhere else. And then we're exhausted, and then our wife calls and says, Susie's sick, and you've got to come home. And then we think, never, never, never give up, right? That's when we use that quote in our current lives. It's helpful to go back to what Churchill was going through, right?

His country was over, right? And he was walking through the streets trying to make sure people were doing okay. And he was painting and writing and thinking when things were real bad. And so what I would tell you is just to circle back to these things that we know, these inherent things, we've basically had a beautiful decade to practice what we now have an opportunity to preach. Right. We've got these sayings.

We've got these things. Now we cannot give up. And that doesn't look like fighting and hitting and punching. It means like I'm going to get up today and I'm going to win today. And then I'm going to get up tomorrow. I'm going to win tomorrow. I don't like the language winning because that means somebody's losing, but I like this idea of I'm going to do the best I can. Do I have?

I do. So I've gotten rid of my thing and people thought this was for that video. It's not. This is my new way to get through a day. This is Deloni. Three by five cards. Dr. Loney is a three by five card because here's a deal. All I could control is my thoughts and my actions.

And so I wrote down the actions and the thoughts I need to have today. And so I don't have the luxury. or the privilege of strategically planning right now, I was supposed to have a year-long entry ramp to my Ramsey world, and then the world fell apart, and Dave's like, go get them, buddy. Go get them.

Deep in, cannibal! That's right. No, dude, this is getting tossed off the size of the Titanic. Hope you can swim, man. Yeah. And so, this is my day. And then I'm going to get the end of today. I'm going to see what I've checked off.

Did I honor people through it? And then I'm going to write another one tomorrow. I'm going to do tomorrow. I'm going to do tomorrow. anything beyond that is me pretending. It's me projecting. It's me wishing. And that's wishing and projecting

isn't helpful right now. The same as wishing somebody's kid would come back when you're holding the mom who's weeping, right? That wish isn't, is just wasted energy. Sitting in this moment and grieving it. What are the things that when we're feeling this battle taking its toll on our hearts,

what are the don't do list, right? Like that sabotage or hey, here's a natural pattern that people might go to, but it's really destructive. Don't do this. Most men I know go to isolation. They go to withdrawal and they go to separation. And so they get home and they tents, you know, they're let's, I'm just going to give a generalized stereotypical house. Some guy comes home from his job and his wife is staying at home and she's responsible for homeschooling. She's been around three crazies all day and he gets home and he's got this stuff on his shoulders.

And so the easiest thing to do is to back up. The easiest thing to do is grab one drink or two drinks and just back up. And so I really want to encourage people to lean into that moment for a minute. Physical touch and human contact is critical. And I think it's super important to remember that connection. is not communication. Those aren't the same thing. And so we communicate all day along with our staff and our team.

We're communicating with our wives via text, how are things going. I love you. How things are going? That's not connection, right? So when you get home, you've got to have intentional time that you're sitting down like this and saying, how are you?

And how can I help? I don't know as a guy. You know what this happened this morning? Let's do scenario. Exhibit A this morning. Tarty household. I get up this morning and I kind of was in a, you know, Kind of a funky, foggy.

I didn't feel clear and excited about today. And there was just, I didn't sleep awesome last night. I'm going through my routine, getting breakfast. And my wife, Emily, she's amazing. And she's very in tune with, like, my moods. She's had a lot of practice trying to anticipate, like, what mood are you in? She could tell something was offbeat. And she said, hey, you okay?

And I so badly in that moment, wanted to just say, yeah, I'm fine, no problem. But through some work in this area, I've learned, like, that wasn't actually true. And the right thing to do is to let her know, like, I'm not okay. And I said, I just feel sad. But I almost didn't say it. You know why? Because I didn't know how to explain why.

First of all, I felt a little embarrassed that my bravado self would ever feel sad because that feels like weakness. And after I got that out and said, I feel sad. And she said, what do you feel sad about? I felt stupid because I couldn't explain. I don't know. I don't know why I feel sad. You know, I couldn't pinpoint like this happened and now I feel sad. It was just a mood.

And that feels, I don't know, immature or childish to just, I'm just in a mood. So if I'm tough, I got to act like I have it together and shake it off. You know, like what is it in that moment when we say, this is. how I feel, but I don't know how to describe why. Like, what are we going for there? You don't have to qualify your feelings. And you said it perfectly just now. We have labeled feelings and emotions as immature and weak and uneducated, right?

I'm smarter than my grief. I'm smarter than my sadness. I'm tougher than my grief. And that's not true. And we've been able to mush them down, especially in times of prosperity. We're able to hide that stuff and just run, run, run. run, run from it. And so what I would tell you is you don't have to qualify while you're sad. I mean, I can give you 111 reasons why you probably are, but you don't have to have a

reason. You just have permission to be sad. And we have not had that. Business owners have not had permission to be sad. And one thing I think it's important for husbands, wives, and business owners and leaders to understand is you only really truly lose your influence when you start lying to people, when they sense a lack of integrity. We talk about integrity all the time. We talk about integrity all the time. And when you're sad or you're scared, people feel it on you, they see it on you, they hear it on you. And so if you're rallying, all right, today's another, and we're going to, and this thing in one week is going to be all, man, they start to feel, wait a minute. And that's when you're going to start losing people. The challenge for those of us who haven't spent our

lives being vulnerable, which is nobody that I hang out with, is now's the moment. They desperately need permission to feel scared too. But you know what my cynical, maybe this is immature leadership, but when you say that, what comes to mind is like, yeah, but William Wallace and Braveheart, you paint your face blue

and you raise your sword and you say, Sons of Scotland, we're gonna, we go, we're gonna, like, that's the so opposite of what you're saying. But he ran in to die. And so inherent in his bravado

was the fact that I'm not getting out of this. And so there is no more vulnerable moment than that. Right now, we don't have an army to charge at. We're being told to stay home. That's the best thing we can do for our neighbors and the least of these in our communities is to stay away from them. That's why when I'm hearing this unprecedented, that's the thing that doesn't sound like there's a precedent for this, is the best way I can help people is to not do anything. And that's hard. I don't have a wiring. Our culture doesn't have a wiring. I don't think anybody in the world has a psychology for this right now. So William Wallace charging was

the single most vulnerable thing you could do because he was charging to his death and we're not doing that. Now, if they say we need 100,000 workers to go get coronavirus to help and then we're going to hold our family's hands and then charge into that, that would be the most vulnerable life-giving moment that our great grandkids will talk about, right? We're just not there yet. And so I think we like to, the heroism and the blue face paint, but not the end result of the William Walls. We like to charge ahead and then get some more clients, right? Not charge ahead to our death. Right.

And so we mistake that bravado for a deeply graceful, vulnerable moment where he literally gets gutted at the end of that, right? He literally displays his guts for everybody. That's vulnerability. That's really good. That's really good. Okay, so... Fight in a fight that you think you can win is not vulnerable.

Yeah, that rings true for sure. All right, so without making it a to-do list, because we know that's not the solution. For me, it is right now. Well, but... Like, I've got a checklist in my back pocket, right? Okay. So I'm, I'm... That's the way I've got to get through.

Well, there's like this paradox of, like, we're saying you can't do anything, yet there's things, there's things you should do. And I think we're contrasting, like, doing things out of performance versus you still show up. And so what I would say is, It's okay to be scared. Don't live in fear. And those are, they sound similar, right? And so the analogy I'll go to is like the, I'm a Christian guy, so I'll go to Jesus in the garden saying, do we have to do it like this? Like, that was a vulnerable, scary moment.

And then he went after, right, and then he went for it, right? William Wallace has the same conversation. And so I think it's, you've got to be fearful. If you're not scared right now, you should go see a psychiatrist. something's not right with you, right? So you should be, these are uncertain times. And then you got to go do. But give me the practical. On the doing side, you talked about, here's things I can control. Talk about helpful tools that at least anchor at journaling, you know, some quiet time, reaching out and calling a friend. I mean, there's things we can do

that we can put on our to-do list that are actually helping us not do the things that are the performance things, but that are the showing up with our full heart. Right. And recognize, and I recognize with you, like saying the phrase, showing up of my full heart, if I had come out of my mouth six months ago, two years ago, I would have, I just would have started laughing as it came out, right? And so I am going to tell you what I do in my life. I'm starting each morning with writing down my feelings. I just said that.

That's terrifying. It makes me super uncomfortable, right? But no kidding. The other day, two days ago or three days ago, I started. started with, I'm scared. I just woke up, scared. I'm scared. I don't know how this ends. And most importantly, I can do nothing about almost all of this. And then I started with, here's what I can do today. And so it was clarifying. I put it out there. And there's something about naming the dragon and giving it a name and giving it a place on a written page. And then I can move on from it.

If it stays in my head, it just affects everything. And then I've got to take care of my body. I've got to take care of my mind. I've got to take it in my relationships. I've got to make sure I'm sleeping. And, you know, Ramsey talks a lot about the four walls. So there's a few things that we can control right now. The steps I would give people is to write down the feelings. Keep a militant about keeping a gratitude journal and be militant about exercising and be hyper-militant about connecting with people. Holding the hands of your kids and touching your wife.

And if you're by yourself, this is going to feel like prison. I've talked to a number of, especially people in their 20s and early 30s. who live by themselves. I mean, this is turning into a nightmare. And so being over the top about Zoom calls and going for walks. Dude, I look like a clown in my neighborhood because I'm like, hey, how's it got? Like, if anyone will make eye contact with me, we're doing this. Like, I want to say hi, how are you?

And it's kind of this funny. Now my kids are doing it, and they don't know that it's super socially awkward for what we're all doing. But we look like this doped up family walking out of the street, but I don't care. I have to have it. And I'm trying to make jokes with people. Any way I can just grab any shred of connection with people is just super critical. And then figuring out as we go, we did my 10-year-old lost his birthday party. It was going to be this weekend.

And so we figured out something to do at the house. And we're trying to figure out how we're going to virtually do Easter. And so none of this is going to be what we thought it was going to be. And we're grieving it, but we're going to figure it out on the way. This has been really rich. Before we wrap up, Dr. D, talk to that business leader who's in the, middle of the storm and maybe cast a little bit of vision for what the other side of the storm's going to look like because we know that we're going to get through the storm you and i are old enough

we've been through enough crisis we've seen enough to know the sun does come out at some point remind us where we're headed even though we don't know specifically but on principle we know there's a brighter future out here what would you say to encourage leaders listening right now about where we're headed. That we'll get through it. And I've been in too many trauma situations over the years, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. No one ever comes back and says,

you know, I'm glad I lost my son. No one ever says that. And so we're not going to be grateful for the tragedy. We're not going to be grateful for what just happened. That's sad and it's tragic. But who we become when we decide and we get rally around with our community and we find new people and we find new strengths,

the light on the other side of this is bright and it's good. Otherwise, nobody would work in crisis, right? It would just be, grave digging. That's not why we do this. We do this because I'm going to grab your hand and we're going to walk through you. The light on the other side is this is going to be awesome. The beauty is, we know this. The world's going to be different. Like, remember when we were kids who used to have to go wait at the gate for people at the airport? We don't do that anymore. Now we just drop them off at the, we just drop them off and say, by and we drive on, right? Or we call a maneuver to say, that's right. And so the world's going to be different after this. We just know it is.

The beauty is we have a significant hand in shaping what that might look like. And so if we can hold in tension one hand that we're going to grieve the loss that we have, nobody recognizes their air conditioning until it's gone, right? So we can grieve this stuff that we've lost and then be about the business of setting anew. It's going to be beautiful. I love that. Well, he is Dr. Deloney. And if you're a leader listening to this right now, I really hope that you lean into

everything that he's given us about how we can show up, pay attention to our feelings, figure out what they're telling us, and ultimately have those things prompt us to more rich and meaningful relationships through the midst of all this chaos. Hey, we believe in you guys out there. We know you're fighting. We know it's difficult right now. We know it's a battle, but you're not alone. We're in it with you. We're going to keep pushing and encouraging and loving on you guys. If there's anything we can do at, Entree leadership, don't hesitate to reach out, and we'll be glad to help you guys out. And together, we're going to get through to the other side.