Breaking Free from External Metrics and Finding True Worth: A Deep Dive with Craig Beirdneau

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hey everyone, Welcome back to the Emotional man Weekly Podcast. We are really excited to dive into our next conversation, Craig and I. Again, this is Craig Beggenau. He is a performance coach who helps powerful people see how powerful they really are. His coaching company is Seeker Leadership. He's simply phenomenal, working with faith and family focused leaders and entrepreneurs. Last week we talked about how we can get wrapped up in this idea of pursuing financial freedom but ending up in personal purgatory because of how we tie our sense of worthiness to these external metrics and circumstances If they didn't. We're going to flush that out a little bit more about how tying worthiness to external metrics, or success external metrics, can leave us feeling empty inside. Craig, welcome back. Let's take it from there, Craig. What are your initial thoughts about this? How does tying our success and worth to external metrics leaves us feeling empty inside?

Speaker 2: 1:14

Yeah, I think the biggest thing that comes to mind is we have no control over external metrics. I guess not external metrics, but over outcomes, over external outcomes, over achieving. I can make $1,000 this week. I can't actually control if somebody pays me $1,000. I can control the inputs that would lead to that. I can make sure I talk to 100 people a day, post on LinkedIn, do the things network, take people to what I do, the things that I do to make that happen. But ultimately I can't control if someone knows that or not.

Speaker 2: 1:50

Covid could happen tomorrow. I pray that it does not happen tomorrow or ever again. But there are certain things that are outside of our control and when we place our personal meaning and who we are outside of that we yeah, empty. I think is a great suffering, is another great word. It's inevitable because we will never achieve, we will never become, we can never control if that happens or not, so almost we're leaving it up to luck. If it does happen. And if it doesn't happen, then where does that leave us? Feeling right, it doesn't leave us feeling awesome. I know that on those days when I'm not as focused as I should be, I know how I feel and it sucks.

Speaker 1: 2:34

What's funny we often talk about in reference to leaders and business executives, this.

Speaker 1: 2:42

But you know where? I see this a lot, and especially in my conversations, because in a lot of our previous guests we focused a lot on the family and kind of this tension between being a business leader, running a company and raising a family, and one of the questions I've often asked at the end is how do you know if you're a successful family? Well, how do you define success as a family? And a lot of and this is very natural, and I think I have often fallen to this they start referencing their children. My children feel loved and one of the things that I see, when we kind of place success on how someone else feels, on how something is going on, how the growth of the company or the happiness of our children is, like you said, outside of our control, leads to anxiety, leads to feeling powerless and it becomes overwhelming. Not only that, but when your children leave and all of a sudden they're off having their own children and they're not inside your house anymore, it actually leaves a lot of parents and especially stay-at-home moms.

Speaker 1: 3:54

Yeah and it any. On the flip side, if you look at someone who works a lot and defines themselves by their profession and all of a sudden they're not able to do that profession anymore, whether you're an executive or an owner, or your I don't know a doctor, and something happens, you're no longer able to do those things. Defining who we are, our value, placing that outside of us on a circumstance Means that circumstance can change and we realize all of a sudden that Internal bastion of worth and identity is gone. It's empty. We become empty, we are powerless. How do you respond to that?

Speaker 2: 4:36

Yeah, I think powerful people don't like feeling powerless. Yeah, I see this a lot in the, especially like the CEOs and co-founders that I work with. Like, I'm gonna will our company Into making it happen and sometimes don't even roughly really successful. Elon Musk, bill Gates, steve Jobs he's really amazing. To personal people who have done amazing things, I'm a truth is yes, could any of them hadn't been able got because we have replaced any of them? Look another leader and Got the same result? Maybe not, I think, you argue. Probably not in the same way, it's for sure, but it's, you know, unless didn't build Tesla by himself, right, they probably have 50,000 employees or whatever it was. They started with a handful of employees and went from there. Same kind of thing. Right, it's this. I'm gonna will my company into making something happen.

Speaker 2: 5:31

And News flash you can't control the outcome, right, and it's. It leaves to burnout, right, it leaves to feeling. I think burnout's one of the biggest ones, and when burnout happens, it's usually yeah, I'm taking care of my wife and kids, or my husband and kids, or my partner and kids, the way that they want to be taken care of. It's usually not that it's. That is usually one of the first things, I get pushed to the wayside and and then it's all me. I stopped having one-on-ones of my employees and I stopped doing the things that are gonna lead to the company being great and achieving what I want. It's gonna lead to them telling me they have to step up to the play and do more Then they should be doing, and which is gonna lead to burnout even quicker, and I think it's a common problem.

Speaker 1: 6:18

It's common problem that I work with if you know what I love about burnout, when you think about the idea of burnout, it's like burning from the inside out. You have nothing left inside you have, you're an empty tank. And why is that it's? We feel like something outside of us has to be a certain way and we give all of our energy to it, all of it, and until there's nothing left. So let's say we have an entrepreneur out there, we have a mother out there.

Speaker 1: 6:52

They are trying to wheel the circumstance to change so that and, and I think, if we're all honest with ourselves, we want circumstances to be a certain way so we can feel a certain way. We want to give our all so that we can be satisfied with ourselves. We, we can. And then that's not, and that's not a, that's not detrimental to feel that way. Sure, but if we are giving all of our inside, all of our energy, all of, we're capable to try to establish some kind of outcome. We're afraid of something we don't want to feel failure. We feel like we have to. I think that's the biggest lie we tell ourselves. Oh, I have to. I have to answer this phone call, I have to answer this email, I have to respond to this customer and why is the have to there? What are your thoughts? What? Why do we lie to ourselves when we say we have to?

Speaker 2: 7:48

A really good question. My thoughts went, pull me like disappointment. I think is normal, right. If I was running for Governor, senator of Utah and I didn't win, you're gonna be disappointed and that's normal and natural. Did you fail technically? You did not become. If I didn't become that, then technically we failed right and are achieving that. But If you do everything within your power To make something happen, that's all you can do. Okay, we, when we assign it, when we assign that meaning outside of ourselves, we, you're constant anxiety, constant worry, constant, just yeah, powerlessness, right, those kinds of feelings.

Speaker 1: 8:34

So I think you keyed in on this idea of powerlessness. We assign all the power to a circumstance, so we say that we have to. So, for example, the family wants to go on outing, I said I'm sorry, I have to work, the family wants your retirement, tension is sorry, I have to answer this employee. I have to answer that there's a fire at work. I have to.

Speaker 1: 8:54

And so we give our power of choice over to a circumstance and we lie to ourselves. Yeah, because we want to shift the blame, the disappointment, to somebody else. So do we don't have to own the disappointment or the shame of feeling like the business is more important than the family right now. I'm not, and again I'm not saying that sometimes a business priority has to take Place in order to support your family, but I think we need to start telling ourselves the lie that we have to, that we are, that we don't have the power of choice in this moment. What are your thoughts on? How do you help people who are constantly in the habit of giving their power away to circumstance, to other people? How do they reclaim that power and become powerful people?

Speaker 2: 9:52

Yeah, this is a great question. I think one of the process I run into is asking is it true? And then saying, okay, what if the opposite was true? Which is part of the work questioning what if the opposite was true? So I have to work in order to save this client and miss family dinner tonight. What if the opposite was true? Right, if it's okay, the opposite would be I don't have to work right now, I can go spend time with my family and we will still have the client. Right, and it gets you to speak.

Speaker 2: 10:25

One egg really puts in things in perspective, bringing that choice back to them. Right, you get to choose. Yes, our choices have consequences and there are trade-offs all the time that we make, but ultimately, you get to choose. So, when people say I just I don't have time for that, whenever somebody says that I now I'll instantly say you're choosing not to do that thing in exchange because you are doing something else that's more important. It's just completely fine. Don't say it's like the opposite, which is like I know.

Speaker 2: 10:57

I have to do this, I have to get this done in order to feel good about the weekend. Right, that's another one working late on the weekend or before vacation. Okay, I got to get these things done so that I can be clear conscience for the weekend or whatever million that I put my all in, or whatever right? Yeah, I love what you said about shifting the blame Like we have. I have to because of this is shifting the blame to some other object and when you have to sit in that it does not feel, it does not feel good all the time. That's, that's, I think. But you said, like, how do I help people? It's running through that process and then eventually running through that process and then they start to run themselves through that process of okay, do I have to do this? No, I don't have to do this. What are the potential consequences?

Speaker 2: 11:45

You hear it all the time when really successful business owners realize they don't have to bend over for every single client, not saying there aren't times when you have to put a fire out and work late here and there. Problem is when it becomes a habit, and with every client. That's when you know you're doing something, there's something there, and when you feel like, yeah, we have to do whatever we need to do to save this client, because it happens all the time, which there are companies where it happens all the time. We're sacrificing things that, yes, clients matter. Obviously we're not going to be in business without clients. But what are we in business for? We're in business to be with our family. We're in business to live the life that we want to live. We're in business to create the life that we want to live. So it's weird.

Speaker 1: 12:29

Yeah and I think it's really segues we're going to end this session on this note, but also it really bridges to the last piece of our conversation is if we have the power to choose, how do we know what and when? To choose? Work, family faith, and that's what we're going to really dive into and how you can make that choice, knowing that it's the right quote, unquote, right choice. That's where you can get into, that's where the most difficulty, but the most satisfaction and peace is found, is realizing they. You know we're on this journey understand why we might or why we're chasing financial freedom or whatever goal it is, so we can feel a certain way.

Speaker 1: 13:15

If we tie how we feel to an external circumstance, it can leave us feeling empty inside because those circumstances are outside of our control, leaves us feeling anxiety, and when we do hit that circumstance, then sometimes we realize that our feelings about ourselves haven't really changed. So now we're going to talk and in our next episode we're going to be talking about how we can measure what matters most by identifying what's most valuable to us and how choosing what's valuable our values, our character, who we are becoming can really lead to that satisfaction and help us with that choice. So join us in our next episode. I'm really excited to handle this last conversation together.