501 | How To Position Yourself For Promotion

Chris LoCurto 0:00
What does promotion really mean? And should it even be a goal and how do we get ourselves positioned for it that is coming up next?

Chris LoCurto 0:19
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 show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are. We're having a pretty good day here. Once again, I am joined by the fabulous, the talented, the what else? What do we got to say here?

Brian A 0:44
Joel says that I'm illustrious. A lush, true,

Chris LoCurto 0:47
illustrious, yes, the illustrious Brian. Welcome back.

Brian A 0:54
Thank you.

Chris LoCurto 0:55
Good to be right through like what am I doing? Like one descriptor that was just like keep beating? The flexible. What does that even mean?

Brian A 1:04
Let's don't even know context for other people.

Chris LoCurto 1:09
For all the people that just took that in a dirty way. That's

Brian A 1:11
not what that meant. Oh, my goodness, no, come on.

Chris LoCurto 1:15
People get out of the gutter. Welcome back. Right. What are we talking about today? Because I know we got a fun spin. Well, we you and I think it's fun. Hopefully everybody else thinks it's fun. We'll see. We have a fun little spin here. We'll see how this goes.

Brian A 1:30
It's fun for us. Oh, no, we've got another how to episode where I'm going to set up a question that we've got and maybe try to unpack a little bit of our terminology at the beginning here. Then I'm going to just pitch it over to you to do a soft ball spike.

Chris LoCurto 1:49
As the softball spike the Brian Alex is

Brian A 1:54
knock it out of the park. That's what we're that's what we're anticipating.

Chris LoCurto 1:59
We have to kind of explain that for a quick second that I don't remember what I don't remember the situation but it was something years ago. You're like softball spike.

Brian A 2:08
My, my sports metaphor, I just come back from Sicily to live in the States. This is a couple of years ago and I was on I was on one of your shows early on. And I think I just I mixed metaphors. That's all wrong with that. Nothing left in there. No shame. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay.

Chris LoCurto 2:31
Lots of continued kidding throughout the years, but no shame. No shame. Yeah. All right, as you would say minimal shame.

Brian A 2:37
Minimal. The bare minimums here, minimal judgment. Oh, my gosh, well, today, you know, hey, look, we're coming up to the end of the year. And I know as we approach that, that little gap, that window of time and the holidays that week before New Year's, most minds go to reflecting on the year that we've just come out of, it's been a long year for some of us, and how we're positioned how it's looking for the next year, of course, a lot of us think about, what do I want to be different in my life? You know, where am I heading, and Am I growing and hopefully, you know, as people been going through some of our more recent episodes, we talked about a lot of jobs stuff, how to make a fresh start, we talked about a lot of personality and even character stuff, why character counts was one of our episodes, we talked about developing a personal growth plan and, and you know, leading up here to this reflection time, I thought it'd be good to, to talk about promotion, and we're gonna, we're gonna unpack the word, and then I'm gonna pitch it over to you to swing at it. But here's, here's kind of the setup for it. You have to put your life together yourself. Nobody's going to do that for you. If you don't like where you are, it's based on the decisions that you've made. You can change that and thought by thought action by action, we can start to get out of the ruts that we've been in, and going down the right path, the path that we want to be, and really, you know, just to be honest, because I know this word is used a lot nowadays, it's not. It's not what we've done that defines us so much as what we're going to do next. And, and what I mean is maybe you've been through bankruptcy and this year, maybe you've been through surgery, maybe you've been through divorce, prison, grief, the loss of a loved one, whatever you've been through, you know, if you're like most people try to attach a title, you know, I'm a I'm a cancer survivor. I have been through bankruptcy. I'm a divorce. See, I you know, I'm a felon, you know, and I've just been let out of prison, whatever it is, you know, I lost a loved one. All of those things begin to define us but Really, we're defined by what we're doing next in our decision making processes. And so it's, it's not our failure. It's not the tragedy that you've been through. But a lot of that failure mentality can haunt us. And it can become a bigger obstacle to us than what we've actually been through, we tend to suffer more, because of the way we think about things rather than the things themselves. And so what are we what are you saying today, you know, in, in going after growth, and transformation, we have to understand it's a, it's a painstaking process. It's a one day at a time, one decision at a time process. But this gives you control over where you're going. And so I wanted to pause at the end of this year, thinking about the year coming up and give people a word, not a word from God. But just a word to think about and kind of ruminate, you know, chew on a little bit. And that word is promotion. And I started looking at this word, it comes from the Latin and it's bromo, Vana. And I say that with a bit of an Italian accent, I don't know if that's right for Latin or not, but that's how I hear it. That's all. But it means it simply means to move forward. It's all it means. It's motion, its action, its movement, its progress. And so that's what we're talking about moving towards and, and moving towards the goal. And I mean, you know, in my life, I want to be using my skills and gifts that God's given me, this year, this coming year in the best way, even better, even more than I have, in this this previous year, I want to become all that he's created me to be and not be holding back his plan for my life because of the ruts that I get myself in. And we've talked a lot about that this year. And I want to have success. And you know, even that word success is interesting. It comes from Latin again. And it just means to advance to it means coming up, it means going to the next level, which we talk about a lot. We talk we teach people in next level life, how to take their lives to the next level, get out of the ruts that they're in. And so I want to put that as the the bullseye for this coming year. How do I position myself for promotion? What can I see myself succeeding in and going to the next level and in overcoming the obstacles that have been holding me back in my life? And so that's where that's where we are? How do I position myself for pro motion going forward in life next year?

Chris LoCurto 7:45
Well, that's easy. Okay. Super easy.

Brian A 7:49
We're just gonna tweet it out. Because it's 140 characters, and done end of

Chris LoCurto 7:55
episode. So the answer is be in the right places at the right time. There you go. All right, when we

Brian A 8:03
come to this show,

Chris LoCurto 8:06
next week, what you can be doing right now where you're at to position yourself for the promotion in progress that you want to see a year from now. That is coming up next. Hey, folks, well, I am so excited to announce that we are finally there. Registration is open now for the next level leadership live event of 2023. But let me tell you what's not going to be around very long, your chance to take $500 off every ticket that you buy. That's right $500 discount per ticket is going to expire very soon. Now this event is your best chance to get the tools you need to take your leadership to the next level. So leaders do yourself a favor and head on over to Chris a crypto.com/events. Just type in Chris a crypto.com forward slash events before the special offer goes away. I can't wait to see you and your team at our next live event. All right, we are back. And we are talking about what you can do to position yourself to be in a place of promotion. And as Brian pointed out in the in the front package there. What we're talking about is mainly moving forward, I think everybody hears the term promotion and immediately the only thing they think about is at work, you know, work promotion, and what does it look like to be positioning myself for something like that a promotion at work and promotion and leadership or promotion, whatever. And that's really not what we're talking about. What we're talking about today is what does it look like to position myself to move forward to go forward? So I think as we tackle this and I want you to hit me with as many questions as you've gotten on this, Brian, I think we have to start with an understanding of once again, where are we you know, how good are we at self assess Seeing where our life is one of the things we do through next level life, one of the beginning things that we start with is my current life status. You know, my life status? Where's life right now? Do I really actually understand what's positive? What's negative? Do I understand, you know, what I desire my life to look like? We take a look at where is life as I see it right now. And again, that's completely subjective to how you see your life. Which is great, because that's what we're looking for. Right? And as we discussed this here today, we have to start with understanding where am I? What is great about my life right now? Am I able to speak to the positives? What is negative about my life? Am I able to see the negatives for truly what they are? Right? How many of those are my choices, which most of those should be, we should be able to see that? You know, if you're not being healthy, well, then why are you not being healthy? And what are you doing to keep yourself from being healthy? So for me, if you're going to set yourself up for promotion for moving forward in life, you have to find out where are you right now? Yeah, what does moving forward look like when we go when we get through a next level life and we're putting together the plan of here's what I'm going to do, the thing we talked about is we don't want perfection, we don't want 700 levels from now there are 700 levels, right? What we want is the next level. So I can see I've spent these two days going through and seeing where I am right now and things that are holding me back and decisions I'm making and all this kind of stuff. And in lies I tell myself and negative self talk and all this kind of stuff and and I see where I am, what does the next level look like? That's, that's as far as we want to go? What does it take to get myself to the next level and we use a version of six Ziegler's wheel of life, you know, the wheel of life that Zig Ziglar popularized? We use a version of that we pretty much the same categories, we just kind of adjust how things look, you know, we we talked about God as and as the individual of God, the being of God, I should say that, and church actually sits in social because that's a social activity. We look at personal his feelings, thoughts, intellect, emotions, you know, things like that. So, when we go through, and we talk about finances, where am I? My physical being? Where am I my social life? Where am I right now? Family, personal. God, you know, all these different aspects, we want to ask ourselves, where am I? Where do I want to be? So if I can be honest, and say, You know what, right now, my social life, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs that are listening to this or like, what's the social life? You know, a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs don't actually want a social life, and they miss out on the benefits of being in community. You know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are busting it like crazy, working hard, and not recognizing that they don't have a social life. They don't have great friendships, they don't have deep friendships, they have surface level friendships. And they're perfectly happy with that, because they've got all this purpose in what they're doing. Problem is, that's not all of life. You know, what do we say at the beginning of the show, work is what you do. It's not who you are, right? It's just a part of who you are. It's one piece of who you are. And I will tell you having great relationships, that we are people who bust our butts, we work hard. We don't have a problem working hard. But at the same time, we recognize we have to have the downtime. We have to have the restaurant, we have to have people time, the community, if we are not in community, we struggle might well my wife doesn't struggle probably as much as I do. She could she could be without a lot of community, she could be with community, it all depends on on the day. For me, I'm kind of the same way. But I need to have time with people at some point. But I love what I do for a living. But if all I keep doing is the same thing over and over again, well, where's my social life going to be in 10 years from now, where's my friendships going to be if something goes wrong, and I need help, or I need, you know, people focused around me or something like that. So for me, you got to start in that place, go through all these categories. And ask yourself, Where am I? You know, where is my career right now? Where is Where am I headed? Am I stuck? What's positive? What's negative? What do I want it to look like? So starting there, get yourself a really good idea in each one of the seven categories. And say, here's where I am. What does moving forward look like? And then you have to ask yourself, well, actually, you should probably start let's let's back it up and start with this. Are you willing to do something about it? If you get to a place and see that you can be in a better position a year from now you can be in a better position, career, financial, social family, if you can be in a better position a better place. Are you willing to do something about it? What if it takes some hard work? What if it takes some healthy boundaries? What if it takes being less selfish? Right? What if it takes better personal care, not the same ridiculous thing that's being preached out there in the world of self care, which is, everything's all about you and the world is on your shoulders, and the world owes you and you should just, you know, spend your days in a spa, not talking about that crappy message, I'm talking about literally taking care of your health, taking care of your mental well, being taking care of your your focus and study on relationship with God. You know, what, if it takes some of these difficult things, are you willing to do it, if you're not willing to do it, if you just want to see what life could be like, but then you're gonna just stick where you aren't, probably don't listen to the rest of the show. Because it's just gonna be a waste of time. And I don't think anybody listening to the show is actually not ready, are not willing to do something about it. So starting with that self assessment, where am I? So before I go any further any questions on any of those pieces or anything that we should,

Brian A 16:06
I think it's entirely appropriate. And it's in line with where we've been going this entire year, which, you know, if we were to put a banner or title a theme, it's about self assessment, it really is. And I liked it, you know, coming to the end of the year, here we can, we can look even categorically, because we've, we've taken some deep dives along the way into specific categories. And, and I like that we're kind of zooming out here. And so yeah, you can Google Zig Ziglar wheel of life, you can go to Chris lakota.com. And just type in our search bar wheel of life, you can find our version on it, the exact one that Chris is talking about right now, and do that assessment. And I think, you know, I've done that a few times. And we've even done that together as a

Chris LoCurto 16:51
team. And it's okay to have an assessment on there.

Brian A 16:55
Yeah. And we, we've done that as a team as well, in some of our preparation for teaching, and going through that process, man, it's, it can be it can be a little tough. You don't always find things that, well, there's things out there, you hope you don't find, you know. And you're kind of opening that box up and taking a look at you know, I took my car to the mechanic the other day, thinking I was getting a routine oil change. And, you know, they jack the car up, he said, Hey, Brian, take a look at this looked under the hood. And man, there was something broke that shouldn't be broke. And it's dangerous. And, you know, I've got this team of people coming in on the weekend. And so I was getting the car ready. And I thought, Oh, wow, you know, thank you, Lord that I got in here, I put the car up on stilts, you know, and looked under the hood and all that stuff and found something before it damaged me and possibly others over the next couple of days. And I kind of wonder Is that what we're doing here, right now just in this assessment process. And, you know, maybe you tuned in because of the title, how to position yourself for promotion. But that's exactly what we're doing. And you've got to assess, you've got to be willing to look honestly in the mirror, in the words of the philosopher Michael Jackson. And you've got to be able to talk to that man in the mirror and decide if you're willing to make some changes, and it starts here. It starts with me. And you know, if I want something different if I want promotion, if I want success, if I want to go to the next level, I've got to start with an honest assessment of where I am, and how I'm holding myself back. So yeah, I love it.

Chris LoCurto 18:50
I think that is a new series for us breaking down the philosophical Michael Jackson songs and relating them to our lives. That's awesome. That's better. I love that you just put all of that in there. That was great. So with that being said, I think you pointed out one of the first steps in that self assessment. And that is, you know, we always start with the positives. What is positive about this area of my life right now this area, the wheel of life right now, and focus on what does that look like? Because and the reason why we do this is is because many people can go to the negative very quickly and never see anything positive. So we always push the positive, what is positive? What are we experiencing all that kind of fun stuff so that we can have those that understanding and start there. But we also need to lift up the hood and see what's broken. So as we go through some of the things that are negative, you know, if you did tune in to find out how do you get a promotion at work? Well, let's start with career. How am I doing in my career right now? Here's my suggestion. And I always tell people, it's really difficult for team members to seek a leader Say, tell me what's wrong with me. Tell me what I'm not doing. Well, tell me what I can change what I can adjust. That's really difficult. Why? Because the last thing you want is to hear things that your leader doesn't think you're doing well, right? Well, here's the crazy thing. If they have answers, that means it's already in their head. And it gives you the opportunity to learn in grow, right? So I tell people, Hey, listen, don't be don't shy away from asking, you know, what can I do better? What do you sing that I'm struggling with? We have a nother Brian up here. Brian Dudley, who works up here at the ridge. And I love that one day, he just texted me. He's like, dude, what do I do that annoys you? It's just like, I love that you asked that question, right? And there wasn't an answer for anything annoying. There was, but I had some answers on some other things of like, Hey, here's some things to look out for. Here's some things to watch. And it was just a really good, mature conversation. And I just, you know, I never did ask him what brought that on? You know, and I think I know what it is. I think it's him seeing other people not do. You know, we have a lot of people that show up here and vendors and things going on. And, and so I think it's possible him looking at things and him saying things that annoy him and asking myself the question, What am I doing? That's annoying, Chris. Right. And I think it was such a great way of him to dig into a question. And instead of getting answers on things being annoying, he gets answers on hey, here's some things you could do better or something, here's something you could work on. Right. And it turned out to be a fantastic thing for him to just go Oh, great. Good to know. And I think really, everything was more personality style, just communication or something like that.

Brian A 21:42
Let me ask you, let me ask you this. After he asked you that question. Did you think more of him less of him or the same?

Chris LoCurto 21:51
Well, I fired him. Okay.

Brian A 21:53
Okay. So that's a good watch out for Yeah, never ask your boss. What you doing better?

Chris LoCurto 21:59
Yeah, exactly. Of course, I thought I thought so much higher up him. Because that moment, yeah. Because we

Brian A 22:05
fear that we shy away from that.

Chris LoCurto 22:08
What's the craziest thing? Right? So you know, as the guy who gained so much perspective and teaches people to gain perspective, I don't have a problem asking people questions, right? I want to know, hey, what do you think about this? What do you see here? What's your opinion? I have no problem walking through those pieces, right. But teaching people to do the same, sometimes it's so difficult, because they have to get past those fears. So the amazing thing is, is I thought so much more highly of him because he was seeking it, he wanted to know, and it was just a legit, I really want to know what you think. And it gave me the ability to speak in on areas that he could make adjustments to. Now if he does great, if he doesn't, well, then that might be a different discussion, right. But the crazy thing is, is there's already things as a leader that you look at on every team member, and you already stockpile things in your head, if it's things that you can adjust, or you try to work with them on that somebody for somebody like me, I am going to try and work with somebody to the point that they will allow me to work with them. If I see that somebody is not going to be able to receive stuff, and it doesn't affect their roll, it doesn't change where they are, they're just not ready for it. And I'm gonna back off. Early in my leadership years, I used to push people on things that I could see. And unfortunately, they weren't ready for it. So I've learned, if it doesn't affect what they're doing back off. At some point when they're ready, then you know, I can speak into that. But to have somebody come after it, man, that's just fabulous. Right? So saying all this to say, what are where are you? Where are you in your role? Where are you with your leader? Where are you with other team members? Are you looking for perspective from other people will oh, gosh, no, Chris, because then that would give them power. It literally doesn't give anybody power. Besides the fact that they've already got it in their heads, their answers already there. It's not something that they're going to come up with. It's not like they're gonna stop and go, Oh, gosh, I don't know if there's anything that you do that's annoying or wrong or bad. Let me spend 15 minutes thinking about it, right, it's going to be something that they've already got somewhat of an opinion on. Just think about it, you probably have opinions on people that you work with, right? And so the key is, is healthy people I would not go ask unhealthy people that question. I would not go seek somebody who wants to take me down a notch, or somebody who is unhealthy or somebody struggling with control or manipulation. Or somebody who's a people pleaser, as we talked about on the past shows that question, what because I don't think I'm gonna get an honest answer. I'm looking for honesty, I'm looking for something that I can use and move forward with. So if I can dig in, pop the hood up and find what's broken, then instead of worrying about where I'm going to be, How can I fix what's broken now? Yeah, what The things we do in strapline the big success, why strat plan is so successful for so many businesses, we're not selling pizza, we, on average, fine. I think it's $1 million more in the next 12 months than they were planning on. That's a fantastic benefit. We're not selling an event that teaches people how to go make more money. Why? Because making more money is not your issue. Every single business that comes in if we say, hey, if we doubled your revenue next week, what would happen? They have one or two answers. 98% of people say we would self implode, there's no way we can handle it. And then there's this 2% that go, oh, we could totally handle that. Okay, well, then we have a different issue. We are well, overstaffed. We are, you know, way over, you know, we have too much capacity. So we have to go a different direction. Either way, the answer still reveals something. For 98% of people, we have too many things holding us back, we couldn't handle that type of growth right now. Well then quit going after tons of money. Let's solve the things that are wrong right now. And that's what we do with next level life. That's what we do with this process. Right? How do we discover the things in our finances that are holding us back? You know, are we emotional spending? Are we not living on a budget? Do we not think that it's important? Are we not on the same page with our spouse? You know, what is our physical being? Are we running ourselves to death? Are we running ourselves ragged? Are we allowing ourselves to stress too much? Are we stress eating? Are we eating crap that is causing us to feel horrible? And are we eating sugar all the time, so that we can line up our pleasure centers so we can avoid the pain of the conflicts that we're living with? All of these different things? What is my relationship with God? You know, am I spending enough time focusing on him learning him growing in him? Or am I letting somebody else tell me what I'm supposed to believe? One hour a week? And you know, feeling like I've got a really good relationship with God. As we lift up, pop the hood, and we take a look around what's broken? What are the things that we need to focus on? So if I want to be in a better place? So think about it right now? Is your car fixed yet?

Brian A 27:08
No, it's not. Okay. He's still working on it.

Chris LoCurto 27:12
So promotion? Is it getting back to normal? Yeah, yeah. Where it's supposed to be to move forward. Right? Literally. Literally move the car forward, right. Yeah. So just even forget about where I want to be a year from now. If things are broken in my life, if things need to be fixed, right now, how about I just get back to normal? hate to use the word normal? How about I get back to where I should be or where I was? Let's fix that, instead of trying to get ahead and still having, you know, broken pieces that eventually when they do break the rest of the car, everything shuts down? Right? I mean, I think the easy analogy is going back to the physical being right. If I don't fix the things that are wrong with me physically, then eventually my body shuts down. I'm somebody who, who can speak to that immensely. I've been chasing getting lead out of my body for for four and a half years now, I think. But I've been chasing the healing side, the health side for 20 years, not knowing what the big issues were, and working on this for so long in my body running and especially in the earlier days, running hard and then shutting down for a week. Right? I know what it's like. So what if I'm just convincing myself that I can keep going, keep going, keep going, and then wonder why I'm sick, or I'm down or things aren't working well. So once we dig under the hood, we've got to find the things that are broken, what things need to be fixed, what things are the highest priority, we're looking in seven different areas, right? If your marriage is absolutely falling apart, but your social life is amazing, there's a problem. Here's a problem right here. Well, man, I've got great friends going out all the time, all this stuff, but my marriage is, you know, one foot out the door or whatever my family is falling apart? Well, we probably need to shift priorities, you know, what should my priorities be if I get a really good self assessment, and again, use the assessment across the colonel.com on the wheel of life? And take a look and see if you get a really good assessment. And what you discover is, man, you're doing really good in areas because you're spending most of your focus there, and you're sucking in other areas, and you're not spending a lot of focus. What do we do about it? Well, Chris, I don't know I don't have the answer. Well, then seek somebody who does, you know, dig into the stuff that we teach, find out how do we solve some of those things? So if I can get those things understood, then I am in a great place to move forward. I'm in a great place. I'm in a great position to say, here's what I've got to work on. And I would say prioritize prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. I'm always going to put the god relationship not church. Church is not a relationship with the King of the universe, it is a social thing we do with other people who are trying to have a relationship with the King of the universe, right? So separate those two things out, I always put church under social. And I put, instead of spiritual I, you know, zig would have spiritual on his wheel of life or has I should say, I changed that to God, God relationship, my direct relationship with God, that is always, always always my top priority. That's where I start. If I can look at that, and I start pressing on that God relationship button, and amazing thing happens. Everything else gets healthier, my finances get healthier, my career gets healthier, my family gets healthier. me as an individual, it gets healthier, my physical being, everything else gets healthier in that process. So that's usually where I prioritize. So start with prioritizing what needs to be worked on what do I need to focus on and then put steps, we're not looking for perfection? We're not looking for 700 levels, we're looking for what is better than where I am now? What does it look like to be better than where I am now, and start putting some of those steps in place define it, you know, write it out. If I did these things, I'll be in a better place. One of the things I do with next level life is we're putting together this, this plan after two days of going through all this immense, amazing information. And we put together some steps, I will ask somebody, if you do these things, will it take this area of your life to the next level? And if the answer is yes, great, we move on? If the answer is no, then what's missing? What are we not putting in there? What are we what are we not reached yet? So those are things that I say if you if you make the decision that you're ready to do something you're willing, take a hard look self assess, take a hard look at where you are, you know, you had mentioned a bunch of potential bad things that, you know, people may have experienced, you know, I and I was wondering, is there a comma between divorce in prison? Because you said divorce prison? I was like, Are you? Are you putting those together? Is that a separation? What is that? Yeah, there's some things that you know, maybe you did come out of a or maybe you're in the midst of a horrid divorce, right? Maybe you have experienced bankruptcy, maybe you lost connection with family, but whatever that is, you know, what does it take to sit down? really assess it? And then ask yourself what needs to happen? We do a great job on the show talking about putting healthy boundaries in place with controlling and manipulative people. But how many times have we also said you may be the one, you may be the one you need to focus on you? What are you doing to affect people in a negative way? What are you doing to mess up relationships? What are you doing to, you know, keep you from being healthy and other people for being healthy as well. So lots of information, questions, thoughts, comments on anything?

Brian A 32:50
Yeah, that's so powerful. I'm wondering, in my head, the question that's coming up is, you know, what holds us back? What holds me back from asking those questions like the other Brian, did. You know, and I think about this, we tend and I'll speak for myself, I tend to shy away. I don't want to know what's going on under the hood. You know, even, you know, you. My, you know, I'm over 50 Now, and my my daughter's asking me, I have you been Have you been to the doctor, you know, you got the check, did you get the check? And I said right. And I mealy mouth, right, you know, and I'm wondering, why am I why am I resisting? You know, some of that? Why do I resist taking the car to the mechanic or, you know, asking a spouse, I mean, that's such a powerful piece sometimes is just asking the spouse, you know, your husband or your wife, how can I love you better? How can I take care of you more? What am I doing? That's frustrating, you are frustrating, our, our relationships are holding us back from growing. I mean, sometimes in relationships, we want to just kind of wink and nod and pretend that everything's rosy until it just blows up. And I think that's what was going to happen with my car. And you know, thankfully, we looked under the hood and we were taking care of it because I want the car to run and I want it to go farther. I want it to do more I want it to be safe. And you know I think we've got a we've got to assess in those areas even if our tendency would be to shy away from it. We've got to be willing to take that assessment in every category in our in our finances just like you mentioned emotional spending Am I Am I willing to look at that in the mirror and be honest with myself do I spend emotionally is that hurting me? What could I be doing? I mean, if you want a promotion, start with your budget. Oh my gosh, what am I doing that's holding me back? Where am I I spending money frivolously that I could be saving, I could be investing I could be giving and helping others in a way that I've never done before that is forward motion. But it starts with that really painful, painstaking process of changing my thoughts about a certain area of my life, changing my actions, my decision making, and being willing to face it and deal with it. And, you know, again, I'm wondering, maybe there's somebody else out there that's in that same boat, where I find myself often have, I'm just going to, you know, wink and nod and pretend you know, I've got these rose colored glasses, everything's fine. It still runs everything, you know, nothing to see here. Close the curtain, you know, let's just hide it, sweep it under the rug. But, man, this is a great time of year, when things tend to slow down a little bit. Maybe you've got some time off from work, maybe you're you're thinking about this this year that's gone by and you know, maybe it's a healthy practice to, to assess at the end of a day. What happened today. Where did I win? Where did I lose? Where did I fail? Where what can I do better? Where's my relationship with the Lord? How am I you know, just doing that personal assessment, that meditative and reflective pause at the end of the day or the end of the month? Or here we are at the end of the year? It can be painful, but oh my gosh, I'm so glad. I'm gonna get my car back tomorrow. Fixed. And I, I know it's gonna go in the direction I want it to if I do that with these other areas, I am positioning myself for pro motion to go to the next level. Yeah, so necessary.

Chris LoCurto 36:48
That's it those civilians can fix your car. We are both we're both Sicilian. Them Syrians that

Brian A 36:58
the the Italians have their way with cars, man. They have they have some fine automobiles over here. They know what's going on under the hood.

Chris LoCurto 37:10
So hey, can you soup this thing up? Can you put a Ferrari in here? Come on

Brian A 37:16
20 for your 20 year old French car, a Peugeot? They're like piece of crap. Right? What are you gonna upgrade your car?

Chris LoCurto 37:25
The problem is the chain fell off the pedals. That's your problem. Oh, okay.

Brian A 37:30
The motors getting slower. The older I get. I don't know what's going on.

Chris LoCurto 37:35
Those hills are just terrible. Like, you hit a couple of great things. One of those is, you know, am I looking at myself and saying, Am I emotionally spending? Here's so the financial one is actually it's an interesting area that people don't care. They don't. They don't care. They don't want to know. And if they do know, they don't have a problem. Because people are like, well, I deserve it. If I'm emotionally spending, who are you to judge me? Do you know how hard I work? So here as you hit that I've heard these voices for decades of people that get into this place? And they're like, Yeah, but that's my money. I worked hard for that. And here's the thing, they miss it, it becomes this victim mentality. I deserve. Listen, it's your money, do whatever you want to if you want to emotionally spend emotionally spent no big deal. You do you. But don't be surprised when you have no money. Don't be surprised when you're in bankruptcy because you didn't do a good job handling your finances. Don't be surprised when you know that the emotional spending is no longer helping you feel better about yourself. Right? Yeah.

Brian A 38:46
So this is a way of that we're self medicating. But the I mean, it's evidence self medication is evidence that there's something that when we were dealing with a symptom, but there's something under the surface, that's not right. And so that emotional spending should be a flag not to defend not a hill to die on book, but in flat. In fact, it's something very different that it should bring attention to, Hmm, why am I doing that? Why am I self med? What am I trying to fill up? Where I felt empty? Or what what wound Am I trying to, you know, numb, whether it's finances or other substances, we tend to do that.

Chris LoCurto 39:30
The problem is people don't see it as self medication. Let me rephrase that. People don't see it as negative. They believe it's self medication, and they believe that's a positive thing. I did something for myself today. Why? Because there's incredibly horrible messages out there that are preaching to people that that's self care. And so a lot of times you'll see somebody in the financial aid, they can see it on the physical. They don't have a problem looking to the or physical being and going, I am screwing myself over by eating crap all the time, they don't have a problem saying that, right? Because we've talked about that we, you know, there's plenty of preaching on health and in the social world, right. But when it comes to that financial thing, every commercial, you see everything that you know, every musician who's talking about all the stuff that they have, and they own and how amazing they are, because of all the stuff that they've got. And, you know, all of that stuff is preaching one thing stuff means that your important stuff means that you're worthy. Buying things, you know, every reality thing where people are going out and, you know, spending ridiculous amounts of money. Look at all of the social posts, that people are focused on money and stuff. Because in their mind, it's worth, you know, cars, how important are cars to a certain, you know, group of people, it's funny, as we're talking about cars, that having a fancy car, they'll go crazy in debt for a fancy car, because they think they prove to people that they're worth something. And yet, they're so far in debt that can't even afford the car. These types of things people struggle with, right? But you mentioned something else that so first off, we've got to get to a place where we can be very honest with ourselves, any type of self medication numbing, coping is actually not helping, it's actually hindering and hurting us. Now, I'm not saying that in a very difficult, terrible moment, that you shouldn't do something to help yourself in that process. And I'm talking about the extreme. But what are we doing about it afterwards? Right? How do we fix this? Right? So if you have to cope with a really difficult, horrible relationship in the moment, choose your coping? Well, I'm not talking about self harm. So please, make sure.

Brian A 41:45
So we have a whole episode on why can't I just cope? So yeah, just to unpack that in a different way?

Chris LoCurto 41:51
Well, listen to that nothing in there is about self harm. Right. But you pointed out something else. What about my marriage? And this is a different piece. What is, you know, you said, why don't I just go to my spouse and say, How can I love you better? Well, what's the answer? For a large number of people? The answer is, I believe, and this is the lie, we tell ourselves, I believe doing so is going to give my spouse power over me. We're already struggling. Not anybody who's has a fantastic loving relationship doesn't have that problem. I don't have a problem asking my wife, how can I love you better? You know, I don't have a problem digging in and seeing what I can do better, right? I know a lot of the things that I don't do well enough, and I'm trying to work on those things. When we feel like the marriage is not good. When it's struggling, then we get into this place of believing these lies that if I do seek that, it gives that person power, and they'll use it over me. They may you know, 5% of people are actually correct on that. Right? There are some people who are married to somebody who's so controlling that they will use that against them. But here's the crazy thing. If you don't even try, if you don't work on it, then what do we do we stand in our own corners waiting for the other person to fix the marriage, which has always worked throughout the centuries, that's always worked out really well. Fantastic. It's amazing how many marriages are fixed, all you do is stand in the corner and wait for the other person look, if works better on its own. We're gonna sell that as a new course. You know, just 1/32 episode. Here you go. So you have to be in a place where you can say, what if this does you know, if I go seeking how I can love this person better? And it does screw things up on their side, maybe they become more controlling whatever. So what what do I need to learn about me? What do I need to do about making decisions, even if this person is unwilling to come my direction? If I will just get out of the corner myself and make choices and make decisions? Who knows? Maybe at some point, it'll win them over and they'll start making changes as well. Maybe we can start moving towards the center. Now obviously, this is not a here's how to fix your marriage with this just one teeny tiny piece. There's so much more to it. But if you're unwilling, it's not gonna matter. It's not gonna matter. It's not gonna matter. It's not gonna matter, right? It's putting that you know, the mechanic pops, the hood shows you what's broken, and you go, slam, don't worry about it, everything's gonna be fine. Just waiting for it to blow up. So

Brian A 44:29
no questions on any of that? Gosh, it's so good. And we're coming to the end of this particular episode, but I could totally see us digging into to marriage and relationships even more next year as we as we continue our process. I mean, just just because we talked a lot about self assessment this year, doesn't mean we're going to stop but I'd love to I'd love to dig deeper on some of these particular veins. Some of these particular sections areas, were again talking about the wheel of life, that sometimes we would just let that wheel spin, we think, Okay, I'm working on my career right now, I'm trying to self assess where I'm unhealthy, but maybe we're not, you know, maybe we're just ignoring other areas that are vital to our overall success. And, you know, if you're not winning at home, with your, with your spouse, with in relationships, it's going to, it's going to be a huge hurdle to winning in life in general. And, you know, with your health, looking at and assessing what I'm putting into my body on a routine basis, if I'm not willing to do that, I'm not winning in other areas, like I could, I don't have the energy, the stamina, the mental clarity, I'm walking around in a fog, I'm self medicating, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we can apply that rule to each of these other areas. One flat, flat tire will hold the whole car back here, you know. Anyway, now I'm starting to mix wheel metaphors now.

Chris LoCurto 46:24
No, tire is gonna wreck your marriage. Let me just say that right now.

Brian A 46:28
It is, it is. But no, I love that we're covering this as as painful as it can be to open the hood. And get somebody you know, like, in this case, I've got a mechanic who's looking at my car, you know, maybe you need to sit down with somebody who's an expert in that field, maybe that's something helpful. Maybe you need to get yourself into a next level life next year, maybe you and your spouse, maybe it's time to do counseling, and maybe you've been putting that off and putting it off, because you're shying away from looking at reality. But that ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away. In fact, oftentimes, I'll throw in a dental metaphor. Now. Look at the you know, allowing a cavity to grow. That's the two falls out at some point. I know. I know. I've been there, you know. But we don't want you know that abscess to go on. You want to deal with the cavities deal with what's going on? Why? Because we're about health, not just on the functionality side, but health for growth. And that is positioning yourself for promotion? Absolutely.

Chris LoCurto 47:43
Absolutely. So with that, there you go, there's some great steps to move forward, if you are going to move forward in life. And by the way, if you're able to get all seven areas focused on and moving forward, then guess what your life moves forward, life doesn't look the same. That's another piece with next level life. As we look at these seven areas, we put all the steps to hey, I'm gonna go do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, all these things over the next 369 months, whatever it takes. Then we ask the question, what if you do all of this? What does life look like? Oh, gosh, completely different than what it is. But

Brian A 48:19
what's so funny is, you know, people that come through next level life. We're in a season now where we've been doing this so long that we've got people coming back for a second. Next Level life. We've got her coming back again, for a another strat plan for their business. Why? Because they know it's going to be painful, it's going to hurt like hell. But once I get through that, assess and fix the problems, it's going to be better than it was before. And so stop shying away, get in there, do the hard work of assessing and fixing the problems so that your life can be better than it is it's worth the pain to get to that gain.

Chris LoCurto 49:07
Boom. Yeah, exactly. Look at that. What and didn't know it. Alright, folks, just for you. We have had fun on this show. I know this. It has been this is tough. This is what we love. This is why we talk about these things. Believe me, Brian, and I can talk about a whole lot of other things. Usually movie quotes.

Brian A 49:29
Cars, why movie cars, wine,

Chris LoCurto 49:31
food, there's all kinds of stuff we can talk about. We do this as a passion of ours because we want to help we want to change as many lives as we possibly can. Do us a favor. Go rank us go quotas, quotas, quotas. I don't think that's cool. That's right. Go leave a quote. You know, on iTunes, let us know how we're doing. If you have thoughts, questions, comments, send it to podcast at Chris tucker.com. But more than anything, we want you to take all this information today. Change your leadership change your business change your life if you can change the lives of others help others to experience this as well alright folks with all of that as always join us on the next episode