Maximize Your Joy (Part 1)

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That's M-A-X-W-E-L-L to 55123 to reclaim your leadership with Belize. Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. My name is Mark Cole. I clapped my hands today. I don't think I've ever done that, because today we're talking about joy. Tracy, I can't wait to talk a little bit about John, but in my opinion, one of the things that I love about getting to work alongside of you and stand on stages with you is you have an infectious joy that you operate in. I don't know how you do it, but isn't it incredible to live and lead from a place of joy? It absolutely is. I think the same thing about you as well. I think once you really do, I'm excited to get into this lesson, but because when you really do find your deeper purpose, and I don't want to get too ahead of us, but when you really do find your purpose, joy just springs out of you because instead of feeling lost and trying to figure it out, you operate from a place of a full cup. That's something very easy and natural, isn't it? It is. Here's what we're going to do, podcast listeners, podcast viewers. We're going to take two weeks and dive deep into this concept of joy. I'm so glad Tracy is with me because you already know it, but those of you that are brand new, you will be infected in a great way by her joy. And John's the same way. He's going to teach you on a subject that I've watched him live out over the next two weeks. In fact, we're going to give you 15 cultivators of joy, 15 things to put seeds in you that will bear the fruit of joy. So I hope you got a pen. I hope you got a paper. By the way, if you would like to be a part of this podcast community, we've got another way for you to be a part. We have a Facebook community that we have established that is designed really to set you up in community around a particular episode and around the podcast. Go check it out. We'll put the link in our show notes today. You'll also find in the show notes a bonus resource. You can print that out, follow along as John teaches. You can find the link to the YouTube channel that will show you the podcast visually, as well as some other links and resources that we'll put out there through the day. That link is maxwellpodcast.com forward slash joy. So here are eight of the 15 that John's going to cover today, the things that will help you discover greater joy in your life. Here's John Maxwell. The joy in life is discovered in the journey, not the destination. And this is a father lesson. It's simple. It's just from my heart to your heart, because I want you to have a joyful life. And I don't want your joyful life to be dependent on where you arrived or what you just did. I don't want it to be events and I don't want it to be places. I want it to be an everyday joy in your life. And I think I can teach on it, because I think I understand how to live this life and I think I have credibility with it. And what I want you to know is that the journey doesn't determine your joy. You do that. So don't look for a journey to provide the joy, but know there's joy in the journey. So I'm going to tell you now, I'm going to give you 15 ways and just get ready to write. 15 ways to maximize your joy in the journey. Very simple. Number one, live intentionally. The best advice I can give anyone of us if we want to maximize our life is don't accept your life, lead your life. People automatically get older, but they don't automatically get better. And the only way that you get better is that you become intentional in your life. Again, as Covey would say, begin with the end of mind. I typed a lot about it. I wrote a book intentional. If you really want to know more about it, just get the book. But live an intentional life. Number two, find your purpose. You see, in connecting the dots of life, you can't connect them looking forward. They never make sense, but you can always look backward and you can connect them. And so in the beginning, I don't think leaders see all the steps that they need to take to go where they need to go. But I think when they look back, they understand something. Here's one of the things I want you not to miss. They don't clearly see all the steps, but they clearly see the first one. Because it's the first step that sets up all the steps. I'll talk about that in a few moments. But when you find your purpose, you find your passion, you find your strengths, and you find your sweet spot. Wow. When I speak like this, what I've done, I just say I was born for this. Why? Because I found my purpose. Number three, you define your success. You define it. As a young leader in my middle 30s, I was starting to have some success, but I was watching people mess their lives up. And I thought, why did they mess their lives up when they're getting successful? And I came to the conclusion that they had never defined their success. And I gave you three definitions of success. I have a definition of personal success. It's very simple. Those closest to me love and respect me the most. Isn't that simple? Let me explain it this way. If those who don't know you well like you better than those who do, you're in trouble. If those that are far away from you admire you more than those who are close to you, you're in trouble. You're not a whole W-H-O-L-E person. So my personal definition of success is very simple. Those who know me the best love me the closest to me, they respect me the most. And then I have a growth definition of success. I think success for me is knowing my purpose in life, growing to my maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others. That's my growth success definition. And my leadership success definition is I add value. I add value to leaders who multiply value to others. That's who I am, and that's what I do. I've defined my own success. That's my North Star. That's my anchor. That's my stabilizer. I don't get distracted by other people and what they're pursuing for success in their life. God bless. Go for it. I know what I'm supposed to be doing, and I've got those three definitions that guide me along the way. Number four, you need to grow every day. My commitment to grow every day has brought me greater joy than anything else. In fact, I had a mentor when I was 31. His name was Richard. He looked at me and he said, John, let me define personal growth for you. And I said, give me the definition. He said it's one word. Personal growth is happiness. When you're growing, there's something that's very fulfilling. There's something that gives you a lot of joy because you're seeing and feeling and realizing that you're evolving into a better person continually. Number five, add value to others. Just simply add value to others. Get over yourself. Please, please get over yourself. The rest of us have got over you. Trust me. Tell me all the time, laugh at yourself. Everyone else is. Just get over yourself because life never will be joyful if it's about you. If you live for self, it's a dead end. It's a dark end. It has no incredible fulfillment and purpose to it. The moment that you say I intentionally add value to others, and every morning I wake up with great joy, I woke up this morning and said, man, I can add value to thousands of people. This is who I am. This is why I live. I mean, you that are in the virtual audience, I mean, I'm getting to add value to hundreds, thousands of people that are not even here today. You know that I have that simple process. Every day I value people, think of ways to add value to people, look for ways to add value to people, do things that add value to people, encourage others to add value to people. I do that every day. It's so simple. It's not a hard lifestyle. It's not difficult. And it's because of who we are that we have to swim upstream and understand that it's never going to give us fulfillment. Number six, stay with your strengths. Just stay with your strengths. I'm not very multi-talented. I'm not well-rounded at all. I'm just smart in a couple of spots. I'm just really, really, really good in a couple of spots. And I try to stay around those spots. I don't get far from them. Because the moment I get farther from them, I'm not in my strengths, when I'm not in my strengths, it's going to be average at best and average, you know, people don't pay for average, average is average. So, stay with your strengths. Number seven, think successfully. How you think. Determine your world. Number eight, partner with others. Understand that there are others that when you join their team, or when they join your team, and when you come together, just understand the value of... The greatest way to expedite improvement is to find good partners or to develop a team. None of us are as smart as all of us. When people ask me about balance, it's a question I'm asking all the time. How do you balance your life? Or how do you balance your life as a leader? I tell them there's no such thing as a balanced leader, but there is such a thing as a balanced team. And sometimes it's those people around you that just kind of, you know, complement you and complete you. And have access to the people, tools and resources you need to build a thriving leadership development business. When you become a Maxwell Leadership Certified team member, you join a global community of entrepreneurs led by our expert team of mentors and faculty, including John C. Maxwell. You'll also get one of the top leadership certifications in the world next to your name, including you the boost you need to get started. Visit us online at maxwellleadership.com forward slash join the team to find out more. Gracie is so good to be talking for two weeks, two episodes about joy. What a great topic to spend two weeks on. And so I am excited for us to go through this. I'm excited for our listeners to really unpack with a mentor who is so good at being joyful. You spend any time with John and you just, it fills your cup of joy. And so I think so many times we talk about on the podcast, extracting lessons from our journey, extracting lessons from our mistakes, extracting lessons from our mess ups and our failures. And I love that today we are talking about pulling out our joy along the journey. And how do we cultivate that 15 ways to cultivate it? And so he's going to break it down for us of how to maximize joy in our journey. And I love that he just kicks it off with living intentionally and not just accepting your life and leading it. And he said something I wrote down here and I hope you've printed out the bonus resource. If you ever haven't printed out a bonus resource today is the day on joy. Definitely. He said people automatically get older, but they don't automatically get better. And so Mark, I think of you. You are, I've known you for so many years now, gosh, getting close to 20, I think you are really a very intentional person. And I think you are, I love that your year, that one of your part of your word is joyful. Even Jubilee is also just such a joyful word. Yeah, it is. Coming up with joy. In what areas are you intentionally getting better? Well, so I love that John keyed on the idea of living intentionally in the pursuit of joy, because oftentimes because joy is a fruit. It's obvious when you have it, you can tell when you don't, you can also tell. But I also believe just like joy is a byproduct of wonderful things. I believe joy is a muscle, it's a discipline, it's a decision that we have to make too. So I love that John starts off just out of the blue or just right off the ground. He says, Hey guys, I'm going to tell you joy is about living intentionally. And so this year I've got several disciplines that I'm running through every single day as it relates to joy. In fact, I'll tell you this. I said joyful Jubilee. I didn't know this. I know a lot of our podcast listeners are people of faith. I didn't know there was a Jubilee translation of the Bible on the Bible app. There is a Jubilee translation. And so this year I'm reading the Jubilee translation of the Bible in all of my morning disciplines and all the things that I do. And so what I say that because I have about six things every day I am doing to make the decision of joy, to live intentionally with joy. And if you have no other takeaway from this session today, this episode, it's this. Get intentional with the choice of joy. And you will see greater joy in your life. Wow. The Jubilee translation. Yeah. I love that so much. Is it with a focus on joy? No, it's not really what it is. Tracy is it's a more literal translation of the Hebrew and the Greek. And so it's a little bit more of a clunky read, if you will. But it kind of gives you a perspective that other translations don't have. So I'm really enjoying it. Of course, in the areas of joy and Jubilee, there's a lot more distinction to it. As what it means to the Hebrew nation. Right. Okay. Interesting. Okay. We got a little history lesson there. Okay. So moving along, he talks about finding our purpose. And I want to jump over it because if we spent time on all eight of these, I hate to jump over purpose and passion because it is such an important thing. But I feel like we've spent a lot of time on that. Right. So I think he's a very purposeful and passionate, passion driven leader. But I love how he breaks down defining success. And as someone who has arguably spent the most time with John as any more than any leader in the world has in the history. He defines success in three different ways. And I believe that you correct me if I'm wrong that you also define your per personally success by these same three ways. Is that correct? Okay. Okay. And so these being your same three personal growth and leadership. And so what is one thing if you wouldn't mind in each of these that you do to cultivate them? And I'm just going to pull out a little bit in each. He talks about in personal, those who are closest to him. And so in those who are closest to you with growth in knowing your purpose and growing to your maximum potential and sowing seeds and then in leadership, adding value to leaders. Yeah. So, so you know, in growth and life planning and architecting the life that I want to live, I'm extremely intentional in bringing Stephanie, my wife into that discussion. I say it often and this is really true. It's not just something cute to say or something interesting to say. She really is the chairman of my personal advisory council. And so she, she really plays in going back to the successes when those that are closest to you love and respect you the most. I have found that the people closest to you need to be the most vested in your personal growth. That's a, that's a, that's a driver of making sure. Too many partnerships, too many couples, they, they grow apart because they're not aware of how each other are growing. So it's a real discipline of mine to make sure that in both growth and personal, that there is an intentionality of getting her engaged, approving and giving her a report. In the idea of leadership success, I had value to leaders who multiply value to others. I constantly assess every leadership interaction with the question, did I leave this leadership moment better? Did I leave the people in this leadership moment better than when I found the moment? And it's a constant reminder that I'm not there for my advantage. I'm not there for my agenda. I have a leadership role so that I can improve and better the people around me. So I do add to the leadership success statement that John has there is I had value to leaders who multiply value to others, but I do it in a way that asks the question demands the answer. I leave this leadership moment with people being better because I was leading. What I love about what you say about Stephanie, and I think it's worth highlighting here is so many leaders, you know, Stephanie isn't, isn't on staff at Maxwell leadership. Stephanie doesn't have a position at Maxwell leadership. Correct. She's the boss. Let's be really clear. Let's make sure the title may not be stated, but the insinuation is very, very understated. I laughed so hard I popped out my air pod. But what I think of is so many leaders like their spouse doesn't have a role in their company. They don't have a role in what they're doing, but she feels very connected to what you do because you honor her in that way. And that is that does bring about respect. That does make her feel very connected to you. And I think that's a very missing piece for a lot of CEOs and high executives when they don't have that interaction or maybe they don't even talk about it or they complain about work, but they don't really let their spouse come alongside of them and feel like they are a part of that aspect of their life, which is a huge aspect of their life. So that's a huge successful piece. So thank you for opening up, you know, a little bit of the Cole family and letting us know that. Absolutely. So then he talks about that we need to grow every day. And so we have so many people who are joining the podcast. We want to say welcome to those of you who are brand new. And so for so many people who are brand new, they've just discovered the podcast. We have new people joining us all the time. It's I'm always amazed that people are like, I just found the podcast. I had no idea. I heard you on a podcast, Tracy. Where would you point somebody who who is just joining us in the Maxwell leadership world and they don't know where to start to grow? It's because I feel like there's there are so many ways and things. It's just flooded. But where would you direct somebody in our world in the Maxwell world to plug in first starting talking to newbies? Well, from a podcast standpoint, every end of the year between Thanksgiving and Christmas always take a moment and challenge people to get intentional in designing the life they want to live. We call that a personal growth journey. We call that a life planning system. And we get really important about that. So if you're new to the podcast from a podcast perspective, go start listening to some podcasts between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. And I will reference it multiple times. You can also go to Maxwell leadership dot com Tracy and we have created a growth journey, a growth program system, if you will, that will help someone that is kind of new to this concept of intentionality around growth. I agree with John. What John said here, personal growth is happiness. And I think he's 100% right. Personal growth is happiness. You know, I just thought of this, Tracy. Another thing about growth that we're doing right now just as a product for just our podcast family is we have the 15 laws of growth. It's a digital product. It's John teaching. It's given application. And normally that's a $500 system. We're we are making that available today for our podcast family only for $99. You can go see the note. You can go see the show notes and we'll put a link in there. The challenge that whether it's going to listen to podcasts, which by the way are free, going and joining a system like I talked about, or whether it's getting a digital product, get intentional and make it an everyday discipline. That is the biggest key that John's talking about here. And you will be surprised how your growth as John says will link itself to your happiness. I think it can feel so overwhelming even for our longtime podcast listeners. It can sometimes feel so overwhelming because there is so much value to be added and we sometimes forget the basics. So I think both for our new listeners and for our old listeners, a long time listeners alike is sometimes good to get back to those basics. So thank you for that. And thank you for that lesson that they can plug into the 15 laws. Okay, so adding value to others. He talked about it and I love how he jokingly says get over yourself because we've all gotten over you. Yeah. I love his humor. I know that you have, you are a person who has gotten over yourself. You've helped me to get over myself and sometimes it's not just like prideful, although that can certainly be part of it. It can also be something the flip side of that is you can be so insecure or wondering why am I here? Why am I in this place that you hold yourself back on the opposite side? So as somebody who has gotten over yourself and probably continues to take daily steps that's now probably just a routine for you, an old hat for you. Can you share how you stay joyfully detached from yourself for somebody who doesn't know how to get over themself? Well, it's so interesting. And maybe this week or next week I'll tell a little bit about just even starting at Maxwell Leadership where I started so low. Maybe we'll pick that up next week. But it's so interesting. One of the things that I do is I'm extremely aware of the lack of sophistication or intelligence that I bring to the table. Now, I'm a street smart guy. I've got, I've ran some companies. We've built some stuff, but I still get amazed. I can't even say don't and doesn't in the right tense half the time. My English teachers, if they knew that we had a podcast that had over 42 million views, they would literally, they would resign right now. They just go, we give up. We give up. We couldn't teach that kid anything and he still got people listening to him. One of the things that I do, and John does this extremely well too, to get over oneself. You really do have to do what John talked about there. It's time to start laughing at yourself because the rest of us are laughing. We would like to laugh with you rather than at you. So if you'll just start laughing at yourself, you'll free us all up to do what we're already doing. And I'm telling you, Tracy, I do it all the time. And people come to me sometimes because I think they're trying to shore me up and make sure I'm emotionally okay. It's like, hey, you really are smart. You're good. No, I'm smart, but I'm just keeping myself at a place to where I understand the humble beginnings where I started. I wasn't as bad then as people thought I was, but I'm nowhere near as good at this stage of ascent and success as people think I am either. I'm somewhere right in the middle, just keeping it real. And I like being there. That's what John's talking about when he says, get over yourself. John is the most comfortable in his skin guy I've ever met. And his skin never is the number one leadership guru in the world. He gets amazed every time somebody says that. His skin is not the author of books that have sold over 40 million copies. He gets amazed every time somebody quotes one of them wherever we are in the world. Getting over yourself is literally not just not taking yourself seriously. It's understanding your leadership influence is not about you. Quit making it about you. It is for the benefit of others. Yeah, and that's a very freeing. It's so freeing once you realize that the lessons that you've learned and the things that you've extracted from your life and the joy that you've been able to receive and bring it bring out that you can pass that along to someone else. And it's about the other person. It's what John says. That's what you say all the time. It's about the other person, which is really powerful. Okay, staying with your strengths. This I think is difficult because as a leader, you're seeing all the areas that need to get done in the organization. And so how do you stay in your strength zone, especially when you see in an organization, especially a fast growing organization. Where you see that there's a need that needs to be done in your organization. And I know you've you've seen this before where you see a need that needs to be done, but it's not and you're a doer. You have no problem doing what needs to be done, except for it's it's something in your organization that needs to be done that is not at all your strength zone. So what do you do as a leader when when you're trying to stay on track with what you do best. But there's something in the organization that needs to be done and it's not it's out of your sweet spot. Yeah, so you know, I have so few strength zones that I really do have to put this into practice. And the way that I do that is surround myself with people, not only that I like, because that's easy to do, not only that are going the same direction as me. That's a little bit harder to do, but it's still easier. But surround myself with people that are uniquely gifted different than me. That's not as easy. Abraham Lincoln did this incredible in the book team of rivals. He surrounded himself with people with different political views, agenda views, leanings, sense of fulfillment. He truly developed a team of rivals around him. But what needed to happen for the nation to come together and unite under President Lincoln's leadership as leaders, try something so big, be pursuing something so grand that you show your team. You don't have what it takes. You don't have all the strengths and then start surrounding yourself with people with strengths that are different than yours. And that discipline will help you. You know, one of the things I would go different, and we don't have a lot of time here, but one of the things that I really get challenged with in this area is when I do have a strength at something. And this is telling you to stay with your strengths, but I have a need to empower someone that doesn't have a strength as good as mine. I go in and I rescue them. And just today, just today, right before we started recording the podcast, I had a leader that was going into a meeting and I'm telling you, Tracy, between you and I and how many ever thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are listening to this podcast right now. I really want to go into that meeting and run it for him. I really desire it because I know I would nail that meeting. But the longer term play is to give this leader a chance to take this leadership opportunity and learn from it, grow from it and get it where it needs to be. The honest answer is he will lead this meeting 80% or even better than that, 80, 90% as good as I would. But the long term return on empowering him to do it is the longer play. And often when we quote, stay with our strengths, we don't think reproducing from our strengths. We think staying empowered with our strengths. John here is talking about use your strengths to empower people as well as to own things. Which leads right into his final thing with partnering with others, that there's no such thing as a balanced leader. There's just balanced teams. And so would you say, I know we don't have a whole lot of time, but would you say that having a balanced team, what that looks like for you? Would you say that you have one right now? And would you say what did you learn from putting together a balanced team and what you learned from finding the right partnerships? And then how do you keep them? I know that's a very loaded last question, but if I feel like you could go there. Well, and I could. And we could make a whole podcast episode out of this. For sure. So to answer your question about my current team, I told them yesterday, I said team, I've never felt more like we have the team that we need to get us where we need to go than right now. And that's right after reading the book that when you have a scaling system, a exponential growth, chances are many teammates are not going to be able to go there. But they have to all have a willingness to go there. And I have a team that is embracing our vision of scale like never before. And it's really fun. It's really enjoyable. But I have a team that really is keeping me in line with reality as well. So it's a great mix. It goes back a little bit, Tracy, to what I said about President Lincoln and the team of rivals. I think you really got to surround yourself with two things that's very hard for a leader. One, people that are different than I. And two, people that are better equipped to get you where you're going than to keep you where you are. And we get comfortable with people that's brought us this far and hold and let ourselves have too much slack in staffing to where we're going. And those two things because we're loyal. We want to reward the people that got us here and think we owe them even if they can't get us there. And we know already they can't get us there, but we won't change it. And then again, I've already touched on it, but it's so easy to staff up and to lead with people that think like you act like you believe like you pursue like you. It's much harder to get people that think very different in those key areas. And that's why we teach on alignment so much. You don't have to have agreement, but you have to have alignment. And that one thought right there helps us staff and get a balanced team of people that will better us, not just emulate us. We don't have to have agreement, but we have to have alignment. Boy, that's a mic drop statement. I love that so much. And I can't wait for next week with our next seven. Oh, it's going to be incredible. And for all of you that have not checked out our community on Facebook, please check that link out. Go join us. Give us feedback. Join that community. Hey, thank you for always giving us these comments that helps us know what's working, what's not working. Damien was listening to the podcast, How to Surround Yourself with Great People. We'll actually put that in the show notes. And Damien said, I've learned that making growth a lifestyle can't be accomplished without passion. I agree, Damien. Passion is one of my top five values. And I'm glad it's yours as well, Damien. Hey, for all of you, thanks for being a part and being passionate about Maxwell Leadership Podcast. Go do something powerful, positive that will influence people because everyone deserves to be led well. Do you feel like you're meant for more, but you're not sure what next step to take, whether you're leading a team, building your business, or just trying to lead yourself well, you don't need more noise. You need wisdom, real proven practical wisdom. 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