Have you ever noticed that some people bounce back from failure

faster than others? They just don't let it

stick. You know, just yesterday I was watching the Steelers play

the Ravens Sunday Night Football and Tyler

Loop, the kicker, missed a game winner.

I, buddy, shared a video with me where John

Harbaugh is walking to the locker room and he's got his arm

comforting, consoling the kicker, you know, and Ryan,

Tyler Loop is a good kicker. You know, I checked his stats. He'd only

missed three field goals. That was the third field goal he had missed all year

in those kinds of situations because the Ravens don't make the playoffs,

the Steelers do. And those kinds of situations make people

or they break people. He could use that as

fuel to have a really successful career. I think he's played in the NFL

for two or three years, or it could be something that just

demoralizes him. I think he's going to

do great. I think he's a great kicker. You know, I'm cheering for him. And

I love that there's so many examples of leadership there, that the one thing

that leaders do is they think long term. They

have a way to focus on the future that motivates them to get through the

here and now. Because as I see with

entrepreneurs and people that succeed is they go

through a lot of crap. They have a lot of failures and a lot of

rejection and a lot of things that don't go their way. And I define a

failure as something that just didn't go your way. You

know, I have this list that I look at at times and I, I call

it. I call it Adam's Failures. I had

in college, this poster on my wall, and it

was given to me by a close family member once. That's inspiring

to me. It was inspiring me. Still inspiring me. It's called Lincoln's Failures. And it

was this list of all the ways that Lincoln had failed in his life and

then ultimately had great success. I mean, but he had a lot of failure.

And so my failure list, at times when I focus on it, it

motivates me. Why? Because I can look and say, I got through that. I can

get through this. This isn't as hard. So on my list,

I have things like unemployment for seven months. I

have losing a. Well,

infertility, a failed marriage, going through trauma,

abandonment, betrayal. Just feeling isolated and

alone. And I can go on. I'm not going

to. But the reason it motivates me is I realize

that this thing now that I'm facing is not as bad as it could

be because what didn't make Adam's failures list is

things that, I mean, almost financial failure, but not quite.

I got through that. And so almost. I mean, I

have, I haven't had major health issues. Things I'm really grateful for as

well. You know, I'm not in prison, thank God, you know, I

shouldn't be, don't get me wrong. But I'm not. You know, things could be worse

and I am grateful for what I have. It gives me a

chance to absorb all the good things that I have in my life. So I

want to go ahead and dive into this topic. It's most leaders think short

term, but here are three ways you can play the long game, which will make

a huge impact, have a huge impact on your life.

So welcome to the Decide your Legacy podcast. I'm your host,

Adam Gregg. I'm a coach and a family therapist and I founded

Decide your legacy in 2012. And we help leaders and

their teams face the issues that they are avoiding.

And so leaders, you know what I'm talking about. We avoid things in our lives

so you can take productive action and make long term progress

changes that stick. From my point of view, everybody's a leader.

You have influence. I don't care if you're 12, if you're 18,

I don't care if you're not in a leadership position by title. You have an

opportunity to have an influence. And

just so you know, this podcast is a great example of how you can

play the long game. Because I've been doing this for over five years. I've quit

three times. This is the 185th episode and just

yesterday I had my highest daily downloads of all time. The first time we've ever

gotten into the multi hundreds on a day,

ever, period. And we're over 2500

downloads, maybe 3000 per month average,

which is a big deal, you know, so doing it a long time, but no

one sees the amount of frustration and discouragement

that I have gone through to keep this thing going. And no one sees

how much inner turmoil I have and insecurity I have when I get up here

and speak that I don't want to actually. Well, Troy can see it,

so the podcast producer can see it. But you know,

people don't see the struggle. They don't see and they don't even remember the missed

kicks that Tyler Loop had when he has a successful career or the interceptions

that people have thrown or the failures. I mean, so I

share this to encourage you three ways you can play the long game and stick

it out. People that have great success, they think of this

big future ahead and they're willing to deal

with the struggle today because they have the big future

there. Parents do this when we look at our kids. I do this

as a dad. I look And I think 10 years down the road, 20 years

down the road, which makes me overreactive sometimes because I think that's going to

derail things. You do that, you do that too much, it's not going to be

good. But the reality is, is that we are playing the long game as parents

and so we're able to deal with the difficult today if we're a

focused parent, if we're the kind of parent that I want everyone to be listening.

We're thinking about the long game recently

and I like to share something that in my

life has happened that I faced that because nothing is

more important for you and your mental health than facing your fears. Nothing is more

damaging than playing it safe, you know, not doing the difficult stuff in

your life. So here's what I did. And again, I am the biggest

hypocrite of all time because I talk about this stuff and I

don't practice. I do practice a lot of it, but I struggle and I

have anxiety, I have insecurity. So I've struggled with having a long term,

10 year vision. I challenged companies and clients to have this, but

I struggle myself. Yeah, I have one. It's written down. But do I really step

back and go deep? And so recently I've stepped back and gone deep

and I've been articulating where I want to be in my life in 10 years,

where I want the company to be in 10 years. And it's kind of scary

for me because now I can fail. And if I share this with people, then

I think they can judge me if I don't get there. But again, your vision

is something that illuminates the right path. You set the right goals today

based on this vision that you want to achieve. It helps you to push through

and have this long game mentality. When we articulate it, it gives us

excitement and passion. But here's the big, big deal with the

vision. Do not be perfectionistic about it. It's going to change, but it's still

orienting, orienting your path. You're never going to actually get there, but it's still

giving you something to aim at. You want to actually have that. And this is.

As we talk today, we're talking about making three

decisions that will help you to play the Long game as a leader. So here's

the first decision. Number one is admit

that you are afraid. I talk to leaders at times and they have

this fake facade that they carry

that is expressing to the world that they're not afraid of anything. And even my

very first coach, professional coach, when I first started

Decide youe Legacy, he gave me the advice of don't share with

other people that you're struggling with building business. You

know, portray. If they ask you how business is going, tell them it's going great.

And I don't think that was the best advice because what I have found with

clients is that when I share my struggles and I'm real

with an orientation of confidence, they're drawn to that because

they see that it's not always going well. But I have to present that with

an attitude of hope that it's going to get better and I'm making progress and

I'm learning and growing through the whole process of failure if things not

going my way, that conveys inspiration and gives people

hope. So be willing to admit that you're struggling. Be willing to admit that you

don't want to fail. Be willing to admit, and here's the deal,

is that there's some danger in your life that if you don't face it,

there's going to be consequences. Because danger that you identify

can motivate you. When we don't admit our emotional struggles

and we're not identifying what they actually are, they have much more

danger in our life because at that point we don't admit and

we don't identify. It's ambiguity, the real struggle. So you want to be

able to admit it, and then you create a plan to focus on it. And

then you create a situation where you're taking action

so you will connect with others through your failure. I mean, I promise you

that sometimes I'm just shocked by it because I still don't want to admit it.

But even this morning, I shared with a client something that didn't go well. And

I could tell that opened up the whole conversation that was much more

positive than I thought it would actually be. And the failure was how I

had handled some family situations because they're struggling with a similar

kind of thing. And that family situation that I

shared was that I addressed some issues with my parents and it became

a crap show. I think I can say that it became an emotional

powder keg that didn't go well for about 20 minutes. And I

didn't handle it well. I didn't approach it right. And I Was kind of going

to catastrophe mode. It ended up being a good conversation, but it didn't start

off that way, you know, and I share that and I shared it with this

client because hey, we can still, I

mean good things can come out of difficult situations. So you

want to realize that fear is not weakness.

It's actually showing you what you can push through to grow. Because

on the other side is the confidence and the capabilities and

the new strengths that we identify because we

push through and we see that we can handle this very difficult thing in our

lives. So the second decision to make to play the long game

is when you do have things that don't go your way,

make sure, make sure that you gather the lessons from

that experience. What did you learn? What can

you alter and change? What can you use as

fuel to push through? So Tyler Loop missed the game

winning field goal. I would highly encourage him to step back and gather

the lessons from this, what was it? And the lesson may

be that he's never going to be perfect and he has to let go of

the expectation of perfection. Maybe it is that

he changes some things about his approach in a

game winning situation. I don't know what it would be but there are lessons

there and there are people that will support him if he engages

them and if he doesn't get stuck in the past and

he sees it as fuel to move forward. All the lessons you can learn.

When I was unemployed for seven months back in 2008,

2009, I mean there were a lot of lessons for me to learn there and

it took me a while to learn them because it was three months of very

difficult, challenging, emotional

stuff for me. So. But then eventually I started

to have hope. It fueled my career coaching focus for a period of my

time. It gave me a lot of confidence in dealing with people going through challenging

situations that helped me to help other people. The setbacks become

your fuel. They help you to shift your perspective regarding that situation.

Who knows? I mean I'm lighter in situations. I mean light, more

light hearted in situations that would have stressed me out years

ago. I'm more light hearted when I deal with difficult

situations like losing an employee. I've had employees resign

in my career, owning a business and it can be very discouraging

and at times it would derail me. And recently I had a

situation that I didn't, did I wish wouldn't have happened.

And I know there's a lot of lessons that I'm learning in this situation but

I've realized that if I learn those Lessons, it's going

to be better the next time. And I am learning lessons. It didn't derail me

the same way it had in the past. I was able to bounce back from

it and handle it, which is really exciting and encouraging to me. So you focus

on the lessons and. And those failures are less

powerful. So I look at my list of failures in my life, which. Yeah, I

mean, hiring decisions or leadership decisions. Failures I've had as a leader

where I haven't done the best job and I haven't helped people succeed the way

I want to. I think my heart is in the right place, but I haven't

always done the best job. So I can look at those and say, this is

going to be something that I can learn from as I hire new people. I

don't want to make those same mistakes again. And the reality is I am going

to make some of those same mistakes again, but not at the same level. That's

where it's a real failure when we make the same mistakes at the same level

that we made them before for. Because some mistakes, we. They're habitual.

We're very habitual people that do things and. But our

effort, our heart, our heart to change is there. So

the third decision that will help you to play the long game as a

leader is. Is after things don't

go your way, have a plan to get

out of it so you know that things aren't going to go your way

in every situation. You know that you're not going to hit a home run every

time. You know that. In fact, as a business owner and leader, as a

parent, maybe 80% of the time you're doing things in a way that

you look back and say, I would have done it differently. So it didn't go

just as you had hoped it would have gone. But as you

gauge these things where you know you could fail, you have a plan to get

out of it so you're not stuck in it. You're not stuck in your head.

You're not stuck in doing the same old song and dance that you did before,

and then you know that you can get through it. I mean, I'm energized when

I know that if I have these failures in my life, I'm. I got a

plan to get out of it, because I've gotten out of things before in the

past and I can get out of this thing in the future.

And having started a business 13 years ago, I

know that there's going to be discouraging situations that happen.

I'm going to lose, like I said, lose employees or I'm going to have contracts

that have challenges to them to maintain. I'm going to

feel like feel is a really key thing here. Feel like a failure, but

what am I going to do to get out of it? So my plan to

get out of these very difficult situations where I feel like a failure is

I go on a run. I have this game plan. I mean I go on

a run and I have certain books that I listen to on that run

that encourage me. I know that when I have a

failure I'm going to go work out things don't go my way. I mean I'm

going to get to the gym. Well, go on a run or get to the

gym. You know, I know that there's going to be, there are going to be

certain people that I will call at that point and a lot of

them are business owners that I'll text and say this was didn't

go my way. And I know from those people there's an

attitude of empathy. It's going to get better, you're going to be okay or

good job man. You gained some valuable information, you're in the

game and you did it. It didn't go your way this time but you

learned some things that are going to help it go your way next time. So

we get back in the game and that plan will help us to get back

in the game. So another go to for me is

to journal and you can check out episode

that's pretty popular right now. It's a few episodes back,

maybe five, six, seven episodes back. But it's on journaling. I check encourage

you to check that out and I'll link to that in the show notes as

well. So one thing

that is, you know, pretty amazing to me is

I have this buddy, his name's Brian and he started a business

and he's in the first year of going in at it full

time. So when I we and

we touch base, we're good friends. So anyway, I called him today in

fact and I said how's it going? And he said well some good, some bad.

He, he wasn't like it was good cause he has a humble attitude about the

whole thing and that's gonna keep him staying in the game because it

has gone well in many regards for him and it has had challenges in many

regards for him. Just like a 13 year old business has challenges but

a little different when it's a brand new business and you're relying on it as

your sole income. Cause That's a big point where you can actually pay your own

salary through your small business. So. But as I was talking to

him, I thought, you know,

Brian's a guy who does have a plan when things don't

go as well his way. He's a guy that talks and reaches

out and he's open about the challenges that he faces. He doesn't try to

sugarcoat it. He has a plan. And he

is a learner where he. Every time he's learning how to sell, he's learning how

to manage, he's learning how to organize his systems and everything, he's like

taking notes. And I know it's, I mean, just watching him,

he's. He's gleaning some things from every situation, I believe.

Well, maybe not every, but from the majority of the situations he's facing that are

discouraging. He's getting a lesson from that and, and he's admitting

that he's apprehensive. I mean, he's not using the word I'm afraid or scared,

but admitting that I gotta face this thing. And I need help

and encouragement from my friends to face this. And I know he's gonna be

successful as he keeps that going. Cause he's passionate about

what he does, which is really encouraging. And

that's cool because that long term game is going to keep you going.

Now something that happened to me on Christmas, and this was

real encouraging to me is I got a letter from my daughter.

And the letter was,

it was the best gift that I got for Christmas. I've read it probably five

times now and I'm going to keep reading it. I want to read it to

you because I want to share with you. It summarizes everything we're talking about here,

about playing the long game. Because at times as a dad I have not felt

like things are sticking. And at times as a dad, I have not felt

like I'm making a difference or I'm having the connection that I want

with my daughter. And at times, you

know, I'm wrong. So I'm very wrong,

in fact, at times. And the letter

that she wrote me, gonna go ahead and read it says, dad,

it has a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her name is Emerson. And she's passionate

about Ralph Waldo Emerson too. I didn't do that. That was her deal. And I

think she went to see his gravesite not too long ago because it's not far

from where she goes to school in Boston, in the Boston area. She said in

this quote was, what are you afraid of? What you are afraid to do

is a clear indicator of the next thing that you need to do. Right? Ralph

Waldo Emerson, very cool. And then she wrote a note. She says, this quote highlights

a huge lesson you have taught me. Run towards fear,

not away. There have been so many occurrences in college where I have been

fearful. But then I remind myself of all the things I have done in my

life that have been scary and how a majority of them have

been some of the best choices I have ever made. I remember doing

scary things because you would make me. I don't think I ever really

made her, but I. I remember doing. I would bribe her, yes, but no, I

didn't make her, but I remember doing scary things that. Because you would

make me and I would hate it, but come out the other side

completely enamored. The fear was just direction.

And you taught me to embrace it, not run, even when

running is easy. I love you, dad. Emerson. Very cool.

So, in summary, if you want to have that mentality of playing the long

game as a dad, as a business owner, because you know the good things are

on the other side. And you want to make sure that you admit that you

have fear, you're not perfect, and that you need other people to help you, and

they will. All these resources, as you admit it, will come to your will

come to you will come, and people will relate to you. You want to make

sure you gather the lessons every time you step out and make that decision

so you don't make it again at the same level and then have a plan

after it doesn't go your way so you can reach out and get support so

you can push through. And people want to support you as well. You're not

alone. You're not isolated. We entrepreneurs, we can talk like everything's going

well, but it's not. And we can celebrate and we can not

celebrate. We got to do both. Got to talk about what's going well, what's not

going well. We got to celebrate the wins, and that's hard for me to

do. I don't always celebrate it because I don't want to seem. Whatever.

Here's my deal is I don't want to celebrate my wins. A lot of times

I think it's going to jinx it. I do. Or I think because I celebrate

it, it's going to fall apart. That's what happens to me. And it's not really

true. So I had a big. I've had some wins and I celebrated one, and

I'm still trying to celebrate better. So take Action on this.

Now. Other thing about the Decide youe Legacy podcast

is we need your help to help it grow even more. So

please subscribe and share. Just think of one friend and

say check this out. Like just listen to this podcast, a small little

podunk podcast, you know, and check it out. I

really would encourage, you know, that will help it grow. I need your help on

this thing. That's why I'm sharing. I mean it has had recent success. This year

has been great or last year was great, huge progress. But

I need your help. So subscribe, give it a rating and review Apple or Spotify.

And now think about something from this podcast that you want to

apply and I would encourage you to apply it by the end of the day

today. What little lesson, what piece of inspiration? Maybe you need to

clarify that 10 year vision. Maybe you need to go ahead and create your plan

after you things don't go your way. Maybe you need to go ahead and and

admit the fact that you're struggling with somebody. 80%

of change is action, only 20% is insight. You

gained insight today by listening, but you

haven't taken action yet. I don't know, don't really know if you will, but

if you do take action, which I'm encouraging you to do, share,

share with me. You know, comment, comment in the, on the YouTube channel,

underneath that episode. We post every episode, full video on,

on YouTube. Give us some feedback on this thing and share with us what other

episodes you might want us to actually produce on this topic or another

topic because we need some ideas on what you want to hear. And

just to remember the word decide means a lot to me. That means

eliminating other options. We have lots of different options. But you're like,

I want to do this, I'm going to commit, I'm going to go ahead and

take a shot, go in this direction. Your legacy is

like how your life impacts other people. How do you want to be

remembered? How do you want people to be impacted by your life? Do you want

to be and live this full life that has huge

impact. There's no positive change until you decide to change.

Decide today because really your legacy depends on it. So I'm

going to close out today the way I always do. Live the life

today that you want to be remembered for 10 years

after you're gone. You decide your legacy, nobody else.

I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.