549: The Shortcut to Self-Improvement

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And today we are talking about the fastest way to improve any area of your life. And I’m going to tell you right up front what this is about, what you can expect in this podcast, and then it is about modeling. The fastest way to improve any area of your life is to find someone who has already achieved success in that area and then to model those people. And I’m going to share with you two stories right now of how I’m modeling my friend, John Ruhlin, who just passed away about a week ago, and I’m modeling Jesus Christ in a non-religious way.

 

So, you’ll see where I touched on it a little bit last week but I wanted to unpack it more this week. If you’re interested in those stories and the lessons, the journey that I’ve been on, and how I learned at John Ruhlin’s memorial service, his celebration of life, how I realized that his spirit is within me and it’s within all of us. We can harness the spirit of anyone, whether they are alive or they’ve passed to improve our lives. That’s one way to model people. John Ruhlin was arguably the best in the world at relationships. His purpose in life was to love on other people and to inspire other people to continue to love on their people.

 

Radical generosity was one of his themes. His book was called Giftology, about how to give people gifts that enhance their life in meaningful, impactful, lasting ways. So, during the service and over the last week since John has passed, through a lot of reflection, I have come to the conclusion that I am going to be a better person because of who John Ruhlin was when he was here on earth, and his spirit is and will remain forever in the hearts and minds of all of us who knew him, and who are going to embody his spirit so that we can be more like John.

 

And the second person I’m sharing today is how I’ve been and why I’ve been studying Jesus Christ, even though I don’t consider myself to be religious necessarily. And I touched on that story a little bit last week but I wanted to go deeper and unpack it today in this other context, this context of how to accelerate your improvement, your development in the year of life, which is to model other people who have more knowledge, more experience, and/or more success in those areas. And you can apply the lessons today to your finances, to your marriage, to your parenting of your children, any area of life.

 

So, I’m going to really share and unpack these two stories. And then if you don’t want to hear the stories and you want to just fast forward to the last five minutes of the podcast and the last five minutes of the podcast, I bring it all full circle. And I invite you to look at your life and look at the areas of your life where you want to improve, you have goals, you want to achieve success, and how to find people in each area of life that you can model to accelerate your success and really tap into the fastest way to improve any area of your life.

 

Before we dive in, I want to invite you to check out Organifi. Organifi makes the highest quality organic whole food supplements that are in powder form. So, if you’re like me, you can wake up in the morning. You can take their Focus supplement to improve your, which, by the way, I took before this podcast today to help my cognitive function. They have lion’s mane and green coffee bean extract that both are proven ingredients to help your mental acuity, your focus, your concentration, and your articulation, your ability to communicate effectively.

 

I take Focus in the morning. I take Red Juice before I work out, which I did this morning. I then drink their vanilla plant-based organic protein powder after my workout to help build my muscle and a variety of other products throughout the day. If you want to improve your sleep, you lose weight, have better focus, build muscle, you name it, Organifi’s got a solution for you. Head over to Organifi.com/Hal and use the discount code ‘HAL’ for 20% off your entire order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast.

 

All right. Goal achievers, I love you so much. Here we go, the fastest way to improve any area of your life.

 

[EPISODE]

 

Hal Elrod: So, what is the fastest way to success in every area of your life, any area or every area of your life? And the answer is to model someone who has already done what you are striving to do. And you can apply this in your marriage as a parent, in your business, in your health, your fitness journey, any aspect of life, your spiritual journey, modeling someone who has already achieved the results that you want or embodies the values that you aspire to hold true to in your life. Modeling someone else is the fastest way to success because the opposite of that is figuring everything out on your own. And that’s arguably the slowest way to success because you’ve got to make all the mistakes yourself.

 

Now, I’m going to share with you a story that I touched on during last week’s episode but I kind of held back. I held back because I was getting ready to leave to the airport to go to John Ruhlin’s celebration of life, my good friend John Ruhlin who passed away recently, and I was headed to his celebration of life, which formerly known as a funeral. But it was much more of a celebration of who he was and his spirit that we’re going to continue in our own lives. When I say we, everyone who knew him, are really asking ourselves, “What would John do? How did he aspire to live his life? How can I be a better version of myself based on him?”

 

And by the way, that is modeling. That is literally what I’m talking about today. And I’ll tell you when I went to John’s funeral, I… And by the way, this isn’t the story that I’m going to tell you. This is a different story that just came up now but there’s another story. I want to go a little deeper in that I was too uncomfortable to fully unpack last week. And again, I had time constraints because I was getting ready to go to the airport for John’s celebration of life. But when I went to the celebration of life, it was four days after I found out that John had passed away, five days after he passed away.

 

And it was a mix of emotions. I was so sad, am so sad, and was so sad to have lost someone dear to me. And you may not know John Ruhlin. Just imagine the most positive, selfless, generous, loving, enthusiastic person who just made everyone around him better and you loved being in his presence. You love talking to him because he lit up every time you shared. He was just as excited for your success as he was for his own. That’s John Ruhlin. His whole purpose was radical generosity. He wrote the book, Giftology. He was the gifting guy. He was the expert in how do you give really thoughtful, meaningful, useful, impactful gifts to the people in your life that you love, both personally and his focus, that was his business.

 

His Giftology business was how do you do it professionally. I encourage you to check out his book, Giftology, by the way. I’m rereading it right now as well. Anyway, the point is I went to the service sad. I was sad while I was there. I was also at peace. I knew that I couldn’t bring John back. So, I believe in being at peace with all things that we can’t change. I was also, and this sounds odd, but I was excited to go to the celebration of life because I was seeing so many people who I love, dozens and dozens and dozens. I think there were 500 people roughly at his service. And probably close to half of them are good friends of mine.

 

John and I sold Cutco together. So, it was the Cutco crew. And as I sat through the service and friend after friend after friend, I think there were roughly seven of John’s close friends who were close friends of mine, most of them were, that spoke about John and who he was, and how he lived his life, and how he’d want us to live our lives. And during that service, I really got present to the fact or the perspective that the spirit of John Ruhlin lives on. It lives on in the hearts, minds, and the actions of every person who decides, and I’m committed to this, to embody John’s spirit in everything that we do moving forward.

 

And the way I’m doing that, there’s a few things I’m doing. One is I’m reading his book, Giftology, and I don’t think I ever finished the book, sadly. Most books or many books I don’t finish, and he’s my friend. So, I read the book. I got into the book and I’m like, “Yeah. It is a great book,” but I already know John’s philosophy. I don’t need to finish it. But now I’m going to finish it and I’m going to implement it to a tee. I’m going to start loving on people proactively through radical generosity the way that John did.

 

I’m going to model who John Ruhlin was, and I believe it will make me a better version of myself. I believe that I will deepen my relationships, that at my celebration of life, I’ll have people saying the types of things about me that they said about John Ruhlin because, again, the fastest way to succeed, the fastest way to improve any area of your life is to model. In fact, I actually like that better as a title for the podcast. The fastest way to improve any area of your life and the fastest way is to model other people. John was one of if not the best at relationships.

 

And so, to improve my relationships, personal and professional, I’m going to learn from John Ruhlin by reading his book Giftology, rereading it, and I’m going to harness/channel my inner John Ruhlin. I’m going to practice radical generosity, loving on people, because that’s what John did. One of the things John did is he FaceTimed everyone. This came up in the funeral. It was kind of a throw-out from his friends. It was kind of a running lighthearted joke. And it was that John never called anyone. He only FaceTimed you because he wanted to see you. He wanted to be face-to-face.

 

And we always teased him. And if you called him, by the way, he would send you to voicemail and then immediately FaceTime you back. And in kind of a joke, but I thought, that’s one way that I can continue John Ruhlin’s spirit is I’m going to start FaceTiming all of my friends. And I brought it up to friends at the funeral, and everybody agreed, “Yeah. Let’s do that. Let’s start FaceTiming each other the way…” And we imagine that John Ruhlin will be up in heaven smiling down because we are modeling the way he lived his life. We’re modeling.

 

And was he a perfect human? Of course not. But the idea is that if we all model other people’s strengths, we all become stronger together. I’ll say that again. If we all model other people’s strengths, we all become stronger together. The fastest way to improve any area of your life is to model the strengths of another person in that area. You want to be better in your marriage? You can read a book on any topic. By the way, that’s one of the easiest, lowest-hanging fruits on how to model someone else, right?

 

You read a book that they may have spent ten years mastering an area of life, and then distilling their wisdom and knowledge and experience into a book that you can consume in a matter of weeks. You can take ten years of life experience, learning, trial and error, and mistakes that other people have condensed into a book and you can transform any era of your life in that way. And that’s something that I do. I read a book in every area of my life that I want to improve because modeling other people is that fast track to get there. So, I’m doing that with John Ruhlin.

 

Now, I’m going to shift gears and I’m going to talk about Jesus. Okay. And some of you are Christian and you’re going, “This is awesome, I can’t wait.” Some of you might be atheists. You might go, “Oh, wait. This podcast is taking a hard turn.” Stick with me. Stick with me. Last week, the podcast that I did and I channeled that podcast. It just came through me. It was titled Reflecting on Religion and Spirituality. And I’ve gotten, the feedback has been really phenomenal from people that this was so needed for them.

 

In fact, if you have not listened to that episode, I highly encourage you to go back and listen to it. It’s Episode 548, I believe. Either way, if you go to MiracleMorning.com/Podcasts, plural, P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S, MiracleMorning.com/Podcasts, you can listen to it there or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can go to iTunes or the Podcast app, whatever floats your boat. But I’m going to go deep into a story that I touched on last week, but because of limitations on my time, I was getting ready to leave for the airport, and I had to record this podcast in one take and head to the airport to go to John Ruhlin’s service.

 

It just flowed through me. It came through me. And I talked about, well, I don’t want to go into detail on that. You can read what it’s all about, but it was really an invitation for all of us to reflect on where our beliefs came from, where they told to us by other people and we blindly accepted them. Might there be truths, underlying truths that transcend all religions, there’s roughly 4,000 or so religions, that might transcend all of them? And then I briefly touched on a story that I’m going to unpack now. I’m going to give you a little bit more detail on this.

 

So, I talked about last week I grew up Catholic. In my 20s, I started studying spirituality more so than religion. And I know that’s a large part of our population, right? That it’s like, “Oh, I’m spiritual, not religious.” And that was really what I said for long. In fact, I would still and probably answer that way. The way that I’m going to explain things right now, you’ll see. That’s why I’m telling you the story to understand how this unfolds. But we’re going to land out is why am I studying Jesus Christ right now?

 

When people ask me if I am a Christian, here is my answer. It depends on how you define Christian. And for any of you that I hope this doesn’t offend you. You might say, “Hal, that’s blasphemy.” I don’t know, but this is my truth. When someone asks if I am a Christian, I say it depends on how you define a Christian. If it is someone who believes every word in the Bible is infallible, meaning that something may not have been lost in translation between God and people that wrote the Bible, right? I cannot say that I believe that every word is perfect, infallible. There could be human error there. That’s from my perspective. I don’t know.

 

If you believe that to be a Christian, you have to believe that Jesus is the only way to God, and I believe that there are parts in the Bible that say that. I’m not telling you that’s not true but I’m telling you that I can’t get there, at least not yet. I have not been able to get to the place where I could say and let me explain my logic. Well, before Jesus was born, 2000 years ago roughly, I don’t know how many millions upon millions or billions, I’d have to google that. I don’t know how many people came before Jesus.

 

And I’ve heard explanations to this but I also know there are billions of people that will never come to know Jesus based on the part of the world that they were born into, right? And so, I can’t get to the place where I go, “Well, what about the billions of people who never learned about Jesus?” Yeah. I mean, you can see I don’t have an answer to that. I just can’t get there that there’s only one way to God. And I talked quite a bit about that in last week’s episode that, again, I believe religions, all religions, and there are 4,000 of them.

 

And interestingly enough, most folks believe that their religion is the right religion and all of the other religions are wrong. And that’s also a challenge that I have with any one religion. To me, it’s like I started studying in my 20s Buddhism and Hinduism, and even atheism. I’d like to understand. And I grew up Catholic, so there was Catholicism, which is a form of Christianity and Christianity, studying all of it or as much as I could and looking for the common themes, trying to understand what do… You know, Judaism. What do all of these religions have in common and what are their differences?

 

But more importantly, I’m concerned with what are the commonalities. What are the common themes? Might it be that there are unifying ideas and principles, and this is each person’s way of trying to understand God or a higher power? This is a human being’s way of explaining it. So, again, I hope you’re still with me. And I realize some of you were like, “Poor Hal. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand. I’m going to pray for him.” And thank you. Thank you. That, to me, is one of the beautiful parts of religion or there’s pros and cons to all things but that there is this set of values and love. And to me, that’s what it should be about.

 

I think that there’s also the dark side of religion, which is like that you’re going to hell because you don’t believe what I believe. And again, if that’s your belief, I support you in your belief or your beliefs. But for me, I’m just being open about reasons that there are certain things that I fully I’m trying to still on my journey of curiosity and discovery and inquiry to figure out. So, with that context, here is the story and I apologize it’s taken me a minute to get here or a few minutes or 13 minutes overall. But hopefully, you’ve gotten a nugget or two throughout the last 13 minutes.

 

And here’s the story, and here’s why I’m studying Jesus Christ right now more than anyone else in my life, even though everything I do share with you go, “Well, it doesn’t sound like you are really Christian, Hal. You don’t believe that Jesus is the truth, the light, the only way to God. And you don’t believe every word in the Bible is perfect. It doesn’t sound like you’re a Christian to me.” And again, that’s why I’ve always so… Oh, I never finished that part. If you ask me if I’m a Christian based on all the stuff I just said, I can’t answer authentically yes.

 

But if you define Christian as someone who does everything in their power to live in alignment with Christian values to model, that’s what this episode is about, to model Jesus Christ in the way that I live my life, to love all people unconditionally, to forgive all people, to be as righteous and holy and moral as I possibly can, to only put things into my body, to treat my body with respect, and to nurture it, my God-given body, to pray everyday. I pray every single day I have for my entire life, right?

 

So, in that way then if you define being a Christian as someone who’s actually aspiring to be Christ-like, not making excuses and going, “Well, we all fail.” Yeah, we do. We all make mistakes. Yeah, we do, but for me, it’s like striving to be as impeccable as I possibly can to be like Christ. Then yes, I’m a Christian, so it’s how you define it. With all of that, in January of this year, one of my best friends, and by the way, I have a lot of friends that are all different religious backgrounds.

 

Two of my closest friends, Brianna Greenspan, and Josh Eidenberg, who run the Miracle Morning Schools program, that’s Brianna and Josh runs the app program for Miracle Morning, they are devout Jews. They practice Judaism. They honor all of the holidays. They are devout, and I have learned from them about their religion. And I think it’s incredible. I think it’s an incredible religion, and it allows them to live their lives in really in a beautiful way, and it guides them to be better versions of themselves and to avoid temptation and to move toward morality, right?

 

So, I love that totally different religion. A lot of my friends are Christian. In fact, probably most of my friends are Christian. One of my closest friends is Justin Donald, and we were having breakfast, me, Justin, Donald, Jon Vroman. And this is the story that I told a small part of in the last week’s episode. We were having breakfast. And Justin, this is the beginning of this year, 2024, and Justin shared his goals. His number one goal is to be more like Jesus. And by the way, he’s a beautiful example of how powerful that is in that Justin is one of the most honest, noble, incredible human beings because he really is living his life in alignment with his morals, with his values, with his goal to be more like Jesus. But that was his number one goal, right?

 

His number two goal was to bring people closer to Jesus. And I’m paraphrasing, He might have worded it exactly like that to bring people closer to Jesus. And that planted a seed for me because as I was driving home and this is in, I think, January, February, March. I’m not sure which month it was. It was one of the first few months of the year. And we’re in August now but I’m driving home and I’m thinking, “How can I support my friend Justin in his goals?”

Well, the only way that I could support him in his goal of bringing people closer to Jesus is I’d have to actually study Jesus. I’d have to actually learn more about him. And how could I move closer without learning more about him? That seems like the first step. And prayer, I mean, you could say there are other steps in there, which is to pray that you– whatever. And so, I started googling books about Jesus, and I found there were quite a few. God’s Creative Power was one that I got, and Lead Like Jesus by Ken Blanchard. That one really connected with me because I thought, wow, that’s almost like a business book because Ken Blanchard wrote The One Minute Manager. It’s one of the bestselling leadership books of all time.

 

So, Lead Like Jesus is like a business book, but then it’s applying spiritual principles, biblical principles to be more like Jesus in the way that you lead other people. And that, by the way, leading your family, leading your children, leading you, right? The way leadership is defined, I believe it’s in that book, is that leadership occurs anytime you try to influence the thinking, behavior, or development of another person. Again, leadership occurs when you strive to influence the thinking, behavior or development of another person. So, we’re all leaders, right? If you’re trying to help the people around you be better versions of themselves, then you are a leader. Of course, this book, though written by a business author, Ken Blanchard, there are also principles tying into business. So, I got that book.

 

And then I got the book In His Steps, which I highly recommend. There’s a newer version I just found that I just ordered as well. The original is written in 1896. If you can handle a little bit of, it’s a challenging read because it was written in the way they spoke in 1896, and I don’t think I could even tell you without looking at the book. Some of the words they’re using because it’s like here other into, I don’t know, it’s just the way they spoke back then was a little different than now, but it’s a phenomenal book. I read Lead Like Jesus in the morning, and I read In His Steps in the evening.

 

In His Steps is about the question, what would Jesus do? It was a pastor. It’s a fictional book. And the pastor in that book asked his congregation. He invited them to take on a 365-day challenge for one year to ask the question, what would Jesus do? And then to follow through with the answer to that question to the best of their ability, regardless of the consequences of the results. For example, one of the people in the story, he owns a newspaper and his number one and number two advertisers are a liquor company and a tobacco company. And he believes Jesus would not advertise products that cause people physical harm. So, he drops his number one and number two source of revenue, not knowing how he’s going to make up for it. And it’s a beautiful book, just there’s so many powerful aspects.

 

Well, the one that impacted me the most is this woman in the book, Rachel. She has the voice of an angel and she sings at the church and she is invited to take on the challenge. And she, along with about 100 other members of the church, all say yes, we will do this, we will commit. And then the book is all these different stories and how they interweave and overlap and how people make difficult decisions. And I’m about halfway through the book. So, I haven’t seen all the conclusions and how it’s all going to work out yet.

 

But Rachel is offered a huge contract, huge financially. She’s offered a lot of money, which is like her dream to be a professional singer. But the people she would be singing to are, I think, it’s wealthy people that– I can’t remember exactly, but basically, the conclusion she comes to is, I don’t think Jesus would use his gift. She said, “My gift is singing. I don’t think Jesus would use his gift to just make money.” And because there was some other part of it where it was like singing to people that were getting drunk, she’s like, so people that are drunk that aren’t going to– like I’m just singing to a bunch of rich, drunk people. And that’s what it was. And she said, “I don’t think that’s what Jesus would do. Jesus always sat with the poor and the meek and the people that needed him the most or needed love and support the most.” And she said, “I think I’ve got to figure out how to use my gift to do that. That’s what Jesus would do.” So, she turned down this huge, financially beneficial contract.

 

And when I read that, it immediately touched my heart and soul and I went, “Okay, wait a minute.” I’m going, “I speak for a living. Nothing wrong with that, I support my family. But my greatest gift is my voice, is getting on a stage and speaking to an audience of people.” And I thought, just like this woman in the book, Rachel, I’m using my gift not to help the people that are desperate and in need. I’m only using my gift to help people that can afford it, right? Makes sense?

 

And so, I immediately sent a voice text to my COO, Tiffany. I said, “Tiffany, hey,” and it was like 9 o’clock at night. I said, “I hope I’m not waking you up or anything, but I want to immediately start speaking at prisons, churches, schools, nonprofits for free.” I said, “I want to start speaking for people who cannot afford me. And let’s just start once a month and let’s start locally here in Austin, Texas and we’ll see how this goes. And then maybe it becomes more frequent, maybe the geography, I start speaking anywhere. But right now, I don’t want to leave my family and go out of town for this. So, let’s start locally.”

 

Well, two days later, and Tiffany was all for it. She was excited. “This is a great idea.” Hal, I think you get people ask you all the time and I just tell them, if they can’t afford you, I just say no, Hal doesn’t leave his family unless he’s supporting the family financially, which has ever since cancer, that’s been kind of my guideline. So, two days later, I get an email from the owner of my favorite restaurant in town, or I got a text message. He said, “Hey, I am supporting this nonprofit.” And the nonprofit is called A New Entry, and it’s probably ANewEntry.org, I’m guessing, I don’t know their website, if you want to check it out, but basically, they rehabilitate individuals who have been homeless that are addicted to drugs, that are suffering mental challenges, maybe from trauma or whatever it may be, and they rehabilitate them to get them back into the workforce.

 

So, first of all, I completely aligned with this nonprofit and their mission. I thought, what an awesome thing. You’re not just providing temporary relief or housing or a meal. Not that anything is wrong with those things, but you’re actually rehabilitating individuals that have fallen on hard times and become homeless. So, now they can be self-sufficient, contributing members of society. Again, I can get behind that. And he sent a link to me, actually, me, Jon Vroman, Justin Donald, that same because our Front Row Dads group meets every month at his restaurant. So, that’s how we became friends with him. And he sent a link to us saying, “Hey, would you all support this nonprofit? Here’s a link. We’re trying to raise $81,000.”

 

And so, I immediately donated to the nonprofit. And then that seed that was planted two nights before when I read that book In His Steps, what would Jesus do? I went, “Oh, wait a minute. This is an opportunity to use my gifts that God has blessed me with to help this nonprofit.” And I immediately text Jack back and I said, “Hey, I don’t know if there are any events or any board meetings or any opportunities, but, Jack, you know I speak for a living, and I’ve been looking for nonprofits and causes where I can inspire either the recipient, so the individuals that y’all serve, or maybe your leadership team or your donors or whatever I’m happy to help in any way I can. And I’ll completely waive my fee. No problem.”

 

And Jack text back and he said, “Hal, this is amazing. We actually have a fundraiser in a week and a half, and it happens to be tonight, by the way.” So, this is literally in– I’ll be speaking on stage eight hours from now. But he said, “We have a fundraiser in a week and a half, and I can reach out to the leadership team, and we’re trying to raise money, and I’m sure it’s probably a good fit.” And he texted me back 10 minutes later. He said, “Hal, this is crazy. The leadership team, two of members are huge fans of the Miracle Morning. They said your book has changed their life and it would be a huge honor, win,” whatever he said, “for you to speak at this nonprofit event.” And so, I said, “Yes, absolutely.”

 

Here is my point. Okay? Here is, let me bring this all together. So, I’m speaking tonight at a nonprofit. Why? Well, because I decided to learn about and model someone. His name is Jesus, right? Not because I’m a hard core religious Christian person, and it sounds a little harsh. I didn’t mean it in a negative way, but based on what I shared with you earlier, right? I was very open and told you where I stand on religion and Jesus Christ. I’m literally leaning into it. I’m learning about it. And it all started because Justin Donald, my good friend, he planted the seed. He shared that his intention was to bring people closer to Jesus. It’s one of his goals. So, he was the spark. He planted that seed. I love Justin. I do model Justin. He’s an incredible human as I told you. I want to be more like Justin when I grow up. And I’m growing up every day.

 

And so, I, as his friend, decided I would learn more about Jesus. I got online, I started with articles, I bought some books. I’m going down this path of modeling and let me say this, modeling Jesus, the book, Lead Like Jesus, and I know I’ve said Jesus’s name probably a thousand times in this podcast. But the book by Ken Blanchard, Ken makes a really, really powerful, compelling point. And he says, if you measure, and I mentioned this on last week’s episode, maybe you heard me say this, but he says that, “What’s the measure of a good leader? How do you measure how effective a leader is?” And he said, “There’s two ways that I would say you measure them. Number one is the impact that the leader has on the people he leads when the leader is not in their presence, meaning what the leader has said or done or emulated or embodied. How does that impact the people in terms of their thinking and their behavior, their actions that they take after they’ve left the leader’s presence?” And he said, “By that measure, Jesus has 2.4 billion people, roughly, that are still, their thinking is being influenced and their behavior is being influenced by his teachings 2,000 years after he passed away.”

 

And the second measure of a good leader is he said, “The people that you lead, what do they say about you when they’re not in your presence? Are they talking behind your back and going, oh, my boss is such a jerk and they’re not doing the things that the boss is trying to get him to do?” That’s the difference between a boss and a leader. They say, boss is you do what the boss tells you to do when you have consequences for not doing it, but a leader, you do what the leader not tells you to do, but inspires you to do, whether there’s accountability or consequences or not, because they’ve inspired you, right? A boss forces you to do things. A leader inspires you to want to do things. And so, the other measure Ken Blanchard talks about is how do the people that you lead talk about you when you’re gone? And of course, the 2.4 billion Christians around the world, they talk about Jesus in the highest regard possible. So, that, for me, was compelling. That’s what actually got me to get that book Lead Like Jesus.

 

So, actually, it’s interesting how the series of events happened. Justin shared the notes or shared his goals. Then I bought these books, I started reading these books, and then this song popped up called What Would Jesus Do on my playlist, like on a recommended Apple playlist? And I hit play. And in that song, they talk about the wristband from like the late 90s, early 2000s, the WWJD wristband, What Would Jesus Do. And I’m like, I’m going to buy that wristband just as a reminder, because I’m studying Jesus, I’m learning about him and who he was and what he presented and I already have a general idea. I grew up Catholic, right? I have read the Bible. I have a general idea. And so, I’m going to buy this wristband as a reminder that I’m really– kind of my accountability buddy that’s on my wrist every day to aspire, to actually do what Justin Donald, what his number one goal is, which is to be more like Jesus and to aspire to that.

 

And again, all of this that I’m sharing right now is not meant to be preachy. It is not meant to be, this is what you should do. I’m just sharing you what’s become really powerful for me because those four letters on my wrist, WWJD, are directing my behavior. And let me tell you how. I’ve completely stopped drinking. I’ve stopped taking cannabis, which I took for sleep for seven years, ever since I had cancer. What else am I not doing? There’s certain things I’m not doing that I’m not comfortable telling you that I’m not doing, but just, I’m not doing things that I used to do that weren’t above my highest good. I’m treating people better. Literally, it’s like this impeccable– and by the way, it’s this impeccable aspiration to follow through with the highest moral standard that I possibly can in everything that I do. And it’s being supported by the book Lead Like Jesus. It’s being supported by the book In His Steps. Those are the main two.

 

And here’s something that’s really interesting. A friend of mine, a neighbor of mine, a friend, his family is not religious. And he texted me yesterday. And he said, “Is your family still going to church?” And I got like, tingles. And I said, “We are. Can I call you?” And by the way, my kids go to church. Our family goes to church because I went to church as a kid, and I felt like it really helped instill a strong moral compass within me, and I wanted to help reinforce that with my children outside of just me and my wife telling them what they should or shouldn’t do. So, that’s why I went back to church and this was, I went back to church probably a year or so ago, but I told him yes, and I called him and I said, “What’s going on? Why are you asking if I’m going to church?” And he said, “Hal, I can’t explain it.” He said, “I grew up Baptist. I was very religious growing up.” He said, “In my 20s, I became spiritual. I’ve always prayed, but I really went far away from religion. And my family, it’s never been a part of our lives.” And he said, “I can’t explain it, but I’m feeling called, as a father, to bring religion or spirituality or Jesus Christ.” He goes, “I’m still trying to make sense of it, but I feel like I’m being called by God to bring my family closer to God and bring religion or spirituality into our lives.” And he shared a story about this man that he– well, and I don’t want to get too detailed. But I said, “I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve gotten the same calling the last six months. And it’s weird how all these signs and all these things are coming out of nowhere.” And I just say, “I’m here to support you in any way that I can.” And I actually sent him last week’s podcast. I said, “This might be a good one to listen to. It’s me reflecting on religion and spirituality and a little bit of the journey that I’ve been on.”

 

So, this, I know I went deep into the specific story and examples and lessons around my journey to be studying Jesus Christ. But again, this is not from a place of– from my perspective that there’s only one way. This is an invitation for you to ask yourself who in your life is living, and they could be in your life where Jesus is not physically in my life, right? And he’s not the only person that I model, by the way. Like, I model different people in different areas of life. I don’t model Jesus on how to make money and then grow my business, right? I mean, I’m sure there’s a little bit of overlap, but for the most part, I’m studying different people, like, what books? Giftology, for example. I’m reading Giftology by John Ruhlin to talk about gifting or learn about gifting effectively. I’m reading a book called Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. The subtitle, When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life. I am a people pleaser and I realize that it’s deeply ingrained in my subconscious. I immediately want to say yes to everyone to please them. And not often, there’s some pros to that, but it can often be a bad thing. And I overcommit to things and I say yes and later regret it. And so, that book Boundaries is helpful.

 

Here’s a book I’m reading. Difficult Conversations Don’t Have to Be Difficult by Jon Gordon and Amy P. Kelly. In fact, I read that book. It was an easy read. I finished it because I was preparing for a difficult conversation with someone on my team. So, rather than figure it out on my own, the fastest way to improve any area of your life is to model someone else who is more competent, more knowledgeable, and more experienced in that area. And in this case, it was Jon Gordon and Amy P. Kelly who wrote a book called Difficult Conversations Don’t Have to Be Difficult. And by the way, if you’re having a difficult conversation in your life, I highly recommend that. And this other book, Boundaries, I recommend that too because that was also based on me realizing that as a people pleaser, part of the reason I’m having difficult conversations is because I am not setting effective boundaries, and I need to get better at that.

 

So, I want to end with the question for you. Who are you modeling for success in your life right now? Who were you modeling for success in your life right now? And it doesn’t need to be one person. For me, it’s John Ruhlin for gifting, Jon Gordon and Amy Kelly for conversations, Henry Cloud for Boundaries, Jesus Christ for my overall moral compass, right? You follow? Like, one way to do this, by the way, is to write down the areas of your life that are important, the Wheel of Life exercise where you divide your life into eight different areas. You’ve got marriage, parenting, finances, health, fitness, happiness or mental health, relationships, friendships. Divide your life into those areas and then ask yourself, who are you modeling for success in each of those areas? Who are you modeling for success in each of those areas?

 

Another way to do it is to look at your goals. If you’ve got your goals for this year, look at your goals and ask yourself, are you modeling anyone in each of these areas for success? And the ways to model, you don’t have to have a person that you can talk to about these areas. Some of these, you’re reading a book. I just shared with you four areas of my life, four different people that I’m modeling. Well, five of you include Jon Gordon’s coauthor, Amy P. Kelly. But five areas of my life that I’m trying to improve, and I am modeling people by reading four different books in those areas or more than that, but you get the point. Reading books. That’s the lowest hanging fruit. That’s the easiest way to learn from someone who has gone ahead of you in achieving success in an area of your life.

 

So, with all of that, don’t let this podcast go to waste, meaning take action. Take action. Actually, write down the areas of your life or your goals that you’re trying to achieve and then identify at least one person or one book, the person could be an author, in each area of your life that you want to model so that you can accelerate your success in that area. All right, goal achievers, I love you so much. If you are still listening and you didn’t get turned off by something I said somewhere in the middle, thank you for staying until the end. Again, I love you. I appreciate you, and I will talk to you next week.