E23 Giving Up The Need To Be Right All Of The Time

Ashlie: Welcome back to another episode of Tactical Living by LEO Warriors. I’m your host Ashlie Walton. 

Clint: And I’m your co-host Clint Walton.

 

Ashlie: So just sit back relax and enjoy today’s content. 

Clint: In today’s episode I want to talk about teamwork. You know I started a detail over five years ago where I had a partner that was teaching me the ins and outs of dealing with the homeless and it seemed like every day I went to work and no matter what I said, no matter what I did I was wrong and we’re both officers. She had a little bit more seniority than I did but there was nothing that gave her power over me other than of course my boss telling me that she going to guide me to teach me to know what I need to do. But I had my own ideas. I had my own ways of doing things just as she did. So after maybe a month of working with this partner I got to a point of where every day I dreaded going to work. Because I was wrong no matter what I did. And in my opinion, we weren’t being productive and making a difference in any way. 

Ashlie: And I remember that time very clearly because it impacted our home life significantly. You would come home; you were exhausted all of the time. It took a lot to get you out of that funk and actually into the reality of like hey baby you’re not at work anymore like I’m your wife.

 

Clint: Yeah and it completely just screws up your whole day. And I would come home and I’d just like I don’t want to deal with anything. I am mentally drained, I’m physically drained and I don’t want to deal with life and I’m not saying that in a negative aspect. But I’m saying that of I just want to turn on the TV and completely close myself off to the world. So after dealing with this, her and I parted ways she went on to newer and better things for herself and I worked in the team environment for another four plus years and had no issues. And it was great. You know I worked on great teams, I had great partners and a lot of it was because I was given the freedom to really accomplish what I knew I could accomplish, and I didn’t do it alone. And I’m not saying that, my partners were huge in that and my bosses allowing me to do that was even more amazing. But now I rewind maybe a year ago now I got another partner. He had more seniority than me, but you know I liked the guy. Him and I have always gotten along but he’s a very gruff individual put it that way. Super nice guy once you get to know him and very vocal in his thoughts and opinions. He stepped into our team and him and I started working together and every day he would give me gruff over everything I wanted to do or explain to him well this is why we do things. And he didn’t agree with that. So I started letting that affect me more and more every day till it got to the point of I didn’t want, I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing anymore. I still did my job to the best of my capabilities, but I wasn’t enjoying work as I did the previous four years. And then I recognized everything that I said to him or he said to me is one of us had to always be right. We both battled this every day of this is how we do things. And he would say to me, well why do we do it this way? And then I would explain it. He said well I’m not going to do it that way. And so I would get pissed off over that and he would get pissed off that, I would get pissed off at him for wanting himself to do it his own way and use his own ideas and approach things in a different way just because they’re different than mine I didn’t agree with them. Doesn’t mean I was wrong; doesn’t mean he was wrong. But we both wanted to be right. So in every day both of us just kind of said hello and went our separate ways. And until I really sat down and recognized, I was doing the same thing to him that my previous partner did to me and I realized that wasn’t fair to him and it wasn’t fair to myself because I wasn’t, I was coming home so stressed out and he was doing the same. And it led to other issues at work in reference to that just nothing serious just very minor problems. After recognizing this you know I took a different approach and really let him express what he wanted to express and do what he wanted to do. And he had some really good ideas and it let him be more open to accepting my ideas as well. And we started working together instead of working against each other and over time our friendship still is there I believe and him and I really, we get along, if he has his idea, he’ll do it and I won’t say anything about it. If it doesn’t work, he’ll see his failures. I don’t need to bring those up to him and I don’t need to protect him from making those. All I need to do is do what I do best and all he needs to do is what he does best. And after working through that him and I, there’s no tension anymore. There’s nothing that holds either one of us back. Now the environment has changed, and we actually ended up working together again and I believe that you know him, and I can fully work together. I wouldn’t want to work with him on a day to day basis because I know it would lead to issues of each of us wanting to control the situation and him having his way and me having mine. But it’s something that we can work through in a team environment with eight other officers that we work with.

Ashlie: You know as you’re sitting there telling me this story and telling the listener your feelings and how you were able to recognize those inhibitions in yourself based on your own past experience. There’s a story that comes to mind and I’m doing a training right now through Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi. And if anybody doesn’t know who Dean Graziosi is. He’s one of like the best marketing sellers that you will ever come across. You can YouTube one of his marketing videos and you’ll see what I’m talking about. But in the training he’s discussing the worst time in his life when he was going through a divorce with his wife and throughout the whole time it’s just agony like you every day he didn’t have any drive, he didn’t have anything extra to give and it got to the point where he started to wonder and worry about what happens when my kids start to have summer vacation. What happens when the holidays come? Like I’m not going to be able to be instilled in their life and be a part of all of these big elements watching them mature and grow. Because I’m only going to have them half of the time and it’s killing him. Every day he’s just sobbing, and he has no understanding of how to make this right. He knows that he and his now ex-wife couldn’t make it work. They tried and it just it wasn’t happening. It was making it a worse lifestyle for their family and more importantly for his children that he knew they had to part ways that he couldn’t find this medium to where he would still be that immense father figure that he knew he needed based on his own upbringing and he had this, everybody calls it aha. We call it Clint calls it a fucking moment. And he was sitting there at his house and he said the only way that I can still make this work and see my kids as much as I want to and still be involved in their birthdays and the holidays is if I learned how to be best friends with my ex-wife and this is really similar to the story that you just shared Clint. Because at the time that he decided to make that change, his entire world and his outlook on it and even his daily function instantly flipped around for him. And when you have the ability to it’s like step back for a second and see the big picture in an unbiased view, I really think you’re able to pull from things that you’re never able to pull from when you’re caught up in those emotions. Because had you looking at the situation back when you were having those nights coming home feeling such distress and the agony of going to work again the next day, you would have never been able to see like wow I’m actually doing this to somebody else. Like I don’t want anybody to feel that way that I felt, and I think when you have the ability to flip the situation around and take a step back, you’re not wrong for changing your mind. You’re not wrong for saying I didn’t see things clearly the first time around. I think if anything else it just makes you grow when you have the ability to say you know what? The way I viewed life back then is not my reality today. The way that other people function around me might not be the same as what I choose for my own life. And having the ability to do that in the strength that it does require in order to pull yourself out from that. It really allows you to embody a completely different experience in life that you can then take and carry with you forever. It would be my thought process that you’re probably not going to be in that same situation as deep as you once were now having these tools in your back pocket.

Clint: Absolutely not. And in every day that I have gone back to work there’s no reason for hanging onto those feelings of anger. Those feelings of I want to be right. Because the only person it truly affected was me. 

Ashlie: And we go through a lot of that with our coaching training you know as students ourselves. And it’s constant and we have to remind ourselves there is this amnesia effect that we teach to our own clients where it’s so easy to forget these tools and you know forget to utilize them in the moment when you’re caught up in emotion. But the more and more that you pull from that and that you’re able to do it even after the fact of a situation let’s say that it becomes easier in that environment, in that argument or dispute or whatever it is to restart to recognize those things and then they become second nature almost. And when you have the ability to identify how you want to control your own mind and you understand that nobody else has the right to be the CEO of controlling your own thoughts and emotions, then you’re really able to enjoy your tactical living.

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