21 - The Honor Blueprint| How to Protect Your Time, Energy, and Authority

Welcome to the Impact Podcast. I'm Eddie Wilson, here to help you visualize what others cannot see, create opportunities where others have failed, and push you to build empires where once there was empty space. Let's embark on this journey together and make a difference in this world. On today's podcast, I'm going straight contrarian view. I believe that you should respect everyone and honor very few people. As a matter of fact, the topic of the podcast today is the word honor. The word honor, because honor is one of those topics that most people, as they think about it, they think to honor someone or to reverence them or to place them on a platform. And I just want to go back to what does it mean to honor? Because I think you'll understand in very short order that to honor someone is to give them a piece of you, to give them a piece of what is rightfully yours. And we should do that with very, very distinct caution. So today's topic, honor. Let me give you a quick definition. If we were just to read it in the dictionary of definition of honor, it would be to show high respect or esteem. There's really two facets of it to show high respect or esteem, or to give adherence, conventional standard of conduct, like to hold yourself in honor or to be honorable. And so it's kind of this interesting concept. I think that oftentimes honor is used within the regard of the military. We hear those words oftentimes. I know that the three big pieces of kind of marine code begins with honor, being a person of high integrity, not lying, stealing, cheating. That is the very first step in the marine code, right, is honor. And I think that we hear that and it's preached through kind of the military ranks of our system. And we hear that word honor a lot. I know oftentimes it's also given with respect to those that have passed on or those that have gotten up in age or accomplished something in life, right, to honor them based on their accomplishments or based on what they have done in life. And so there's this place of honor, there's this space that they're given. And so I've heard oftentimes that we need to honor the dead by attending a funeral or a wake or being at some sort of calling hours to show what that person meant to your life. I've heard oftentimes that if someone's having a retirement party or they've accomplished something great in life, they've earned an award that it's honorable to show up and to create your presence or to display your presence there so that honor is displayed, right, and honor is given. But for me, as I begin to think about honor, I really like more the definition that's tied to scripture. So if you delve into scripture, the Bible talks about honor in a very different way. And as a matter of fact, the word honor in scripture, specifically the passages that say things like give honor to whom honor is due to when it talks about honoring your father or your mother, right? These words honor, if you go back to the Greek essence, right, so most of the New Testament scripture is written in Coine a Greek. And if you just go back to that Greek word, the Greek word is team a team a, and it literally means the word time. Time is the essence of honoring someone to give honor to where honors do is to is to give them the gift of time, whether that's time in their presence or time by representing them. But time is really what this connective tissue is really based on. And so what I would say is, as I began to and have over the past years, many years now, really try to define these words in my life. Again, it goes back to why do I do these podcasts? The reason I do these podcasts is because I get asked by many, many people, oftentimes as many as hundreds of people, I get asked, can I spend time with them? Can they run something by me? Well, I mentor them, especially at the Aspire Tour. We have thousands of people that show up every single month, and that's a consistent theme of, would you just give me a few minutes a month? Would you just mentor me? Would you spend time with me? And so by way of trying to do that, but with limited time, because I still operate many companies, I do that by essentially doing this podcast. I began to break down the topics of what I would give to someone who maybe is a little bit earlier in the journey than I am. I give them my time. I give them what specifically I want them to know how they would act and the steps they need to take in order to get to the level of success that I've achieved. And so I'm mentoring through this podcast. Now, ironically, what I'm doing is I'm honoring their time by giving my time to essentially give to that request. So today, as I spend my time and all the time that I spent in preparation for this podcast, I'm honoring you, right? Like I'm giving you honor to those that are listening, right? I am honoring you by spending time in preparation. I'm spending time by sitting behind this microphone, looking at this camera and delivering content to you. I'm honoring you. And you in return are actually honoring me, right? You're honoring me. You're sitting there and you're in your car. You're at the gym or you're at your, you know, at the workplace, wherever it is. And you're listening, you're sitting there cooking dinner and you're listening to me speak about life, speak about concepts, speak about the truths that I've learned in my life, the success that I've learned in my life. And you're honoring me by giving me your time, right? Time is the essence of honor. Time is the essence of honor. And so when I, when I began to really break these down in my life, I believe it's this, true honor is the gift of time or positional authority in my life. And it's, and then it's given to others, right? So like it's taking this resource of my life, which is time and positional authority and bestowing it on someone else, right? That's honor. Now, let me give you some other, maybe definitions of honor. And then I want to, I want to jump into let's make this very practical today. One of my good friends, Larry Yatch, Navy Seal, he said the word honor to him means living to a code of behavior, which the good of the group comes before the good of an individual, living to a code of behavior in which the good of the group comes before the good of the, of the individual. I think his definition also coincides with mine, right? It's, it's giving a time and positional authority. He's saying that the group is so much more important than the benefit of the individual. And so I'm going to honor this group with my time and with that positional authority, right? And so I believe that that's, that's very, very important. I will also say is just kind of where we're getting into this, that time is oftentimes the great counterbalance or honor is the great counterbalance to ego. You hear me talk oftentimes about how ego is the enemy. I love that book by Ryan Holiday and I've talked about it quite a bit on podcast, because it made such a massive impact on my life. Everything I want is on the other side of my ego and honor is the great equalizer to ego, right? So think about this. Ego will prop me up, right? Like ego will prop me up. However, honor holds me accountable because of the positional authority that I actually possess, right? Ego says, I can do this even though I've never done it before. Honor says that is not worth my time or it is worth my time to actually pursue to see if I can actually do it, right? So honor actually holds my ego in check. It is in direct competition oftentimes as well. So where do we go with this, right? Like how do we make this practical? So I've explained this to you and what I want to say is that I do believe that everyone, every human, deserves respect. And I believe that we should respect each other. Respect is, you know, we won't get necessarily deep into those definitions, but respect is that awareness of someone's humanity or their existence. Respect is giving place to others, whether it's in their speech or in their in their desires or their opinions. And I believe that everyone deserves respect. However, not everyone deserves honor because not everyone deserves your time and not everyone deserves positional authority in your life. So let's start number one. I'm going to talk about three things, three people that you should honor. Number one, I believe that you should honor God. You know, no matter what you believe about God, his existence, I know in my life that God has played a massive role in my life. You could not convince me. You couldn't convince me that God doesn't exist. And for those of you that maybe still are struggling with that, a recent book that I read by Jordan Peterson on We Who Rest With God, you should highly, highly recommend that as a read for those who struggle with the very existence of God. You know, I don't want to get into a place where I'm trying to prove to you that God exists, but the very nature and order of all things around me prove that there is a higher power that I've given myself to. And when given, giving yourself to the very nature, the very essence, and the very existence of God, God then begins to show himself real in your life. Those that just pretend that he doesn't exist or those that just live in this belief that he does not exist oftentimes drown out the very voice, the very nature, the very essence, the very experience of God. And so those that give themselves to it, I think oftentimes are the ones that experience him in the most demonstrative way. So I believe that because God exists, I must honor him. Right? If there is a creator and a creator of all things, if there is a source that everything derives from, if there is order in the chaos, right, then I must give some place of positional authority and time to it. Because if there is a creator or an order maker, then why would I deny the very positional authority that that has in my life? So for me, I have to give positional authority to God, because if you even believe that there is a God, it would be crazy to remove the very existence out of his life by not giving authority or time to it. Does that make sense? And so because I believe that there is a maker of all things, because I do believe that there is a divine order to all things, then I have to give myself to that. I have no other choice. Or to not give myself to it would be to literally deny the very existence of it. So I think there's a lot of Christian atheists out there today. Right? It's like they state that they are a Christian, but their actions, the honor that they give, deny the very existence of God. Right? Why would you say that God exists and then you never pursue what it is that you were created for? If there is a divine, why wouldn't you want to experience the divine? You know, so anyways, I believe that you have to honor God. Number one, honor God with time and position of ultimate authority. Number two, I believe that you have to honor oneself, yourself, because the very nature of believing that God created me and created me for a purpose, and there is a divine purpose and a divine nature to what I'm supposed to be giving myself to, then I then have to honor myself. Right? Because to then take that step and then not honor myself, then what I'm doing is I'm saying that the creator, the all knowing, all powerful, all, you know, omnipotent, all powerful, omniscient, all knowing God, then I'm actually by not honoring myself, then I'm dishonoring him. And so I have to honor myself. And in order to honor myself, I have to give time and positional authority to myself. Right? Now, I actually think that this is where the ego and the honor begin to counterbalance. Because ego says, well, I should think about myself more highly than I ought to think, right? Like, I should elevate myself. However, honor says you should only give positional authority to that which is, to that which is actually earned, or capable or responsible for it. And so, for instance, if you are not a good employee, or a good father, or mother, then you shouldn't honor yourself as such. However, you should, your ego may say that you are, but honor says, you know what, there's only a that gift of time and positional authority given for when it is true. And so therefore, in order to honor myself, I need to be real with myself and not live in a pessimistic view of who I am and not an optimistic view of who I am, but a realistic view of who I am and the areas that I can increase in. So, I'm going to honor myself for my true capabilities. I'm going to honor myself for those choices that I've made in true character. I'm going to honor myself for the good that I have brought into this world, the good that I have created in others. I'm also going to be lacking of ego and being very aware of maybe there are areas that I have dropped the ball, areas that I am deficient in, areas that I still have opportunity to increase. And in doing that and honoring myself, I'm going to give time and positional authority to that area, but then I'll give time in honoring myself to those areas that I'm lacking where I should be. So, it makes sense. And so, there's an equilibrium in honor. And then lastly, I believe that we have to honor those around us. Now, here's where I started, which is you should give respect to everyone and honor to very few or very little people, right? Or that high respect or esteem to very few people. And that's because that adherence or that conventional standard of conduct is oftentimes violated by those around you. And oftentimes, it's the people who violate the very code of conduct through their ego that demand honor your time and positional authority. I'll give you a for instance. And because this is really the tricky part, you should not honor those who demand time from you by giving them time, right? When they don't have positional authority and they're demanding it and they come about it in a wrong way. So, let me give you for instance, one of my practices that I've held for a very long time is that if I have an employee that comes at me and demands something from me, they will demand or they will express what I've done wrong or how I have to change something. When someone comes at me, I dishonor their request by immediately rejecting it, right? Because in the end, when you honor something that is not worth honoring, what you do is you change the balance of what is right and what is wrong. You change the balance of what should be valued and what should not be valued. When someone comes to me, an employee, and says, this is how you should run your business. Well, that doesn't deserve honor, right? First of all, unless they have ran a bigger business or they've ran a business like my business or they've been in a position where they possess honor in that area, meaning that they have the accomplishment that they actually deserve it, I can respect them. I don't have to get mad at them and say, who do you think you are, right? But I don't have to honor them, meaning give them time to tell me that area that they do not possess, that they're not honorable in or they don't possess the ability to be honored in. However, if an employee comes in and offers a suggestion or asks if I would be open for some feedback, right? I can honor that because the position they're in is a position of knowing, right? They're in a position of knowing. They're in a position of maybe they have some information or some data that I don't have. Maybe they've talked to a customer or maybe they have talked to another employee. So it's all in that demand, right? And so it's for an employee to walk in and say, let me tell you how to run your business. I immediately dishonor that because I'm not going to give time or positional authority to someone who doesn't possess that space in my life. However, if they come in and they say, may I give you some feedback? Would you be open to some feedback? Would you be open to some suggestions? Then I can choose to honor that based on their positional authority, right? Maybe it's some piece of information that they know. However, the moment that you allow somebody to take positional authority in your life that does not deserve it, rarely, if ever, can you get it back? Rarely, if ever, can you get it back? You can honor them, but understand you will forever have to honor them because to then dishonor them once they've been honored in that way feels disrespectful. Well, you gave me that position earlier. You have to hold people in their positional authority. I'll give you another example. If your teenager at home is giving you ultimatums, right? What they're essentially saying is honor me. And a teenager in my home, they're going to get respect, right? They're going to get a lot of respect. I'm going to honor, I'm going to respect who they are, respect that they're human being, respect that they're my child, respect that their opinions deserve to be valued. However, for me to be told how to parent or how to spend my money or how to care for them, right? Like, they don't hold that positional authority. And so I'm going to dishonor it. I'm going to dismiss it until it comes in in a place that is honorable, right? Where may I give you a suggestion? Can I give you some feedback, right? Then I can have the choice to honor that position because once you give in, once you give into one ultimatum, you're forever bound to the ultimatums, right? Holding a line of honor is so vitally important, so vitally important. Once you honor something that should not be honored, it's really hard to reign it back in. As a matter of fact, most of the businesses that I get the chance to go in and deal with, what I see is, is that someone has already been given honor in an area, positional authority or time in an area that they did not possess the right to be in, or they don't have the experience to be in. And what happens is, is when they don't possess the experience, then they have a lack of confidence. Then they hold that honor with ego versus confidence. And so therefore, you're always fighting with them against their ego, not fighting against them in their confidence. It's never bad to argue with someone who has a level of confidence because they've experienced something in their life. That's a great back and forth. However, it's really hard to argue with someone or to correct someone who's positioning themselves from a place of ego, a lack of knowledge, a lack of information, an inflated belief about themselves, right, ego, that you can't change it, because then you would actually have to change the belief about themself. You'd have to cut down the very fabric of what it is, right? Like, if, you know, my son walks in and he says, and ego would say, if he's never, let's say, a bolt, you got a bolt and a wrench, right? And you say, he says, I know how to, I know how to do that. Give me the wrench, right? Ego is if he's never actually done it before, and his belief about his ability says, I can go do that. Confidence is, he's naturally done this hundreds and hundreds of times. So he walks up with the bolt and with the wrench and he has a turn. Now, if we begin to argue, and we say before he starts to turn, I say, hey, it's lefty, loosey and righty, tidy. And he says, no, absolutely not, absolutely not. It's righty, righty, loosey and lefty, tidy, right? Like, it's if you want the opposite, then what happens is, is if he's done it a hundred times and I've done it a hundred times, you're arguing or maybe your, your conflict is based in the belief of the understanding of what you've already done. And so then when truth is actually brought out, there is a lack of ego. It's a, oh, I must have been mistaken. However, if you're arguing from a place where you don't have any experience, then when you're exposed, what happens is, is in the exposure, you lose yourself, which then feels like you've been diminished. And all of a sudden your ego is destroyed, and there's a lack of, of a connection because of that. So honor, who are you honoring in your life today, who should not be given time or positional authority? I want you to think about it. Think about family members. Who are you honoring in your family that really should not have positional authority in your life, should not have time in your life? Who are you honoring in the workplace who have you given honor to that does not deserve it? And now is creating havoc because the decisions and the choices are coming from a place of ego. That's a problem. It's a huge problem. If I were to dissect down one of the two to three greatest problems in every business I ever face and walking in, it is someone who cannot be corrected based on ego. And oftentimes they have that because they've been honored above their actual ability. And then lastly, are you honoring yourself? Are you honoring yourself? You today have skills, strengths, abilities, talents. You also have weaknesses. You have areas that lack character. And for you to get authentic, I believe that you and real, I think you have to honor yourself for what you are good at. And you also have to, I would say, I'm gonna say this is gonna sound strong, but dishonor yourself in areas that you're not good at, not necessarily a public shaming, but a dishonoring means to take away positional authority, allow other people to speak truth in those areas. There are areas of my life that I struggle in that I'm not great at. There are areas of my life that I'm, you know, really great at. And I really excel at. And I need to give myself honor in those areas. And I need to allow dishonor or the removing of honor in the other areas to allow authority to come into my life, or knowledge and information, right, to come into my life, so that then time as it's given properly allows that area of my life to grow. If ego is the hard shell that is over top of that area of growth, and then I continue to honor myself in an area that I'm really not great at, what's gonna happen is, is we're going to constantly grow lopsided, we're gonna keep developing in certain areas, and then under developing in other areas. We're just shielding the inevitable, which is ultimately growth. And then lastly, if we honor God, we'll actually take a look at all that he has created, and we'll give proper order, proper time, and proper positional authority to all things. First thing that comes to mind is the most important commandment in Jesus's answer. Yeah, golden rule. Yeah, I feel like you've retooled this, and I love how you've done that. Is there a connection there or am I? Yeah, I think there's 100%. You know, there, it's funny because the Bible talks about various things when it seemed like every time someone came to Jesus, they were asking for like the sum of all knowledge or like boil it down to this one thing, you know, which I think that's human nature. We all want the equation that solves all problems. I literally wrote down, I would love to hear you because you sorry and I interrupted, but it's because it has to do with this. You said someone who cannot be corrected when you come into a company is top one or two problems that you've come across. So immediately I was like, how do you diagnose that? And then what's your like step by step treatment? But I'm asking you the same thing. Yeah, for sure. How do you recognize that? And then what do you do? Yeah, you're literally saying boil it down to one thing. Yeah. And I think that that's what everyone approached Jesus about in scripture was like, tell me, you know, how do you get the heaven? How do you like it was like, like it was always like these very like specific answer or questions. And the one thing that the one time Jesus was speaking, and he said, he said, love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself, right? Like that was like the great commandment, right? And then you go all the way back to the Old Testament. And the one, the one passage of scripture that comes to mind, though, that I love as a child, my parents would read the Proverbs to me a lot. And the one proverb that always sticks out is it says honor the Lord with thy substance, meaning the makeup of who you are with the first fruits of all that increase. It's talking about like, it's not just honoring God like the expectation and obviously, you know, Solomon, why is this man that ever lived writes Proverbs. And he says to basically like, he's summing up, you know, like how to find success. And it's like honor the Lord with thy substance, right? And then, and then the first fruits of all that increase. So honor God, give time and positional authority with who you are. And then with everything you create with who you are, also then honor him with the time and, and essentially the positional authority, right? And so it's like, not just who you are, but all that you create. It's like, he created you, you will then create, like it's a divine relationship that then causes creation, and then honor him by then giving that same time and positional authority to then all that you create. And it's like, it's like, it's like it goes out and then it pulls back into the hole, you know. And to me, that's a fascinating concept that really, that's how every human interaction should be. If I honor my child correctly, their positional authority, right? God honors me with his time, with his resources, with the positional authority I hold in God, right? If I do the same thing to my child, and then my child turns around and honors me, right, then it's like, it's this constant loop. And I think that what happens is, is when we possess and we hold some of that to ourselves on, and we hold it to ourselves, what happens is, is that loop isn't, isn't refined, that loop isn't recreated. And then all of a sudden, it's like it causes interruption, but also it creates disconnection. And I really do think the essence of that is the ego. Makes sense. I wrote something down as you were talking, we've talked about this thought before, but you've talked about how you enjoy truth because it is universal, it doesn't need to be translated, it just is. And so therefore, in my mind, truth can scale very large, sure, God with mankind, or, and then very small with me and my two year old child. And I think of, as you're talking, I'm trying to think of examples in my life where someone is asking for positional authority or for me to honor them that maybe is incorrect. And I immediately think of a group of adults speaking and my two year old runs up immediately expecting 100% of your attention, sure, needs to be given to this person. And so it's, and you're right, the second you give it, it's almost impossible to give back. You can't, you can't get it back. But I guess for me, I learn and I act often in extremes. So if I'm not one way, all I know in my, how to be is complete opposite. The opposite. But I appreciate you bringing up respect because you can still do it respectfully or with grace. Correct. And I think that that's the important part. It's like, you know, respect has to still be, why I said, I believe that everyone deserves respect. I mean, your two year old, your, you know, every employee, everyone deserves respect. That doesn't mean that they have to be honored with your time, right? My child deserves my time because that typically, but the thing is, is it's all in the approach, you know, it goes back to a demanding of my time versus a gifting of my time are two completely different things. That's respect versus honor. And for me, it really is apparent in the workplace, the people that yell loudest at me, I have to have your time. I need it right now. They demand it are the people that I resist the most, because while I'll respect them, I'm not going to honor them, you know, because, but in the end, it's like, for instance, I don't want to say this, but if you have given someone positional authority, then they do deserve honor, right? Like they deserve your time and your respect and you've given them the positional authority. So you don't want to disrespect someone with positional authority that you've granted, because then it also causes a massive disconnection. Makes sense. Your closing questions, which I always love, you ask our listeners to like do an inventory. Who are you honoring? Who should you not be giving time or positional authority to in your life? And then who are you honoring in the workplace? Are you honoring yourself? Is there once they do that, they write those things down, they think on them? Is there, could you get, I'm asking you to give me the diagnosis? What's the next step with that? I think there's a couple of things that could be taken away from that. You know, you asked me the question earlier about what do you do with an employee that has been given honor, but they're not worthy of that honor. You have to sit them down and you actually have to have that conversation. You have to, I've had a lot of conversations with employees to say, hey, I may have elevated you too quickly. You know, I may have given you a position where you weren't quite ready for it yet. We're going to have to address that because what it does is it creates the new baseline. Now they can then choose to live within that reality or pretend like it doesn't exist. But now it resets the playing field that allows me to then decide whether I want to honor them or not, right? Give time or positional authority to them. And so you have to reset it. And then there are, you know, serial violators of it, and you're going to have to put a wall up. You cannot continue to honor people who deserve dishonor that need to be removed. The hardest thing about, you know, what I said was is, when I said, I asked everyone to take inventory, I said, you know, think about the people that you should be honoring, which maybe yourself and maybe others around you. But think about the people you should not be giving honor to. And the hardest thing is, is not honoring someone who deserves it. The hardest thing is, is to remove or to pull back from somebody who you've already given something to, that there's an expectation for it. And that's hard. But I would highly, highly recommend for them to write them down and do it with grace, do it with respect, but do not give those people your time. Time is your most valuable asset. We talk about that all the time. And to just allow the essence of your life to be removed from you by giving it to those that are unworthy is, to me, the definition of insanity. Like it's like, why would you give yourself to something that doesn't deserve it? That's honor, right? Like honor is giving your time and positional authority to someone or do something that is deserving of it. Thanks so much for being a part of the podcast and for listening today. Love to connect with you further. And you can connect with me on social media at Eddie Wilson official on any of the social media channels.