How are your stress levels?
Do you have more positive or negative influence nowadays?
Are you more faithful or reaching for control because you feel out of control?
Now is a time when we either fall into the fear cycle of the pandemic and economic downturn or press into truth, values, and a better mindset.
If we can’t lead ourselves well, it’s hard to lead others well.
For full transcript, continue reading:
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show. Today we are going to do something a little different with everything that is going on in the world. We want to encourage you and give you some hope as well. So whether you are a business owner or a stay at home parent who has suddenly become your kid’s teacher, uh, we want to encourage you during this time. So today we’re going to share with you part of the conversation that Joel and I had on our Facebook live recently. So if you want to watch the entire discussion, which is almost about two hours, that’s good stuff there. Please visit our page on Facebook. We hope you find some good news in the conversation today and we thank you for joining us.
Joel: You know, in life as we experience, if we can’t lead ourselves well man, it’s hard to lead other people. Chris, what should be, what should people be focusing on right now, especially those leaders out there? What should they be focusing on right now to lead themselves better?
Healthy Mindset.
Chris: Yeah. So, um, we talked with a bunch of our, our Next Level Mastermind clients. We did a discussion with them on Wednesday. Where we just brought all of them into a zoom call and we went through a bunch of this stuff because it’s something you need to be hearing. Um, the first thing I’m going to hit is the fear part. Now for me, this is not a struggle for me when it comes to fears. So I am a believer. I am what I would consider to be a strong believer in Jesus. I know we have a lot of people who follow us, aren’t believers. So, um, you know, I can’t really speak to the fear part if you’re not a believer. Well, I can only speak to it from what I do know. And that is, I am keenly aware that the God who created 95 billion light years of space, the God who created billions of galaxies instead of one universe, even the top scientists say that it happens so precisely. It was like hitting a one inch target, 20 billion light years away, that God is big enough to take care of every problem that Chris LoCurto has every struggle, everything. And so for me, um, fear in times like this, I look at fear two ways. We’ve talked about this the other day. There’s, there’s two kinds of fear. There’s the, Hey, I’m being chased by a lion. That’s a legit fear. That’s actually a smart fear. Uh, try and make sure you’re not the slowest person. If you are in a situation like that, if there’s something bad about to physically happen to you, you’re about to get attacked or something like that, that’s an okay fear, that is a fight or flight mode, respond well to that. Take care of yourself. The other fear is the one that we spend so much more of our time in and that comes from the enemy. And that fear is the fear of something that has not even happened yet. That fear is near that something terrible is possibly going to come. Something’s looming, something, whatever. Right? So we have two different types of fear that people are facing when it comes to this virus. When it comes to this situation, one is the legit. Hey, close yourself in. You know, lock yourself up. It is perfectly okay. I know people who are like, Oh, I’m not afraid of this virus. I’m going to go everywhere. What? Listen, if you get sick, then you can’t be surprised that you actually did get sick by putting yourself in those places. I think there are smart choices that you can make. One of those is lock yourself down. Now we, uh, we closed the business doors. Well, that sounds so weird. You know, everybody’s working remotely. Um, but everybody’s still working, right? And so I have gone out to the store a couple of times, you know, I’ve had to get out there. There’s no doubt about that. But for the most part, I’ve been staying away from people, right? Because it’s a smart choice. I don’t want to have to go through the process. So there’s no fear in it though. There’s not being afraid that I’m going to contract, the virus. Now, if you’re somebody who’s struggling with an immune system issue or something like that, well then that might be a smart fear.
Place Your Trust in Him.
If you’re elderly and you’re struggling as well and you’re worried about contracting it, then that’s smart. Make smart decisions, but don’t live in fear when it comes to how this is going to impact your life, how it’s going to impact your business, how it’s going to impact your team. Fear needs to not even be a part of it. Guys, I got to tell you, and I know a lot of folks who are like, how in the world are you not afraid? Well, I’m not afraid because I believe that God has my best interest at heart. I am somebody who has been spending decades working on my relationship with God. I’ve been, I’m somebody who has grown immensely and I don’t, I don’t do the, you know, the little devotional once a day and pray only at meals I’m talking about, He is the most important thing in my life. Everybody who knows me, everybody who is around me or spends any time with me knows my family understands. There’s nothing more important than God. Why? Because He’s the one who owns me. He’s the one who holds my eternity in His hands, right? He’s the one I’m going to spend my eternity with. He’s the one who if you go out into your yard and you take a shovel full of dirt and flip it over, as long as you’re living in a halfway decent place, you’re probably going to find millions, if not billions of organisms that He’s created, right? One of the most amazing things to me is no matter what you look at, everything has it’s own sound. That just blows me away that he had to create a sound for everything. That’s how big God is. So for me to think that He doesn’t have my best interest at heart makes Him a tiny guy and He’s just not small to me. And so I don’t fear. I trust that He knows what’s going on. He knows what’s happening and he knows what he’s allowing and he knows what He’s going to do in my business. So fear is the first thing that you just have to get past. Right? So for me, Joel and I and Heather, we all talked about what on Sunday, what are we going to talk to the team about? What, you know, what do we, how do we set up this weekend? The first thing that I, you know, Joel is like, well, what’s going through your mind? How are you experiencing this? I’m like, well, you know, obviously I want to make sure that everybody understands their leader is not afraid. And then I want to make sure that I understand the messaging that I’m going to share with my team. You know, I’m going to, I’m going to lead my team in this time so that they’re not afraid so that they are going to God so that they’re trusting God. We have a phenomenal, a teaching environment, uh, at our office. It’s what we do all the time. And so come Monday, that was one of the big things. We were all virtual. Uh, we looked like the Brady bunch. Uh, as we were meeting what everyone’s looked like lately, everybody’s, everybody’s, uh, one of our team members sent that out. It’s like everybody’s staff meeting. It looks like the Brady bunch this. Uh, and so one of the things that I shared with them is guys, your leader is not afraid. I don’t want you to be afraid. I want this to be something you focus on. Um, you know, spend time in prayer with God, spend time, um, knowing that he has got this and we’re going to be perfectly fine. We’re going to be okay and we’re going to do everything we possibly can. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to run into troubles down the road and we’ll, we’ll talk more about that in a little bit, but I want to make sure my team is doing it.
Next Level Leadership Live Stream
Hey folks, here’s my question for you. How many of you have always wanted to attend the Next Level Leadership Live Event? Well, guess what? Due to this fantastic coronavirus pandemic, you now have the opportunity to see the Next Level Leadership Live Event, Live stream. Yup. The entire three day event is now going to be online April 29th through May 1st. So this is your opportunity to attend the Next Level Leadership Live Event at home. Here’s the deal folks. We are going to get through this together. Our goal is to help you by giving you the plans to not only serve buy, but to capitalize on the other side of this economic downturn. So to do so, go to chrislocurto.com/livestream to sign up today. That’s chrislocurto.com/livestream.
Look into Your Influence.
Joel: How important is influence right now? Cause that got me thinking like what if you’re not surrounded by people or you don’t have a leader like you that’s saying, Hey, we don’t need to be afraid. We need to be smart. But what if it’s a person that they don’t have, that they’ve got doomsday, naysayers, people who are very fearful in their life today? What do they need to do?
Chris: So Heather had a great question for people. She said, are you, are you spending more time with CNN or, NIV, you really have to think about this. What is your in for us, ours, NLT, we spend our time in the NLT. You have to take a look at who’s influencing you and what’s influencing you. Now I stopped watching the news. I found, I don’t know how long ago it was, what was, gosh, one was Bush? It was about ten years ago. It was running against the hanging chats. What was his name? Albert. I found myself, I used to watch the news every morning as I was getting ready and I found just getting frustrated. I stopped watching the news since then, like literally people for decades. Cause I feel like that’s been decades, right? People for decades have been like Chris did you know this was going on? I’m like not until you tell me, cause I just don’t spend my time watching the news. Why I cannot stand the sensationalism. I cannot stand the fear mongering, folks. If you’re spending time being influenced by somebody who gets paid to make you afraid, change your influence, change your stinking influence. If you are spending time, I don’t know what your Facebook feed looks like, but I can promise you this. You know my social media, I don’t really spend much time on social media, but I’m not being influenced by people who want to complain. Go crazy. You know, talk about how horrible life is. That’s not an influence in my life. So you have to ask yourself a question. If you are fearful, why, you know, what is feeding that fear in your life? So change your influence, make sure that you are only allowing the influences of, of a good perspective. You know, people that are, I’m not talking about Pollyanna folks. Oh, everything’s going to be fine and the house is on fire. That is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people who are spending time getting high levels of quality perspective, right? They’re getting good information. They’re getting really good solid information on what’s actually happening, actually occurring. And you know, they’re not fearful themselves. Uh, I’m not saying that you can’t have that person in your life and I’m just saying, check your influences. And by far, most of it needs to be solid. You know, God fearing, not man fearing, um, positive people. So that’s what I, that’s where I would look.
Joel: So right now there are a lot of people, Chris, who are out there who have I mean, very legit concern. Um, they were just laid off. They know someone who’s sick. Um, it may be someone in their home or maybe a family member across the country, um, but they’re really feeling the impact of whether it’s the virus, um, or their livelihood. What’s your message to those folks?
Chris: Okay. It absolutely sucks to be in a position, um, where you’ve just been laid off. Um, it absolutely sucks if you have got the virus, if you’re sick or if you’ve got somebody who does, um, I completely get it. I understand. But here’s what you need to be doing. You need to be seeking and spending time seeking the one person who can change this and can fix. I say person, Thee God, who can change this? You need a lot more time in prayer. You need a lot more time in his word, while other people are telling you to freak out and you’re a victim and all that kind of stuff. There is a God who tells you if you will seek me, if you will spend time with me. Uh, you know, I loved it. As we were doing our staff meeting, uh, Keely, our, our 19 year old, uh, texted, uh, about 2 Chronicles 7:13-14 about how God talks about there are times I’m going to do things, you know, we have in a Western culture, especially in the Western Christian culture, we have a terrible lie that we sell. And that is that God never does anything bad. He doesn’t allow that. He’s too good. Anybody who sells that line has never actually read the Bible, get five pages and God wipes off everybody off the whole planet. Why? To get rid of the bad stuff, get rid of the wicked stuff. But he’s a God who is a Father. He’s somebody who loves us. He’s somebody who will give us correction if we’re not spending time seeking Him and doing the things that He wants us to do. So for me, I’m going to tell you, spend time seeking Him. He can fix, change, do anything. He created everything. You know what an Eastern culture they will. They have no surprise. They, they’re, they’re not shocked that God could park the red sea, you know, Western culture would go, how did he do that? How could he possible culturally go? Well, He made the water. It’s not very difficult for Him to move it around a little bit. Right? So if you’re going through that difficult time, you’re not hearing me say,”Oh, it’s no big deal.” I absolutely understand that it’s a big deal and it sucks right now. But spending time focusing on how bad the situation is, is not going to fix a single thing. It’s not going to fix anything. Instead, the first place you should be going to is God; seeking him, seeking his word. Uh, after that, when you’re spending a lot of time seeking him, know what I would do is I bust my butt, try to find out who’s hiring. Interestingly, Williamson County where we are sent out, there’s a a, I’m sure everybody’s got this where you can text to a specific phone number and they will tell you the updates, the COVID-19 updates in your area and Williamson County sent out all the companies that are hiring right now. I am at the office. I came into the office to do this and I will tell you that I drove past app calmed down the street and their parking lot is completely full. My assumption is is that they’ve either done something safety wise or they’ve altered. I’m sure they’ve done something safety wise, but they may even have altered what they’re doing to make ventilator’s makes a, I have no clue. I don’t know what they do, what they produce. There are people that literally are hiring right now. Um, I just flipped through it for a little bit just to see, and I mean it was like Whole Foods was hiring. Um, Publix I believe was hiring. So there’s companies out there that are looking for people right now. Probably a lot of delivery stuff. Probably a lot of stock and stuff that, you know, late nights doesn’t matter. Take a hard look if you’re laid off right now, there are people literally hiring it right now.
Gut-Punch in Self Worth
Joel: Chris, what do you, what do you say to those that hear that and say, I get it. I know I need to do that, but I’m struggling with giving up my lifestyle. I’ve worked so hard for it. I want to hold onto it. It’s so hard for me to bring myself to a place of going to stock groceries. Not, there’s nothing wrong with that job. You guys may hear what I’m saying because you’re struggling so much with, I used to do this and now I don’t anymore and I really, it’s hard for me to bring myself to a place of going and getting a job like I used to do when I was 18.
Chris: Okay. Um, I’m going to give some gut punches along the way from the guy who busted his butt working multiple jobs, uh, 20 some years ago to get out of debt, uh, from the guy who has done everything. I own four businesses. I will go and clean the toilets if I need to. If you are worried about your lifestyle, then I have two things to say about that. One, you have a really bad perspective. A lifestyle isn’t about what you have, what you own, your position. I mean it technically is, but letting that be the focus of how you put food on the table, that’s really perspective, right? Because nobody cares. And anybody who does care, they don’t really matter, right? Your worth does not come from man’s opinion of you. I can’t make you worthy by my opinion of you. I am a created being. You’re a created being. So just something that we share in next level life. If I go down to the beach and I pick up a whole bunch of sand and I bring this back and I fire it, melted down fire, and I blow this jar and I make this jar, which by the way has my people that was asking me what in the world is that? It’s lemon water is what it is. Literally lemon water. I drank tons this is how I drink it faster, uh, and the yellow rubber band is because that way nobody steals cup. So if I blow this jar into a jar, it’s mine. I own it. It’s worth is what I see it is, it’s worth to me is a jar. It holds, it holds my lemon water. It holds food. If I want to put it in whatever I want to put in here, it’s worth to me is what I say it is. If it decides it’s a plate, it doesn’t actually make it a plate. So let’s change this around. Now, this instead of being a jar represents me as a human being and this represents God. God has created every single one of us. He owns us. People really don’t understand. They are owned by God. He made you. He owns you, right? So if you decide, He already tells you what your worth is. You are fearfully and wonderfully made in His image. And if you read it correctly, it says their image. God doesn’t have one image. He has multiple images. We can only really focus on three that we can even kind of understand. God’s made us in their image. And so what does that mean? We are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God. God has shown us by the cross. I don’t know anything else that shows me the amount of love that He is that he has for me than the fact that he came down and had the flesh ripped off His body to take on all of my sins into bring a kingdom of forgiveness because I’m stupid and I screw up all the time. Right? So for me as a creative being to, just off the side here, look, I have another one now for me to look at other creative beings and try and get them to tell me that I’m handsome, I’m intelligent, I’m funny, I’m whatever is ridiculous. Why? Because I can’t make somebody else worthy. Only God can. But we spend the rest of our life trying to get other creative beings to tell us that we’re worth something. Guys, your worth is not in what man thinks of you. Now, I’m not saying you don’t have worth as being a dad or a mom, a spouse, any of that stuff. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, is that when you spend trying to get all of your worth from human beings and not getting it from God and listen, those of you who claim to be Christians, everybody comes into Next Level Life going, Oh, I’ll get my worth from God, and then they walk out going, Oh my gosh, I don’t get my worth from God. I get it from men. I got to start getting it from God. You think you’re getting it from God by claiming to be a Christian? That’s not it. You have to know it and you have to stop trying to get it from human beings. If your fear is a lifestyle, what are people going to my lifestyle? I don’t want to go throw boxes on a shelf. Oh for the love, are you kidding me? Does your table need food on it? Then go do what you go do what it takes. Go make it happen. Go bust your butts. Quit looking for worth from human beings. If anybody wants to look down on you because you’re a Publix right now slinging boxes, then they’re the ones with the screwed up perspective, right? Not you and for everybody who is working at a grocery store who was working at a restaurant or whatever, somebody thinks is not worthy of their time. We applaud you. We thank you for all the nurses and doctors and police and firefighters. Everybody who is out there right now taking care of people. We applaud you. We thank you that your focus is more on taking care of people. Then what your lifestyle looks like.
