Ep141
===

Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Decide Your Legacy podcast. This is episode number 141, Decide on 2025. It's the start of the year. It's a time to make some goals. It's the time to have some things you're focusing on and. You know, it's hard [00:01:00] sometimes to focus, to keep moving forward and to push through when we're, especially when we're discouraged or we're struggling.

No matter how you feel today as you go into 2025, at the core, you have an opportunity to make some changes. You have an opportunity to do some things differently. So we're going to focus on that today. And I'm your host, Adam Gragg. I am a legacy coach. I've been a family therapist for 25 years, mental health professional for over 25 years.

I struggle just like my listeners. I don't claim to have everything figured out. I'm struggling now to get going and get traction in 2025. It's a new year. I've been back and forth on this, like really excited about changes and then get discouraged about changes. I got a lot of changes going on right now in my life.

So I have a daughter that's almost 18. I've made a whole bunch of business changes this year. Super excited, but then I get super scared. So I get fearful about what's next because I can't predict it. I can't control it. My [00:02:00] controlling junk is coming up and I'm wanting to really hold tightly to things.

I'm wanting to stay the same. I mean, truthfully, I'm wanting to not let go of what I know is secure. ~And I'm doing that right now. And then I can just. I just feel this battle going on inside of me right now, too. ~So by the end of this podcast, you're going to be inspired to make a decision, to know what you're going to commit to and decide to focus on one thing, one specific goal, one challenge, one habit you want to break in 2025.

So it's day two of 2025. It's episode part two of Decide in 2025. And so I'm going to share one thing uncomfortable I've done recently. I like to share this every episode because nothing's more damaging to your mental health than playing it safe. You know, nothing is more important than facing your fears.

So I had a courageous conversation with my daughter yesterday, Emerson, and I've had some business decisions I've had to make that were courageous as well. When I have a courageous conversation and I reach out, I try to connect, I try to [00:03:00] talk about something that I think is really important. Well, that's scary to me.

I don't know what the outcome is going to be. So I get, I get scared. I'm fearful about it. So what's a decision that you have been putting off? And I have been putting off that conversation with Emerson for probably a month or two, but I had it, and it didn't go well initially, but I think it's going to go well long term.

It ended up being a good night and some really good interaction, and I would have regretted not having the conversation with her. So I want you to start off with this action. What's the decision that you're putting off? Is it something related to your health or your finances, relationships, work, career?

Money family dynamics. What is it? What's a bad habit you want to break? A good habit you want to start? Write that down. Think about it. As you go through this episode, decide on 2025 and you're going to get inspiration as we go. I believe that when I have a plan for a podcast and I have a plan for an appointment, when I have a plan for an interaction that [00:04:00] I am going to speak to somebody, a potential client, I have a plan.

I go in with the plan, an agenda. I'm always going to do better. Always going to do better. It doesn't have to be as rigid, strict, scripted plan, but it's some way that I'm entering in to that interaction with some information on my mind that's relevant, and that gives me some security. That's why we buy a book or we listen to a podcast.

So, a podcast on seven steps, which by the way, ~this, ~this podcast Decide in ~20 on, in, on ~2025 is about seven decisions that I am making in 2025. So, seven decisions. We've covered the first three, which I'm going to discuss with you and review with you in a second. And all of these decisions actually are covered in Shatterproof Yourself Lite and in the full version of Shatterproof Yourself.

So the first of those decisions that I'm committed to making in 2025 is to keep the big picture in mind. So I'm remembering that at the end of 2025, I want to feel a certain way. I [00:05:00] want to have achieved some things in my life. That's going to keep me focused on heading in the right direction, regardless of the discouragement that I feel regarding decisions that I have today, I'm willing to push forward.

I had a discouraging business discussion today, didn't go the way that I had hoped. It was a situation that I thought was going to have a real positive result and it didn't, but that's okay. It may be six months from now that leads to a good business connection and maybe a year from now, but I planted seeds and I believe it's going to be fruitful down the road, not as fast as I would have liked, but the big picture remembering that these conversations continue to move the business in the right direction is key.

So that's number one. Then the second is to make sure that I focus on doing scary stuff consistently. The hard things consistently, like this interaction that I had, like challenging people, like having this conversation I had with my daughter yesterday. Those are [00:06:00] scary things. And if I do them consistently, that's positive.

So I don't want to be a hypocrite. I want to be someone practicing these seven decisions. Then the third that I talked about in the last episode, go back and check that out. Decide On 2025 Part 1, is to decide to know my value, to know what I bring to interactions, to business engagements, to know what I bring.

My good qualities, I'm really good with teams, I'm really good with getting people to deal with core issues, I'm really good to help people, helping people to actually face stuff in their life, to challenge them to face fears. Those are my skills. I'm really great at helping people create a plan for their future, to ask them the questions to help them see what things.

They want in their future. I got to remember that though, when I go into these interactions and that helps me to stay focused. So the fourth decision that I'm making is, is to decide to connect with people, to reach out to people, even when I don't want to, to make the first step to take a leap to connect.

And that's going to lead to other connections in my life. It helps [00:07:00] me deal with my own stress, my own anxiety, because I'm making an effort to connect with people, many of which I don't even know yet, but that's my commitment to reach out. So that means talking on the phone, pursuing opportunities where I'm wanting to be hesitant.

It means going to events and reaching out where I might want to shy back. That's a decision that I'm making. Now. An illustration that I show clients frequently is, I call it relationship building. And it's a picture that I'll draw on a whiteboard that's of a factory. And there's three levels to that factory, three floors to the factory.

The first main level, main floor, I call connection. So if you want to build relationships with people, so if I want to reach out, I have to realize that I have to connect and I don't want to just reach out. I want to actually make connections. I want to build long term relationships, build trust in that relationship.

So I have to enter in through the front door and that's the connection. So that's the very first floor. [00:08:00] And I'm not even going to enter into that front door if I don't have some level of trust and I have, don't have some level of commitment. I'm not going to go into that door to try and build a relationship Because if I think they're sketchy, and I think they're not going to follow through, and I don't think they're going to be trustworthy, why am I going to even engage that relationship at all?

So that's the very beginning. That's the very first level, first floor, going through the front door. Then the middle level of this factory is called conflict. And so when I think of conflict, it's disagreement. It's going through tension. It's dealing with a power struggle. It's doubt. It's clarifying.

It's answering questions. It's helping people understand if somebody is trustworthy. So you start with connection. And then the third level is intimacy. And that's where the real stuff is being built. The purpose, the goals, the values in the business. Being on the same team. Building a history.

Reflecting on that history. That's the great stuff. That's what people want on a team. They want to feel connected. [00:09:00] You know, I work with companies on building their cultures. This is what they want. And I see this come out where there's real meaning, but it's always through conflict. Someone opens up and challenges someone else on the team.

And then on the other side of that, they start to trust that person because they realize that they can show up. I was dealing with a core leadership team interaction not long ago and somebody owned their junk.

I mean, they admitted something that other people on the team saw and they actually owned it. And I can see the level of trust being built in that moment. Those are the moments that I live for because I can see the connection happening. Now you have a problem, companies have a problem when they don't follow the order.

So they put, they don't connect and they just deal with conflict right away. And there's no really no connection, no rapport being built. So you can't really have that. It's, it's jumping the gun. It's skipping a floor or they try to focus on intimacy, going too deep with people. And they haven't actually realized, haven't actually proven that they can trust the people through conflict.

They build that trust. You got to go through [00:10:00] conflicts in order to build that level of intimacy. I, 2002, I played a prank on my family over Easter where people didn't know that I was in town in Sacramento area for Easter. And I decided to surprise everybody at Easter dinner.

I knew when they were all going to sit down for Easter dinner. And I came in to the backyard at my aunt and uncle's house with a grocery sack on my head without anybody knowing I was in town. I was holding two grocery sacks that were filled with goodies for Easter. I walk around the back of the house, people see me and they're laughing.

I walk over to where everybody is hanging out because I knew they were about to, I knew they were congregating at this time of the day. ~ ~I had the bag torn off my head by my cousin Dave and everybody was surprised and screamed at him, you know, they were happy, glad to see me, but I made a mistake because I didn't follow through with this model.

I skipped [00:11:00] the connection phase. Nobody actually knew that I was in town. It was a shock. It was a surprise. So there was no rapport built and ended up trying to be at the conference. the intimacy stage because I know these people. I love these people. They know me, but we didn't go through and it led to conflict because it broke down this order.

It led to conflict eventually later in the day, but that conflict did build a better connection between me and some people who, well, one person in particular who was frustrated by me playing this kind of prank without, you know, the way that I had played this prank. And you know, I, it's debatable on whether or not I would play this prank again.

I probably would. Because I think pranks are really fun, but it can show you why some relational situations can break down because they're not going in order. Recently, I was frustrated with my daughter about a decision that she had made and it was not, I wouldn't say a bad decision, but I [00:12:00] agreed to pay for something that was more expensive than I thought it was going to be.

Now, looking back on that, I'd have to own the fact that I wish I would have asked more questions and I will ask more questions in the future. And then I saw my daughter and I was frustrated about the cost because I asked her how much it costs. And it was when I thought it was going to be about 50, it ended up being about 140.

And that was a big deal to me right there. Cause I felt like I was misled in that situation. Now, I hadn't seen my daughter at that point in a while, and I didn't build any kind of rapport. I didn't go through the front door and build connection with her, find out how her day was, find out what was going on with her friends, understand where her mindset was at that time, where she was emotionally.

I just went right into my frustration that this was much more expensive than I had thought. And that led to some conflict. We worked it out, but it could have been avoided at that level had I made the [00:13:00] effort to connect and build rapport initially with her. And then we would have gone through that conflict at a quicker pace and gotten to the intimacy.

Which is the good stuff. We worked it through. I felt like it was positive overall, but that's what happens. You're going to make mistakes. You err on the side of wanting to address things. You don't want to run from situations, but that was one that looking back, I would have built more rapport in advance and you can as well.

So sometimes we go back and we realize in our organization to build the culture, we have to build more rapport before we can have the level of conflict that is necessary. To drive the vision, or we need to go back and focus on dealing with conflict in a healthy manner by mining for conflict, by bringing it out, by figuring out where are those elephants and somebody having the courage to bring them to the surface.

The team knows where the elephants are, the conflictual issues that are not being discussed, and they know as safety is built through connection, then all of a [00:14:00] sudden these issues come to the surface and people start to resolve and deal with the conflict.

How do we resolve this? They figure it out and they solve problems because when you believe and you see that you can solve problems on your team or with your family, then it's amazing because then all of a sudden, you can get to the point where there's intimacy in those relationships. Amazing thing because then, you know, it's like, wow, we can deal with the culture.

These difficult conversations, which families hide from this stuff, and it causes so many problems. Family businesses can be some of the most difficult environments because they have two different worlds, and they don't talk about the business issues, and they usually won't talk about the family issues as well.

They have conflict avoidance. They're fearful of conflict, so it's not addressed at all, and eventually things dissipate. They blow up. I mean, this is a serious issue long term. If people don't Realize how important it is to face conflict in your life to get past the surface [00:15:00] and get to the core of the issue.

A great example of this happening in the right way is when you're making a new friendship and you meet somebody and you like them. And you think you have something in common. So you start to go through the connection door. You have enough trust and there's a little bit of commitment and you invite them to go get coffee or you invite them to go play pool or darts and they meet you.

And that's another level of trust because you realize they follow through and then you start talking to them about their life and you have fun and you follow up and you go through it again and you meet and play darts again because you realize that's really fun. That's a cool, cool person. You'd like to get to know them better.

There is an issue where they cancel and you don't know whether you can trust them or not, but they cancel last minute and they tell you it's because one of their kids are sick, and you're kind of wondering because you have some history where people back out at the last minute and they're flaky, but you choose to trust and you invite them out again.

And then you realize, and they realize that, You figured out that it really wasn't their child that was sick. It was another person invited them out to go hang out as [00:16:00] well. But something very interesting happens here. They apologize and they admit to you that they weren't completely honest because they feel bad about it.

That's conflict. And then you have To make the decision whether you're going to continue the relationship or not, but they were vulnerable and admitted they messed up. And I would suggest that that's a great opportunity to build trust and to get to the intimacy phase because you worked through something and now you realize that this is somebody you can trust because they fessed up and they followed through and they changed their behavior because the next time they don't do that or they tell you the truth.

And you realize that this is a relationship that's worth keeping. That's a really cool, amazing thing that can happen. So, I want you, as a challenge right now, to just choose to view conflict as a pathway to intimacy. So you stop being afraid of it. That's the decision that you make. You're going to connect with people knowing that it's going to require to get to the next level boundaries, honesty, consistency, owning your stuff, following through.

Keeping your commitments and then fessing up when you make a [00:17:00] mistake and do not expect them to be perfect in the process. So you're letting go of that perfectionism. So the fifth decision that I'm committed to making. Which I'm going to share with you in a second is before I want to share that fifth decision, I want to talk to you about something that can be very helpful for you starting 2025.

You can go through Shatterproof Yourself Lite. It's a free mini course on seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health. In this mini course, it's a workbook that you download and a course that you watch on your phone, on the, Decide Your Legacy app on iOS.

You can download both of those there. And you're also going to get a free PDF called Daily Action, which is a really great habit to start 2025. It's a gratitude practice. It's a way to celebrate. victories and stay excited about your day ahead. You're going to get that as well when you download the app and you go through Shatterproof Yourself Lite, seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health.

So the fifth decision [00:18:00] that I'm committed to make is to help others. Now that may sound very basic and cliche. But it's a little bit different than what you're thinking, because a lot of times when people think about self care, they will focus on thinking about themselves more, what they want, their time, their needs.

I am convinced that if my objective is to help others and get to know others and to be there for others, I'm actually going to care for myself more that way, because my focus is off of myself. My anxiety, my fears, my needs, and it's on to other people in a healthy way, not a codependent way, so don't get me wrong here, it's not healthy when it's codependent, that's just smothering and that's enabling, but my attention, when it goes, on other people, getting to know them, then a lot of the fears that I have and a lot of the stuff that I'm engaging in, which is fear and anxiety for me, it [00:19:00] goes away because I'm not worried about how other people perceive me.

I'm worried about connecting with those that God has put in front of me in my life today. Very cool. I'm not consumed and I don't get sucked into other people's drama when I'm focused on helping them and getting to know them and being curious. I'm not sucked in by their diversions. I don't get sucked in by their defensiveness.

I'm willing to stay engaged in their life. And I was with a friend yesterday who was a bit, Not in the best mood and I was hanging out talking to him and I said something that was on my mind that I didn't feel like was crossing the line at all. I basically said that I am choosing in stressful situations to just remember that God's gotten me through it before and God's going to get me through it again.

And then I said, everything is better when I focus on God. And I focus on my relationship with God and staying close to Him in the process. And I do believe that. I believe it [00:20:00] shifts my perspective. It makes me realize that I've gotten through it before. I can get through it again.

And in this interaction wasn't what they wanted to hear. And so it ended up having some pushback. Like, are you trying to change me? Are you trying to get me to think about things differently? And I wasn't, I was just trying to say, Hey, this is something that helps me. I'm not saying you should do this.

I'm not saying that, but I didn't get sucked into it. The point I'm trying to make is that I was just sharing my own thoughts. I wasn't trying to be preachy. I really, truly don't believe I was trying to actually convince him to believe the way that I believe or convince him to do things differently or change or I wasn't judging him.

I was just saying, this is helpful to me. It was more of me talking positive about what helps me in my own life. And I didn't get sucked into the drama. I was able to see, I did a little bit for a second there, but I was able to rise above it and say, well, it's always good for me to be grateful. It's always good for me to be positive.

It's always good for me to actually keep them in, to focus on having some [00:21:00] distance from the drama in my head so that I'm not consumed by it, which is great. I wasn't giving my power away in that interaction. And, you know, an illustration that I like to show clients is I draw two circles.

And so there's really, in this illustration, there's three different types of relationships that I'm describing. One's a disengaged relationship. And so that I can illustrate by Two circles that have a space in between, so they're not overlapping at any point. And it's just two different people. So you think about a close relationship or an intimate relationship or a close friendship or a parent child relationship or a father son relationship, some important relationship, when Those people are not interacting.

They're distant, or maybe they are interacting, but in a very superficial level. They're not going any deeper. There's no intimacy there. That's a disengaged relationship. And then the second relationship that I [00:22:00] draw on my whiteboard is an enmeshed relationship. And so it's two circles that are overlapping.

Basically, they're drawn on top of each other with potentially a little tiny space on each end that represents the person's individuality, but it's mainly two circles that you can't differentiate from each other. It looks like one circle, basically, and this is an enmeshed relationship or an enabling relationship.

And those people are so absorbed into each other that there's no individuality and they're not challenging each other. They're doing what the other person wants potentially in a toxic way. They don't even know where the other person, they don't know how they feel. Another way of describing this would be a codependent relationship, which I like the definition of a codependent relationship is where you really can't differentiate between how you feel and someone else feels.

So someone else feels discouraged and you're going to start feeling discouraged. There's no space in between. When someone else can be angry [00:23:00] and you don't have to be consumed by their anger, you can stay positive. That was what happened with my friend the other day was they were not in the best mood and they didn't want me to be in a positive mood.

And I was not willing to get sucked into the negative mood. I didn't feel like that was going to be helpful for that specific interaction or any interaction. I don't have to be consumed by their emotional state. Now, the third relationship that I draw in this three styles model, I call it a Decide Your Legacy whiteboard, is to draw a healthy relationship.

And a healthy relationship is two circles, that have a, some crossover, a rather large area in the middle that they share, and two rather large areas that represent their individuality. So there's two people, and they're interdependent, so they have a part that they share, and they have this independence, which is themselves, and they can differentiate between how they feel and how the other person feels.

They can address an issue, and the other person's frustrated by it, and they're not gonna get consumed by their, their [00:24:00] frustration. They're going to be able to share their opinion, and the other person doesn't like what they have to share, and they're okay with that. And they realize that they still do the right thing by expressing their concern.

They are their own person, and they like themselves. The more you like yourself The more you can be in this type of relationship, in this healthy relationship, you're not consumed by it. You're not giving your power to that relational dynamic. You're able to be yourself in the process. It's an amazing thing.

It's a freeing thing. It's a scary thing because the reality is the enmeshed relationship and the disengaged relationship are really the opposite sides of the same coin. And people flip between those two types of relationships. So in conflict. They just say to heck with it and they go to a disengaged relationship.

When the healthy relationship in conflict, they're going to talk about it and work it through. Well, I'm going to choose in 2025, I'm going to decide to help other people by [00:25:00] being in this healthy type of relationship. I believe that this kind of relationship is going to give other people courage as well, because you're willing to be yourself in that relational dynamic.

You're willing to stand up and to have a voice and have courageous conversations, which is a model that I like to follow. When thinking it's a five step process that I guide clients through and having a relationship that is healthy.

I mean, nothing is completely healthy, but it's a very healthy dynamic in the process. The reason why you want to do this is because you want healthy relationships, you want to get to the other side where there's intimacy. So what helps me is remembering that that third type of relationship, that healthy relationship, is going to require you to have empathy.

And empathy is not sympathy, empathy is stepping into someone else's shoes and walking around a bit, is realizing that you can actually try and understand another person's point of view. And when you do that, you're going to win them over. You're going to do that through asking questions, through showing concern, through [00:26:00] trying to understand where they come from.

I mean, that's a powerful thing, getting to know what it's like to be in someone else's shoes at a deep level. And my deal with that is that once people know you're really trying to understand them, when you cross that line where they realize that you understand their potential and you want to help them to reach their potential, you've won somebody.

They may not do business with you right away, or they may not want to, they may not act as if they have a great deal of trust in you yet, but you get to that point and there's going to be a different feeling. I mean, everything feels different at that point. Like it's going to feel a lot safer because you've shown them that you care.

Very powerful stuff. So those are the five decisions that I'm going to make. I'm going to come back next week and we're going to talk about the next two decisions of the seven decisions that I've decided to make for 2025. So I just went over one through five. And in review, [00:27:00] I'll go ahead and share those with you.

So see the big picture. Face scary stuff is number two. I'm committed. I've decided to face scary things in my life. I've decided to see the big picture, not get stuck in the weeds today. I've decided to know what I bring, what my unique abilities are. I've decided to connect, which requires me to be willing to engage in conflict when necessary, when that's the next right thing.

And I've decided to help others to focus less on how I feel and more on getting to know others. So you, if you feel like making a change in your life, this is the information that's going to inspire you to do the same. So what is a decision that you want to make and you want to commit to based on this content?

What insight did you gain? By the end of the day, I would encourage you to tell somebody about that commitment, about that decision you're making, and to start making that decision right away. So check out shatterproof yourself light. You're going to get insight into all seven of these [00:28:00] decisions that I've made today, and then check out next week's podcast on Decide On 2025.

So these are the last two decisions that I'm making in 2025. You can hit the link to get. Access to shatterproof yourself light in the show notes. Check that out. You're going to want one. You got a workbook and you got a video to watch where I walk you through briefly, but in depth, seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health.

Remember, insight is 20 percent of transformational change. Action is 80%. An okay plan that you act on is 100 times better than a great plan that you do nothing with. Decide. Commit. Apply something you learned. If you really want it to stick, tell somebody about it.

Let them know and start today. I'll sign off the way that I always do. Make it your mission to live the life now that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone. You decide your legacy, no one else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll [00:29:00] see you next time.