The Resilient Mind - Develop A Leader’s Mindset - John Maxwell

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

John Calvin Maxwell is an author and speaker who has written many books, primarily focusing on leadership. Titles include The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader. His books have sold millions of copies, with some on the New York Times Best Seller List.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind Podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Develop a Leaders Mindset with John Maxwell. Get access to the Mental Mastery Program and other exclusive episodes by becoming a subscriber. Enjoy. Lesson has to deal with the price tag of leadership, which is self-discipline. When people ask me, and they do in Q&A all the time, John, what is your greatest leadership challenge? I always give them the same answer. my greatest leadership challenge is leading me that's my biggest problem my biggest leadership problem is

john maxwell yeah leading me see it's much easier to lead you my gosh i'm teaching these lessons on developing the leader with you it's so easy to lay out these thoughts these ideas give you these steps to do it it's so good and and then when i've done i leave you it's just wonderful good luck see It's easier to teach what I know that is to live what I know. Teaching is easy. Living it, it's more difficult. And that's where self-discipline comes into play. In my book Intentional Living, and when I teach it,

one of the things I do for people is I give them a visual. And this is a visual that works for intentional living, but it's a terrific visual for self-discipline. I always do this, because what I want you to know, what I want to know, what I want to know, is that everything worthwhile is uphill. Everything. There is nothing in your life. There is nothing in my life that's worthwhile.

That's quick and easy. It's all uphill. You have to fight for it every day. You have to climb for it every day. Doesn't come to you. it's not in three easy packages and it's not the cure to overnight success. It's like one guy said all my life I've worked hard at being an overnight success. Everything worthwhile is uphill.

Now the problem is we have downhill habits. Now if you have downhill habits and you have uphill hopes, you're in trouble. And the only way that you go uphill is by self-discipline. So listen to me very carefully. It's an impossible for you to have continuous success without having self-discipline in your life. Impossible. And my greatest challenge as a leader is your greatest challenge as a leader. And that is, every day keeping people climbing.

Because they don't want to climb. They want to coast to success. Huh? Are you with me? They want it to come to them. They treat it like the lottery. And they just kind of hope that if they're at the right place at the right time, something wonderful will happen to them. It won't. Everything worthwhile is uphill all the way, all the way, not partially uphill. And the challenge that we all have is we don't mind climbing uphill for three or four days as long as we can coast for a couple. I deserve a break. I deserve a break. I deserve a break. See, what you don't understand is four days of climbing is wiped out with one day of coasting and you're back to the same place that you were and you wonder why

you're not being successful. It's faster downhill than it is uphill. It's easier downhill than it is uphill. It's quicker downhill that is uphill. And so what happens is, We have a lot of good uphill days, but we have a few downhill days, and the few downhill days cancel out all the uphill days. So people ask me all the time, they'll say, are you writing another book? Yeah. I'm always writing another book. In fact, I'm always writing three books. I'm creating one, writing one, and finishing one.

Well, do you do that all the time? Every day. Honestly, God, I've never had a book write itself. It would be nice. If I can figure it out, I'm going to buy into that program. No, I've got to write every one of those suckers. And I love people who say, well, how do you do that? With a legal pad and a pen.

One word at a time. Well, what's your secret? every day, every day. Now self-discipline, the first thing it does, it enables you to go uphill. You can't go uphill without self-discipline. Nobody will carry you uphill. Nobody can coach you uphill. Nobody can push you uphill.

If you go uphill, you've got to do it yourself. There are no free rides uphill. There's no such thing as actually. Accidental achievements. It's the bridge. Self-discipline is the bridge between good intentions and good actions. Good intentions is on one side of the water and good actions is on the other side and the bridge is self-discipline that takes our good intentions and turns them into good actions. And the question is, is my attitude about self-discipline? Is it a tunnel or is it a a bridge. If it's a tunnel, then self-discipline is heavy because it's always about what I'm going through. Well, I'm going through this. Well, I'm going through this. I'm going through. There's a difference between going through something and going to something. When you're going to something, you're on the bridge. When you're going through something, you're on the end of the

tunnel, hoping there's some light at the end of the tunnel. So if self-discipline is a heavy thing for you, it's a hard thing for you. But if self-discipline is a journey for you, it's easier for you. Is it a bridge or is it a tunnel? Am I going through it? Oh, I hope I get there. Or am I going to it? Secondly, self-discipline is the difference between temporary success, and sustained success because the uphill journey is all the way. You don't get flat land and you don't get down land. It's just all up land. And so the core of all success,

the core of all success principles is the core of it is self-discipline. Most people want what I call a quick fix. Okay, John, okay, okay, talk to me, talk to me. Help me out here. What's the quickest way for me to be very wealthy, highly influential, and very successful in life? You just cut out the, just give me the just straight, quick, fast, easy way. There's no such thing. It's uphill all the way. And self-discipline is the vehicle that gets you there. Listen to me carefully. there is nothing I can do for a non-disciplined person to make them successful. And the quicker you understand that and quit working with those kind of people,

they'll wear you out. What have you done for me lately? Can't you carry me for a while? I don't want to carry you. I want to throw you off the bridge. The only energy I want to exert with you is throwing you down. Have no desire to. It's the pay now, play later scenario.

You either pay now, that's what my father taught me, and then you get to play later, or you can play now and you pay later. But you're going to pay. Do you want to pay on the front end or do you want to pay on the back end? If you pay on the front end, the cost is less than the back end. Every day you delay the payment, the payment gets at greater level. Number three, self-discipline makes habit your servant instead. of your master. Now habit becomes your servant, not your master. Once you understand self-discipline,

habit begins to serve you instead of you serving it. Now, we talked about uphill hopes, downhill habits. Are you with me? So let me on the screen, let me show you the difference uphill climbing and downhill sliding. See on uphill climbing everything worthwhile is uphill. Can I tell you on downhill slide? Nothing worthwhile. There's nothing worthwhile. If you're going uphill, you get winds, you get losses downhill. If you're uphill, you're preparing. If you're going downhill, you're repairing. I know people every day, they just repair. They just are fixing yesterday every day. High morale is uphill climbing, low morale is in downhill sliding. You get high self-respect if you climb uphill, low self-respect if you're going downhill, self-improvement, uphill, no improvement, downhill. You're purposeful uphill, you're aimless downhill, you're fulfilled uphill, you're empty downhill, you're making a difference uphill, you're not making any difference downhill, you're intentional in your actions uphill, you've got just good intentions on downhill. Wow. Now, all of this uphill climbing

can be described in the phrase self-discipline. Again, it takes a highly self-disciplined person to uphill climb. And at only self-discipline, we'll get you there. Now, okay, let's talk about emotions for a moment, because we all have them. We're all emotional creatures. Emotions are a wonderful thing. I love emotions. I allow me to express a lot of things to a lot of people.

So I'm not anti-emotions, but let me say something. Emotions without thinking is downhill. You show me a person that's emotional that doesn't think, and they only got one way to go downhill. And emotions with wrong thinking is downhill. And if you put emotions above thinking, it's downhill. So how do you get uphill? That's when you have emotions. but with right thinking.

Because when you think right, your thinking will always trump your feelings. They always will. Not in the beginning. So you've got to give people time to work through that. In the beginning, it's emotional. We feel that, well, my gosh, it's wrong, and I'm mad about that. It's okay. It's okay.

There's nothing wrong with that. Here's what I say. Let your emotions emote for the first few hours. But then let thinking come into your life. You with me? And if thinking doesn't come in your life, there's no uphill to it. Self-discipline number four is most easily developed in your strengths and in your passion. Because self-discipline needs fuel.

And the fuel comes through doing what you love and doing what you're good at. There's a relationship between willpower and why power. There's a connection. And the connection is very simple. When you're doing your why, your purpose, you have a will. Because it's what you love. It's what you care about. That's what I call making self-discipline easier.

And so therefore, I'm very self-discipline in adding value to people because it's a passion in mine. Are you with me? I'm very self-discipline in writing. I write at 5.30 in the morning. I write before people want to see me. And I get very excited about that. I don't get up at 5.30. Oh, my God.

Got to write again. Okay, here we go. Come on, thoughts. Hit me. Hit me. No thoughts hit me. I'm going to lay down for a moment. Sleep on it for a while.

Now, I get so excited when I wake up. up because I know I'm about to write. And the moment the pen starts moving, the ideas begin to come. The moment the pen starts moving. You got to move the pen. The ideas don't come to the hand without the pen. It's the motion controlling the emotion which turns into self-discipline. So I don't have to write.

I get to write. I want to write. So people say, I admire your self-discipline. Let me tell you something. When you fall in love with something as much as I fall in love with something, you'll be self-disciplined also. A lack of self-discipline is a lack of knowing what you want in life. And when you don't know what you want, you won't have any self-discipline power to get there. Self-discipline.

Number five. Makes consistency possible and consistency compounds. It always has, and it always will. See, consistency is the prerequisite of excellence. You only become excellent in something because you're consistent. with it. If you're inconsistent and it's hit or miss, you've never hit or missed your way to excellence. It's consistency. And consistency reinforces the vision that you have and the values that you have. People do what people see. So when you're consistent with that, people see you doing it

and it becomes a value in there because leadership is highly visual. People do what people see. And consistency establishes your reputation. You get a reputation by doing the same thing extremely well. And that consistency provides security for other people because they now know they can depend on you. If you've been good in the past and you're good in the present, there are pretty good odds that you'll be good in the future. it's that consistency that brings security people when they say, wow, as a leader, I can depend upon you. And when you do all those things and put them together, consistency compounds. And so here's what I mean.

I've been speaking like I'm speaking now, not as well, but I was speaking for 50 years. Okay? For 50 years. So people, they watch me teach. And they said, John, God, you're such an incredible communicator. You just sit on a stool and drink your water, suck a cough drop, laugh and talk and walk around and sit down with us. You seem totally relaxed. Well, I am.

I'm not nervous. I wasn't nervous before I came out. I'm not nervous now. I'm very relaxed. I'm with friends. I'm having a wonderful time. This is hard. This is very easy.

What's the secret? All right, we're friends. I'm going to come down and I'm going to share the secret with you. But don't tell anybody. Just between you and me. Here's the secret. I've done this. 12,000.

That's secret. 12,000. Let me go it this way. If after 12,000 times I'm not any good and I'm nervous, it's not my gift. You see, we miss consistency because in the beginning we count it one at a time. And we're so obsessed with two, three, four, four, five, seven, all right, eight, to this eight times, eight, you shouldn't even start counting until you get to about 10,000. It compounds. Writing the same way. I shared with you, it was my seventh book when I got good at writing, seven books.

The first six books, people weren't saying to me, when you're going to write another book? What's your next book coming out? They're saying, oh my God, he wrote another one. I wonder how long he's going to do that. The first six books, only my mother bought the books. Get the picture. Training. I've been doing it for 39 years.

Writing I've been doing for 38 years. Providing resources. I've been doing for 35 years. Self-discipline allows every day to count. and self-discipline allows every day to compound. And what you've got to understand is, you'll never know how good you're going to be until you've done it long enough

to know how good you can be. That was really good. You're never going to know how good you're going to be until every day you do it to discover how good you can be. And self-discipline is what allows you and me to get better. And here's the way it works. In the beginning, when you start off, you're not as bad as people think you are.

Because I know what it was like to start off. And I started off, I mean, when I first started speaking, and I wasn't really good. And I wanted to tell people, I wanted to say, I know it wasn't really good. But I'm really not that bad. I'm not quite as bad as you think. I am because at the beginning people just think you're worse than you are. But let me tell you how consistency it works. If you do it really good over time, in the end, you're not as good as people think you are. It's called the consistency flip after a while. People just say, my gosh, they're amazing.

No, not amazing, just done it 12,000 times. If you can't do it good after 12,000 times, find a new gig, okay? get a new career. Go do something else. Self-discipline. Is it a bridge? Are you going to something? If it is, it'll motivate you. Or is it a tunnel? Are you going through something? If you're a tunnel with your self-discipline, you'll quit all the time. But if you're a bridge, you'll keep going because you see what you're going to, not what you're just going through. That's self-dism. You just listen to, develop a leader's mindset with John Maxwell. Continue strengthening your mind by checking out our other episodes.

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