Maxwell Leadership Podcast: Overcoming Instead of Being Overcome (Part 1)

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today we’re starting a brand new two part series where John Maxwell is talking about how we can be leaders who overcome instead of being overcome. Now, as John talks about this, he’s going to talk about the inside work that we need to do that many times paralyzes us. And next week, he’ll come back and talk about the external forces that paralyze us and stops us from being the leader that we should be. I’m so excited because after John’s lesson, I’m going to be joined by Tracy Morrow, and we’re going to discuss what we learned and how we can apply this lesson to our life and to our leadership. Here we go. Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
In your life and in my life, we’re going to have all kind of obstacles, barriers, difficulties in our life. I have a minor in counseling, and I used to do 30 hours of counseling a week. And in doing 30 hours of counseling a week, you very quickly begin to see patterns. One of the things that I realized is that people who give up are usually beat up with what I call the four r’s. So if you allow me in this lesson on overcoming instead of being overcome, I want to talk to you about the four r’s. I’m going to give them to you now. The first two r’s basically deal with ourselves, and they’re what I call the inside issues of our own life. Number one is regret.

John Maxwell:
I run into a lot of people that are filled with regret. Boy, I wish I wouldn’t have done this. I wish I would have done this. Oh, I missed that opportunity back there. The second r is resentment. There are a lot of, a lot of people that hold an awful lot of resentment within their lives, and those are both what I call the inside issues. What I mean by that is that if you’re going to overcome them, you don’t have to look toward anyone else. You’re going to have to do that on your own.

John Maxwell:
That’s an inside job that has to be handled. Now, the second two r’s, number three and number four, they come from the outside. The third r is resistance. Whether it’s a parent whose children are resisting their values or a salesperson that the customer is resisting their product, we all come up against a certain amount of resistance in life. And the fourth r is rejection. What happens when whatever we share isn’t accepted? Okay, so those are the four r’s. That I want to talk to you about. And if you’ll allow me in this overcoming lesson, I’m going to just take them one at a time.

John Maxwell:
Let’s talk, first of all about regret. Okay? And in your notes, Catherine Mansfield said, regret is an appalling waste of energy. You can’t build on it. It’s only good for wallowing in. You see, regret results into two things, and the wallowing that Katherine Mansfield is talking about is the first thing that results, that regret results into, and that is self pity. When a person is filled with self pity, very seldom can they accomplish very much in their life. Eugene Peterson is one of my favorite authors, and I’m reading now from his book, Earth and Altar. Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings.

John Maxwell:
Self pity is possibly the most ignoble. Pity is the capacity to enter into the pain of another in order to do something about it. Self pity is the incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality. Pity discovers the need in others for love and healing, and then fashions speech and action that bring strength. Self pity reduces the universe to a personal wound that is displayed as proof of significance. Pity is adrenaline for acts of mercy, and self pity is a narcotic that leaves its attics wasted and derelict. What happens when we regret is that we have a tendency to feel sorry for ourself and wallow in self pity. The second result of regret is guilt.

John Maxwell:
There are many times that because of regret, we feel very guilty. People that have high regret in their life don’t have a great grip on what life is all about. When I hear a parent say, boy, if I would have just done better raising my child, and I look at the parent and I say, you don’t understand. You’re not going to do great raising the child. I didn’t do great raising my children. I mean, I did my best, but my best isn’t great. You just look back and you just say, wow, you know, boy, I wish I’d have been more patient here. I wish I could have seen it through their eyes on this issue.

John Maxwell:
And what happens is that we get this idea somehow that we can live a perfect life, and so therefore, we allow ourselves to regret things that we shouldn’t be regretting, not because we would want to change it or do it better or whatever, it’s because that’s what life is. And at that moment, that’s what we knew, that’s all we had. That was our journey of the process of life itself. So our response to our past mistakes must be twofold. Number one, we need to learn from them. The most important lessons I’ve ever learned were out of my mistakes in life. And number two is, we need to let them go. And one is as important as the other.

John Maxwell:
We need to learn from them to grow. Now, hang on. We need to learn from them to grow. We need to let them go so we can continue our journey. So many people, they stop their journey at the depot of regret, and they never continue. They never press on. They never reach their level. Only because they keep saying, but I want to go back when we can’t.

John Maxwell:
Okay. One of my favorite poems that I memorized many, many, many years ago. Though we cannot go back and make a brand new start, my friend. Anyone can start from now and make a brand new end. The second r is resentment. And the chip on your shoulder can become a very heavy load. You do not have power to stop the negative stuff that can happen to you. We do not have within our own ability to form life in such a way that everything in life treats us very kindly and very fairly.

John Maxwell:
So what I learned was that I had to take control of what I could control. And what I can’t control is other people and other situations. What I can control is me. So I can’t always control what you will do to me, but I can control how I’ll respond to what you do to me. I can’t always control how you’ll think about a difficult situation, but I can control how I will think about you in that difficult situation. And the moment that I understood that, I held within myself the power to control the inside issues. And I want to say something. The inside issues are the important issues of life.

John Maxwell:
Out of it come the essence of life. Let me give you some things resentment does. Number one, resentment hurts us more than it hurts others. Number two, it causes us to focus on the wrong things. It represents a lot of wasted energy, which is, number three, it drains us of needed energy. So how do we remove resentment from our life or from the life of someone else? How do we remove resentment? Number one, admit the problem. If you’ve got that problem in your life, admit it. Number two, add value to those above and below you.

John Maxwell:
One of the greatest ways to overcome resentment is to begin to add value to other people, especially the people that you perhaps are jealous of or resent. If you add value to those above you, that’ll take care of the resentment problem. If you add value to those below you, it’ll take care of the pride. Problem number three, appreciate your gifts and uniqueness. Appreciate the very fact that you are an original copy and you’re not supposed to be like someone else, and they’re not supposed to be like you. And what is success to them may not be success to you. Number four, accept your limitations. Accept the very fact that there are certain things in life that you or I will not be able to do.

John Maxwell:
And number four, ask a friend to help you. Because if you could ask a friend around you to help you, it’s awesome. The added value that’ll give you.

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back, everybody. I just listened to this lesson. I was truly reflecting on how often I allow these internal voices to stop me and my leadership. In fact, I was reminded of Albert Einstein’s quote that says, in the middle of every difficulty, there is an option, there is an opportunity. And I think Albert Einstein is right, that a difficulty can stop you or it can propel you. And so I’m so glad today, Tracy, that we’re digging into this. I want to overcome. I don’t want to be overcame.

Mark Cole:
And so let’s go for this and let’s talk about leading through difficulty.

Traci Morrow:
Well, I love any podcast where John is really talking about the true hard work that we do internally, that part of us that really takes a look inside because we, we are the hardest person that we’re going to lead, right? And so when we have to look at ourselves, we’re the only person that we can control. So I love that we get to, as soon as he was like, the four r’s, you know, people who give up are usually beat up by the four r’s of like, let me add them. What are they? What are they? And so I put up my duke ready to, I don’t want to be beat up by these four r’s. And so we’re going to get to the first two. You know, he gives us all four, but we’re going to get to the first two and really dive deeply. And so he hits that. Those first two are an inside issues in our own life. And he starts with the first one, regret, and goes on to resentment.

Traci Morrow:
And I found myself quickly going to resentment, and I think it’s because from the time I started listening to John, I was 21, and I’ve learned from him for so long that I quickly passed through regret and got to resentment, because I find that I think I’ve learned from him enough in most of my adult life that I really learned to not live with a lot of regret. And I found that as a disservice to myself to not slow down and. And revisit it again. So I had to listen to this one a couple times, Mark. And so I want to slow down and land on regret for a little bit. So is regret or guilt something that you have had to overcome personally or with your team? Either regret or guilt.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. You know, I love this. I was thinking about a meeting that John and I had just. Just a short time ago with truly one of the top technologists, CEO of one of the most respected technology companies in the country. You would know him and the organization if I gave you the name. But he was asked a question in a Q and a that John and he was doing, and he was asked the question, what’s your greatest regret? And, I mean, without even thinking, he says, I have none. And so he was like, whoa, whoa, wait. You have none? He said, to have a regret is to not appreciate the journey that’s got me where I am today, and I’m right where I need to be, should be, and want to be today.

Mark Cole:
So every setback, every challenge, every bad decision is truly the reason, the infrastructure that created this. I think he was onto something. So when you ask me, do I have a regret? I want to say no. But to be honest with you, Tracy, yeah. I’ve got a couple of things I wish I could go back and do differently. At the same time, I’ve made major, major decisions and life decisions and conclusions in my life that led to a totally different life than I planned as an adolescent, as a teenager. But as I go back and I try to take those and I learn from those, I have found that when you use words or emotions or a perspective like regret, what you end up doing is missing the lessons that can be learned to make sure you don’t repeat it. I think this is not scientifically proven, but allow me to exercise 35, 40 years of leadership exposure to you.

Mark Cole:
I believe the greatest cause of repeated mistakes is unresolved regret from the first time. I do. I believe people live in it so much that they allow themselves to get too close to the edge and they make the same decision again because they regret it. It’s like finding buying a blue car and all of a sudden there’s blue cars everywhere. I think when you spend too much time as a leader on regretting a previous decision, you asiate yourself to that and then become that again. My challenge to all of you, I’ve seen a lot of leaders come and go. I’ve seen a lot of leaders cycle back through mistakes, get peace over the regret that’s plaguing you because it’s stopping you, hindering you from where you want to go.

Traci Morrow:
I love that you said that I wrote that down. I hope if you are not driving that you wrote that down, too. But if you are driving quick, hit bookmark and come back to that, because the greatest cause of repeated mistakes is unresolved regret. And I think that’s why I quickly rushed through that is because John, if you’ve been learning from John for any period of time, I now, at 54, started learning from John at 21, 22 years of age. When I look back now and catalog the regrets that I might have in my life, it’s because I have learned, it’s such a gift from John, is that you can, he taught us, and he continues to teach us how to process through mistakes and errors in such a way that we don’t look back on those moments with regret. Things that of course we all, of course I made mistakes. Of course I’ve made big mistakes in my life since I was 21. But he, we have all learned how to process through those mistakes so that they don’t become a regret.

Traci Morrow:
That we look back and cringe a little bit, but we look back and say, but you know what? This is what I learned from that. And that was the gold that I mined from that really ugly moment.

Mark Cole:
You know, our podcast family knows a lot of my story. I came to Maxwell leadership. It was a different name, but I came really broken, really busted. I mean, I had so many challenges. And to be honest with you, I had a lot of things to regret. And again, what I found here at Maxwell leadership was an opportunity to surround myself, not with perfect people, because I spent much of my life trying to be perfect, because I felt like everybody around me was perfect. And that whole comparison trap, I think that’s why John’s quote in the lesson today about Eugene Peterson, there is a huge difference in pitying someone else, emotionally relating to someone else and self pitying yourself. We have in our organization, Tracy, you know this.

Mark Cole:
You’re a huge part of this community. We have 51,000 coaches, speakers and trainers that have joined our team. And what I found in a lot of them is they join because they want a different tomorrow than what they have today. In other words, they’re wanting to take the sum of their life today and begin with explosive opportunity and growth in the future. And when we bring these coaches now, 51,000 of them, into Orlando for certification, one of the biggest things we do is teach them. Maxwell DNA says yesterday was nothing more than a launching pad for tomorrow. And I’m watching these people. It’s as if they’ve heard it for the first time.

Mark Cole:
They don’t have to live in guilt. They don’t have to live in self pity. They can make a difference. Here’s what I’d like to do, Tracy. We’ve not done this before, but this is what I want to do. I want to just. I want to give you an opportunity just to hear a little bit more about joining our community, joining a group of people that don’t live in yesterday, but reach for tomorrow. Check this out.

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Mark Cole:
Thanks for letting me do that, gang. We would love to have you be a part of our community, Tracy, I watch you and I watch our team really challenge ourselves to not live in this self pity concept. To not live in this guilt concept. I think you were letting related to John a little bit earlier. You got through the whole regret thing early on, but then don’t we all have to work through this resentment thing? I mean, just true.

Traci Morrow:
Here we land with 2ft on resentment. And then he talks about the, you know, the chip on the shoulder and the two kinds of, you know, the things that resentment does. You know, John has this great song. I don’t know if any of you have downloaded it, if you even know that John has ventured into writing songs, but one of his, he has, you got to look those up and download them, because one of his songs that he has written is one of the songs that just resonates so deeply with me. It’s called get over myself. And. And the start, the song starts out saying I had to learn how to get out of my way. And.

Traci Morrow:
And this is what resentment really is all about. But he talks about two different things as far as, like, do you resent yourself or do you resent other people? And so before we kind of get into resentment and controlling what, you know, learning to control what you can control instead of pointing fingers at other people. So I’ve got a two part question for you in this, Mark. And number one, as a young person, did you tend to lean more and struggle more with internally blaming yourself or with pointing the finger at others and kind of shirking the responsibility and passing the buck, so to speak? And then number two, whichever way you landed on that, how do you now help, because you can identify now as an adult, with whichever one you leaned toward, how do you help people on your team, whether it’s in your family or in your team at Maxwell leadership, how do you help those who are on your team who struggle with the opposite? So let’s say you struggled more with blaming yourself. How do you deal with team members or your kids who struggle more with pointing fingers at others and vice versa, if it’s the other way?

Mark Cole:
Boy, I’m so glad I did not know you were going to ask that question. And I’m so glad you did, because oftentimes we put resentment in the category of disliking or bitterness towards someone else. But yet I found. And so I’m so glad you asked this question. I do more resenting of myself.

Traci Morrow:
Same.

Mark Cole:
And I definitely lean that way, Tracy, to the point to where, I mean, I’ve said stuff like this, Mark, you’re so stupid. Mark. What a dummy. And I’m going, hey, I don’t even let my best friend call me that. What are you doing, Mark? Calling yourself those names? But it’s true, isn’t it? We self talk ourselves into shame, into guilt. And I would dare say to the point of this lesson today, we talk ourselves right into resenting the very qualities that make us unique, the very things that would give us strengths to become the best version of ourself. And once again, just like we talked about in regret. I think resentment begins to paralyze us, especially when we’re resenting ourself.

Mark Cole:
You ask the question, I love the second question, too. How do I relate to those that kind of point the blame or resent others? I don’t understand them, Tracy. I don’t know if I help them because people, and even right now, talking to you about, I can get on a soapbox and go, how can you put the power of your posture in the hands of someone else if it’s meant to be? It’s up to me. That’s a great statement, but that’s not a colloquialism. That’s not a cliche. I truly believe that. I was teaching earlier today, in fact, I was teaching about this concept that says, how do I gain influence with the leaders above me if they won’t talk to me? And I went, how are you in a setting to where you do not let your leader talk to you? The responsibility is on the person that wants more from a relationship, not the responsibility on someone that’s really fat, dumb and happy and don’t even know that you have a bad relationship. And oftentimes, especially in resentment, we allow other people’s lack of focus or lack of action stop us.

Mark Cole:
And I don’t know that I help people that have the blame game as it relates to resentment. If somebody is that bad, why don’t you be done with them in your thought life and move on? So, Tracy, I sound very edgy, very hard on that because I spend so much, I’m not any better than the person that blames others because I spend way too much time, as I’ve already said, resenting myself.

Traci Morrow:
It’S a hard parenting thing, isn’t it as well, situation. Because when your kids are blaming somebody else instead of taking ownership, if there’s ever a moment when they do that. But I also find that my kids are hard on themselves too. So it’s a behavior that’s also taught. We also teach that to our kids. Now that said, I also find self deprecating humor to be my humor style. So sometimes if I’m making a joke, I’m not really being hard on myself. But then I also, but truly, I do tend to be harder on myself.

Traci Morrow:
So I can absolutely relate to that. So, moving on, John then talks about, and it really all comes down to adding value. When we value people and serve them, that seems to really be the answer to it all. And I love when he put these two things that you can find there in your notes. And I hope you print out your notes, podcast listeners. He says if you add value to those people above you, it takes care of the resentment problem. And if you add value to the people below you, people moving up in the ranks, in your organization or in your company, that’ll take care of of the pride problem. And so when John talks about adding value and valuing people, it really takes care of you, either placing yourself above people or placing yourself below people.

Traci Morrow:
When you have that perspective shift, can you. I’ve got, I’ve got another question, but I, and I think it just kind of comes back to teaching our kids, teaching, talking about in our team, really making adding value and valuing people an important part of our team culture. So my last question is, when he oh, go ahead. Did you have something to add to that?

Mark Cole:
Well, I was just.

Traci Morrow:
Sure you do.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, I was going to say this whole idea of adding value to those, that you have a tendency to resent. And John says that if you add value to those above you, that you’ll take care of the resentment problem. And I totally agree with his point there. I think we have a problem sometimes with resenting other people that have no hierarchical position with us. Think of family members, that’s hurt you. Some of us podcast listeners have lost a relationship with a loved one all over something that was done and resentment set in. I can remember a time in my life I had done some terrible, terrible things, things that I just regretted and again wanted to have the self pity and wanted to resent myself. And I remember, I remember some very important people in my life really not wanting to have anything to do with me.

Mark Cole:
And I spent a while going, well, I don’t blame them. I don’t want to have anything to do with me either, but I can’t get rid of myself. And then I began to relate with how it must feel to have experienced the disappointment. And something happened magical within me. I think it’s spiritual, but we’ll call it magical for the podcast family. But it was really spiritual for me. Something began to awaken and I began to have an empathy of how it must feel to be on the other side of me. I had not heard John speak at that time about what’s it like to be on the other side of me.

Mark Cole:
And I began a three year journey. This is not accolades on me. It’s how hard it is to get over resentment once it sets in point. I spent a three and a half year journey, four and a half times a week, intentionally adding value to those people that I had hurt, disappointed and allowed for six to eight months, true resentment to set in. And I’m happy to report today that after three and a half, four years, really, the relationship was not only restored, it was better than ever. But the price tag of allowing unresolved resentment to set in your life, especially with family members, needs to be a convicting point of this lesson today. And resentment can only be as John has talked about. I love how he started this two part series.

Mark Cole:
Resentment is a personal choice, and you can’t allow resentment to get into your heart because it will take a root and it will become the fruit of the relationship. And getting rid of that toxic fruit and replacing it with love, joy, peace, a great sense of connection is extremely hard work. So you didn’t ask for this on the podcast today, but leaders listen to me. If you have resentment in your life, you want to get rid of it, and it starts with you on the inside. For you to be able to get.

Traci Morrow:
Rid of that, that was, that led, that just teed up perfectly and even began to answer my last question for you, which was, I have found this to be an age or an aging process, a wisdom. Maybe even you could be younger and have just a sincere coachability, teachability to learn this in order to put yourself through that process, to really do the deep hard work. And if I could just speak to our younger listeners, the sooner that you can put yourself, hold your feet to the fire and really ask yourself those hard questions and be coachable and teachable and listen to what Mark just said. You know, I don’t know if you do this with your team members or people who you coach or mentor and are walking through, but how do you help somebody, maybe, who has highly competitive pride or maybe is just so highly hard on themselves, how do you help them go through that or take steps in that? What you took as a three year process, Mark, I would say it was a three to five year process for me as well in my twenties that I just really put myself on the chopping block to really try to take on a sincere understanding so that I viewed myself properly. It was a spiritual journey for me. But how speak to our listeners who are like, maybe they’re listening and they have a bitterness and a resentment in them and they really want to begin the journey of getting rid of that. That how would you advise them to close out today?

Mark Cole:
Yeah, you know, I think it lies in John’s final two points. I think, number one, you need to accept your limitations, and John certainly covered that today in the lesson because let me tell you something you cannot overcome by yourself, which is going to lead me to number five, John’s fifth point. But you, you got, you have to understand that left to your own, you will continue to live a limited life. You cannot. It’s the same thing with limitations is the same thing as blind spots. You can’t see them, therefore they’re, quote, blind spots. Limitations are exactly that. They are limiting factors in your life, and you can’t overcome them without point number five.

Mark Cole:
Ask a friend to help you. And I think when you can recognize, you know, I’m really struggling with resentment right now. I’m really struggling with challenges. I’m very. I’m very self def. I really find it easy to devalue myself. And I think that when you and I understand that as a limitation and we can authentically admit that, vulnerably invite people into that part of your life, then that friend begins to call to your attention negative self talk, negative self thinking, negative self deprecation so that you are just literally trying to limit yourself from achieving the potential that you want to go after. I think, Tracy, I really do believe this and I’m so thankful for this today.

Mark Cole:
I believe it’s a mindset issue. I believe that our ability to turn overwhelmed, to turn our doubt and our stress into growth and momentum comes in this ability to stop limiting ourselves. We recently created something. I’m incredibly excited about this. It’s the mindset mastery playbook. If you’re watching on YouTube, which you should be, then you’ll see me holding this up. It’s a four step process to turn overwhelm doubt and stress into growth and momentum. It’s what we’re talking about here.

Mark Cole:
Don’t allow yourself to be overcome. Be an overcomer. And we’re going to make this available free. This is a free resource to you. We’ll put it in your show notes. You’ll be able to see it, you’ll be able to download it. You will enjoy this. There’s not a hook.

Mark Cole:
We want you to have it. And I think it’s a great, great part to what we’re studying today. A great next step. I’ll tell you this. When I years ago agreed to start this podcast, I realized that it was going to be the daily, weekly, intentional focus that was going to make a difference. You can’t do it with one fell swoop. You can’t do it with just a quick little pick me up. It’s going to take every day, every week working on yourself to change this internal mindset, to be that overcomer.

Mark Cole:
I want you to come back next week. We’re going to talk about the external factors that limit you to being an overcomer. Hey, I want to recognize one of our listeners from Nigeria. Prabharanti said that I’m watching from Nigeria. I’m multiplying value to others as you add value to me. Well done. That’s exactly what we want to hear. We’re so proud to have you in the podcast family.

Mark Cole:
And until next week, part two. Go lead well, because everyone deserves to be led well.