The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Stop Fear, Rumors, and Pressure From Running Your Life - Reset Friday #2 | S7Ep6

Episode Date: September 20, 2025

In this Reset Friday, Kevin Pannell shares how one jack rabbit can spook a herd of sheep and how the same happens to us when fear, rumors, or groupthink take over. Drawing from Deuteronomy 32:30 and Joyce Meyer’s 15 Minutes in the Word, Kevin shows how this plays out at work, in politics, in church, and at home, then offers three ways to stay steady: mindfulness, ownership, and connection.

Good, everybody. Welcome back to People Process Progress Podcast. This is Reset Friday. Number three. I'm your host, Kevin Pinell. Today's theme is don't let one Jack Rabbit run your life, right? So I heard a reference to this on Joyce Myers 15 Minutes of the Word podcast, which I highly recommend where she talks about how one Jack Rabbit can stampede a herd of sheep. And really what she was talking about in Deuteronomy 30 through 30, how one can chase a thousand and call. as others to flee or take flight is the reference there, right? And so certainly this past week, certainly in recent years and politics and religion and worldviews and maybe just disagreements at work, one person's opinion can be so influential and sway so many more, whether it's with

facts or falsehoods, that we get caught up in that, that we become the sheep that are chased away by the jackrabbits, right? And so fear spreads really fast, really easily. So what are some parallels we see in life. So at work, one rumor can rattle a whole team, right? In politics, certainly I think we see this a lot more these days. One false headline stirs millions of people in church, a divisive voice, right, can unsettle the whole congregation. At home, an anxious person can shift the whole mood of the family, right? And the key point is it's not weakness. It's what happens when we stop thinking and grounding ourselves in truth, which is easy to do. Our minds get lazy. We're worn out. someone has a really convincing argument, you know, but here are three ways that I've found to be

less sheepish because we all fall into it. One is mindfulness, right? Take that time to yourself. I like 10 minutes a day in prayer, by yourself sitting somewhere, walking in nature, working out, focused on what you're doing. But pause before you react and that's hard to do. And I've been someone historically that's not been good at that. I've really had to work at it. And ask if it's true. What you're reading is true is what I hear about this person at work. are the results of that thing true? Headlines, we all know. Headlines are made to be clickbaity.

So the headline is often not accurate, right? Especially right after something bad happens like we've seen this week and really throughout the news media. But find your own data, right? Act on what you know to be true or what you believe to be true, not just on what somebody spews out there because there's so much clickbait. Ownership and intent.

So the ownership from the stability equation and the intent from the project pupil process progress of project management, those are both the starting points, right? First, I have to own what I'm trying to experience or know my objectives, know what I'm trying to do, know what I'm trying to get out of this thing I'm reading or hearing about. And then what's the intent, what's the intent of the person? Is it just to try and sway me to keep the fervor going in a positive or negative way or whichever way that's happening? And then taking responsibility for your choices, right? What you say matters. We're seeing that. We're seeing folks get fired and

shows canceled and all this other stuff, which is this whole other discussion. And then stay on your path, right? What's your path in life, right? Is your path to just follow someone you don't even know that's saying all this stuff or even someone you do know that you're like, well, I don't know about this. Is it true? Am I being sheepish and just running with the pack? Or am I being the, you know, stand out maybe the sheep dog that's like, wait a minute, and I might get into protection and all that kind of stuff. But standing on their own and thinking, this doesn't make sense. What's happening? Right. You don't have to be just one of the flock, right? Be the leader of the flock. And then connection. We're so disconnected these days, working remotely online on our phones all the time.

They have no personality, no body language, right? We're not near each other. So it's easier for people to be completely and wholly disconnected. But we need to surround ourselves with people sometime. We need to get out of our houses, get out from our phones and behind our computers and get out there and engage with people. And it's really valuable to do that at the workplace, have get-togethers when you can, right? Do on-site visits when you can in your family, spend. time I eat dinner, no phones, right? No one's sitting there with their phone. We're all talking to

each other, ask each other fun questions. There's games that have cards that's like, you know, dinner table questions. It's awesome. And it helps keep you grounded and it builds trust, right? When you can see somebody, you know what they're like physically, you know how they act, you know how they respond. Then when you, let's say it works, see it on a camera, you're like, oh, that's just what they do or something like that. But let's think about how sheep follow the first one that runs often right but we don't have to run when everybody else does or like lemmings and that's another example right there's little animals that just run and they keep running off the cliff we don't have to do that we don't we can we can make our own decisions for me what's been very helpful is my faith

with god is a rock with these pillars of mindfulness and ownership and connection that i talked about today these helped stabilize me be more present in the moment be less pulled in this other direction that everybody's trying to get us to spend our money on or give our opinion on these days, right? And we can stay steady when others are stampeding and just let them go, just let them run by and be like, I'm just, I'm not going to be part of it, right? It's also a time to stand your ground. So a call to action for me that I always take away from this that I would give for you all is this own your mind, move your body, anchor your spirit mindset, right? So owning your mind mean be a free thinker, educate yourself with your own data, listen to people that are educated

on the subject, not just folks that are throwing their opinion out there and spewing whatever they want. That's at work or outside the workplace or in your home, right? Move your body. Movement is medicine. I've talked about that so many times. It's a critical thing. It's good for your health. It's good for your mind. It's good for your soul, I would say. Some kind of movement every single day. Some days it's going to be really hard. You're going to lift heavy weights or run real fast or do Jiu-Jitsu or play a hard game of paddle. Some days you're going to do yoga, right? That's fine. That's part of the whole process and anchor your spirit. Whether you believe in a deity, right? I believe in God. I'm Christian or you're another religion or you're no religion. Anchoring your spirit can be enjoying the outdoors,

enjoying the city if that's your thing, but connecting to the world that we live in because isolation just rots at your brain and it just makes you drone on just like one of the sheep that's in the pack that's in the herd and just gets you know starts running when that jackrabbit comes in thank you all for listening for watching this video i don't do a lot of youtube videos so i'm just starting to do this as well but um you can go to people process progress.com you can get to the subscription for the audio podcast there's some cool project management tools also an assessment so if you're not sure where you are why am i feeling like this what's going on you can answer some question, series of questions, and figure out which, which of the stability equation

pillars of ownership and mindfulness and movement and boundaries and connection and sleep and faith do you think you need to work on? You probably already know. I knew what I needed to work on before I pulled them together and wrote the book. And then for the people process and progress of project management book, that's on Amazon. There's some great tips, particularly if you're not a project manager and you're like, what's this world all about this project management? How do we get teams together? What are some tips? What are some myths that I help bust from what I've seen? and they all apply and that's why I'm talking about once a week here on the People Process Progress Podcast

but the video and audio versions is how do we help people work together and then how do we take care of ourselves that's really what this Focus Friday is all about so thank you all for watching this video for listening if you're on the audio version stay safe out there, wash your hands and Godspeed.