← Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: Anchoring in Values Through Life's Turbulence
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This message comes from Pemco Mutual Insurance Company. At Pemco, their mission is to help customers worry less and live more. That's why they're all in on sharing prevention tips that empower you to prevent some of life's pitfalls before they happen. Visit pemco.com prevention from the podcast that.
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Gets you from where you are to where you want to be. Escaping the drift. This is the Weekly Drop with John Gafford. No matter what platform you're watching or listening to us on, make sure you like, subscribe and comment. And now the Drop. Welcome back to the program, everybody. This week on the Weekly Drop, we are talking about core values, what they mean, why you should have them. So I was just surfing through the old interwebs, as I do sometimes, and I ran across a post by my good friend Steve Sims, who is fighting a battle with cancer right now. He is aggressively fighting it. I like to say that he's winning. It looks like he's winning, but he's kind of in those throws where a lot of his identity and what his post about was today was about losing his identity to chemo. And he says, my identity was always kind of wrapped up in riding motorcycles and drinking whiskey and having a goatee. Well, right now, obviously, because I'm in the hospital, I can't ride motorcycles and I can't drink whiskey. And because the chemo now my goatee has fallen out. So everything that I would have said is my identity has now gone away. And I wanted to kind of take that a little bit further than what Steve said today. And because I tell a story in my book, which is when I talk about being very careful with what you make your identity out to be, and especially what you can't do is make what you do your identity. I tell a story in my book that's coming out where I talk about many moons ago, I was running a very hot nightclub in Atlanta. I mean, Esquire magazine had called us the number one nightclub in the United States. It was a very swanky spot. And then because of some random, you know, grains of sand coming through the hourglass, the world turning a certain way, the butterfly effect, whatever it was, we had a very high profile crime that happened at the club and it put it out of business. And when the club was going, I remember there was not one door that was shut to me in Atlanta. I could go to any restaurant, any table, any bar, any nightclub. And everything was always comped, the ropes always opened. And, you know, whatever I wanted was always provided because I was the guy running the coolest spot in town. And there was a new bar opening up downtown in midtown, in Atlanta. My friend Ray was opening a new place called Lava Lounge. And this is after our club had gone out of business. And I was kind of a little bit lost with what I was doing, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. And, you know, it had been a minute. And anyway, my friend goes, we should go to the opening of Lava Lounge. I said, okay, yeah, let's go. So much like I had a million times before, I didn't think to call anybody. I just figured I'd walk up and play nice. And there it was. And I walked up to the front of the line, which was a mile long, wrapped around the planet, and there was a bouncer standing there that I did not know. And I knew most the door guys around town. I did not know this guy. And as I walked up, I said, hey, man, I'm John from Cobalt. And the guy just looked at me with this blank stare and said, mad Bar has been out of business for, like, three months. You know, whatever. Back of the line. And in that moment, I know it sounds stupid, and you may listen to this and think it's crazy, but in that moment, my identity was completely destroyed because I had wrapped up everything about who I was based on what I did. And if you do that, especially if you're in a situation where things can change in an instant, you're going to set yourself up for failure. You're going to set yourself up to have a crisis of identity, or in worst cases, not be your true, authentic self to anybody that's out there. So how do you take that story and what Steve was talking about earlier and really protect yourself going forward from doing that? And it's to identify your core values. Now, in business, if you look at this, a lot of companies have core values. You see those motivational posters that are written on the walls. A lot of companies just have this is who we are, and they put it up there on the wall, and then they don't ever look at it again. The employees, if you ask them, couldn't tell you what they are. They have no idea. I try in our companies to develop core values that everybody knows, and then we make all of our. All of our business decisions based on those core values. But more importantly, you should identify and pick out core values for yourself, because if you don't, your identity is always going to be wrapped up in something that's shaky or, you know, can go away. Another Time in my life when my identity got a little rocked was I'll never forget the last time that I told people instantly that I was on the Apprentice. That show. It was, we're in New Orleans. And this girl walked up to me and she's like, you look familiar. This is before I was married, so I'm allowed to have this conversation before I was even dating my wife, so I'm allowed to have this conversation. So she walked up to me and said, you know, hey, you look familiar. And I said, oh, well, you know, you may know me from season three of the Apprentice. And this girl looks at me with this Southern accent. She goes, I thought you went to Metairie High School. I don't watch that shit. And just walked away. And I was like, wow, okay, that is no longer going to be part of my identity to say that I'm on this television show, because that's over and it's behind me. It doesn't work that way. So when developing your own core values, and when should you use these? Right, let's talk about when you should use them first before how to develop them. Number one, I talk about in networking, when people come up and ask in those networking events, I would rather tell somebody who I am as a human rather than just rattle off a resume. I find it much more interesting, and I want to hear about. I would rather hear somebody's core value than what they do for a living, because I don't care what you do for a living. If I. If I don't respect or I don't resonate with what drives you or your. What you find important in life as a human, I don't really care what you do, because we're probably not going to do business anyway. So understanding how to use that, understanding what it is, is very, very important. Now, obviously, one of my favorite books is 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. He talks about the importance of having the end in mind. So when you're, you know, when you're first thinking about developing.
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This message comes from Pemco Mutual Insurance Company. You know that moment when things take an unexpected turn and you get that sudden sinking feeling that maybe it could have been avoided. Pemco Insurance wants to help you avoid that feeling by sharing prevention tips that empower you to prevent some of life's preventable pitfalls. Because Pemco's commitment to their customers goes beyond the moment of acclaim. It's about being with their customers every day. More@pemco.com Prevention Core Values Think about where.
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You'Re trying to get, not necessarily where you are today, but where you're trying to go. You know, I think core values should inspire you. So you aspire to something greater than what you currently are. So you've got to make sure that you're aspiring to something great. So a good way to start figuring out what a core value is for you is think about defining moments in your life. Think about moments in your life when you were like, wow, this major of adversity, something terrible happened, something pivotal, pivotal, sorry that happened and what that taught you. And think what mattered most to you in those times? Was it the relationship with your family? Was it the support of your friends? Was it your ability to stand on your own two feet and persevere through really, really tough and troubled waters? What was the thing in those moments of those defining moments that really, really was important to you at your core? You know, another thing I can say is look for role models. Look for people you aspire to be what's important to them. Consider the people that you absolutely admire. What values do they embody? When you think about the people you admire the most and you have to sum them up with three words, what are those words? Is it truthful? Is it honest? Is it steady? Is it strong? Is it vulnerable? Whatever it might be, that's a great place to look. Because again, these are not just meant to inspire you, but you should aspire for greater things through these words. Once you start laying them out and you have all these words down about who you are and your core values and what's important to you, you want to narrow this down to like three or five. If you have my core values are 20 things, it's crazy. You're never going to do anything with that. But just get down to like three or five. Three to five things that are hyper important to you, that are your non negotiables, which is how you do things. There's a book called Dare to Leave Dare, Dare to Lead that's out there by Breen Brown that says the reason you should do this is because if you don't. There's a whole section on this in that book, but it talks about if you don't do this, you're going to become overwhelmed and you lose clarity. And if you don't have clarity where your core values, what are you doing anyway? You shouldn't have that. Once you get these things down and you think like, this is my core values, this is what I believe in. I believe in truth at all, in all moments. I believe in. You know, I believe in strength. I believe in whatever it is, whatever those things are for you. You need to audit your actions and ask yourself if this is what's important to me. Am I living this life? Am I living true to these words? Is this something I wish I was? Or is this who I really am? You know, in the book the Four Agreements, one of those agreements is to be truthful at all times, is to be impeccable with your word. And that means honoring and value. That means honoring and doing all things, guiding by your core principles, by your core values. You can't just sway in the breeze. That's not being honest with yourself. So ask yourself if your actions are. Do they jive with this, or is this just something you're doing as an exercise? And if they don't, you got two choices. You can either change your core values to what really reflects who you are, but if you don't like who you are, maybe you got to change your actions to get more in line with what you wrote down. And then once you have these, start living them. When people ask you who you are, like, for example, wouldn't it be better to say, you know, the things that are really important to you as core value? I'm a great father. I'm a great husband. I'm a wonderful mentor to the people around me. That's who I am. Because here's the thing. A lot of things in life can change, but your love for your kids probably won't. Your ability and your desire to mentor others and see them grow won't. The situation in which you apply that skill might change. However, that, at its core, will not change. And then you got to live this stuff. You know, when you're faced with a difficult choice or you're facing a crossroads or trying to make a decision, you got to look at your core values and ask yourself, does this work with what I do? I use this in business. Every single day. Every single day, we ask ourselves that we make decisions in all of our businesses based on the core values that we've set forth. Things that, like simply Vegas, my real estate company, things like integrity above all other things. Does this jive with that? Is this person that we're talking about maybe having to get rid of? Are they. Are they living that? And if they're not, they have to go, they cannot stay. Culture of collaboration. Are all of our people bringing something to conversation that's important to us? Easy exit. Is this the easiest part? Do we ever give anybody a hard time about leaving our company? Absolutely not. Because it in our core values not to do that. We live those things because a it makes everything better, but primarily it makes your life easier because you don't have to think as much. You have this set of internal guidelines, this barometer of what works for you and what doesn't. And as long as you're using those core values to manage your day to day decisions, your life will fall in line with them. So hope that helped man, if this helped you, please share it with somebody else. Please like subscribe. Do all those things that help us with the advertising that pays for this thing. It keeps it going. We appreciate your support so much and I'll see you next time. What's up everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escaping the drift.com you can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five star review. Give us a share. Do something man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime time, we will see you at the next episode.
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This message comes from Pemco Mutual Insurance Company. At Pemco, their mission is to help customers worry less and live more. That's why they're all in on sharing prevention tips that empower you to prevent some of life's pitfalls before they happen. Visit pemco.com prevention.