Your perspective your choice. Pt.2

Hello. I'm your host, Terry Baylor, along with Ralph Owens. And on today's show, we're going to discuss dealing with the unexpected, being human, and moving forward with intentionality. Hope you enjoy the show. You

have to allow yourself the time to be human. When these things happen there's gonna be an emotional response. You wouldn't be a human being if it didn't. Right? And God gave us those emotions for a reason.

But what you have to learn how to do is not to make decisions while you're in that emotional state and give yourself some time to process. Right? You wanna get hot headed and go off and tell give a person a piece of your mind and all this kind of stuff. You wanna separate yourself from them, allow yourself to emotionally process. And then when your emotions have calmed down, then you wanna take the time to choose your perspective.

Because even back then when I was still at that job, had chosen the perspective of I'm not gonna let this defeat me. I'm going to become better because I know that all things are gonna work together for my good. And even though I don't see the good in it right now, that doesn't mean that good is not coming. I'm gonna continue to be my best. Right?

That's great. Yeah. But I mean, what were your thoughts going through that moment?

So I had a mentor that I've been talking to and so I ran this scenario by them. And I've grown a lot, man, since that time. I'll just share this. Energy that I would spend in those kinds of situations in the past would be to seek vindication, to prove folks wrong. And I just, right now how I feel about it, even looking back on it, I could use that energy in a lot better way.

And in that situation, was actually, because I was doing my devotions and all that and man, I'm like, man, I wanna fight this, through the whole thing, was like, man, just hold your peace, hold your peace. So I did, I held my peace, I went in every day. And so just to kind of tree top the story a little bit, I'll just kind of deal with my exit from there because an opportunity came my way. And it was the weirdest thing, Everyone was assembled in the big room. I forget what those conference rooms were named.

And everyone was asked to give their impression of what was it like working with me, Terry? And two things stood out. One individual, I'm not gonna call his name, but he said, Terry, in some of my darkest times and most rough days, I would speak to you and you would take the time to uplift me and just share life lessons that have really transformed my life. Well, again, I believe the process of not being a victim because I could have been very toxic in the information that I was given this guy, but I wasn't, right? I was probably giving him the same information that I was giving myself.

Hey, sometimes you got to encourage yourself. So I was probably doing that. And the other thing that stood out the most is someone who had probably some insight into what was going on. He shared it, he said, Terry, I can say that you are walking the walk. You are walking your talk is basically what he said because I understand where you are.

Because he had a little inside information. I'll say this though, from a anecdotal and how to process it, one of the tips that I was given by my mentor was take everything that you are experiencing right now and everything that you want to say and everything that you feel that you need to say, write it down.

That's good.

So man, took, man, I don't know how many hours, probably a couple of hours and I just took my time and wrote everything that was going on in the moment from the scenario to how I felt about it, to how I want to see vindication about it or where I wanna see myself next. And that was probably the single biggest thing that allowed me to move forward and to get over that hurdle. And I had never really done writing in that way before. I've always done like my bucket list, what do I wanna see the next ten years? What I wanna see out of this ten year list, what can I accomplish in five years?

Out of this list, what can I accomplish in one year? So that has kind of been again, right? As we talked on the last episode about being a task or target driven, I gotta get to the top of the mountain type person. So everything that I've ever really kind of done in a writing sense has been about what are my goals? How am I gonna get there?

But that exercise of writing down what and how I felt in that moment, where I wanna see myself, how I want to see it all play out, man, it was extremely therapeutic and was really felt like I got a fresh start. Really felt like I got a fresh start after doing that because it wasn't pent up. I didn't have it on the inside anymore. So it was a sense of therapy, just going through that. No, I think that's great what you shared, man, and not taking on a victim mentality.

And I'm gonna say this, I think as African American men, man, that's an easy place for us to be. Yes. It's an easy place for us, let's just be honest, it's an easy place for us to be because the reality is, yeah, I mean, it's not just made for us to just walk through, not have any, everything's gonna be smooth sailing. We've come into the office, everybody's giving us high fives, saying, glad to see you today. It just doesn't happen that way.

And so a lot of times the road that we are traveling, especially at the levels that you guys aspire to operate at and to lead and to be influential, quite honestly, there's just not a lot of us in those roles. So again, I felt a huge privilege and an honor to be able to spend the last nine years or so of my work career working with one of my best friends.

Absolutely.

I remember several times where maybe I had something going or you had something going on and we call each other and be like, hey man, I just need to, allow me to run this by you. Well, here's the thing, we understand that not everyone's gonna have that. So again, that's what we're trying to do Leadership Sovereignty for. May have to take your ten minutes. That's the one beauty about the show being ten to fifteen minutes here.

Me go give me a quick dose. Let me go give me a couple of quick tips. So how exactly to deal with these things. So I just wanna encourage you, man, to really reflect and be intentional about how you process what you're going through. Be intentional about it.

Let me take some time, me One of the books I'm reading and I'm almost to the end of it, man, it gives some great anecdotal things about when you're in your every day. So this is And they talk about how working out, right? And they equate this to working out. They say, hey, if you're sitting in your office and you're in back to back meetings, two hour meetings, hour meeting, it is just as beneficial as doing a workout to get up out of your chair, even if you're working at home, whatever, right? Get up, walk around the perimeter of your house or walk around the living room to the kitchen, is something that's metabolic about that process and getting up and walking that brings a level of, gets your heart pumping.

It does very similar to the same thing that a workout would do for you. And so it'll give you a refresh, it'll help you clear your mind. Of course, we're not made to sit all day either. So these little bitty anecdotal things, just these small things are enough to just help deal with some complexity, of sorry, of being in the office every day and dealing with people because here's what I've learned. People are going to be people.

They're gonna have their challenges. They're gonna not be cordial sometimes, they're gonna have alternative motives. Sometimes they just might be outright dirty about it. But to Ralph's point, let's not take on that victim mentality because I believe in that it inhibits us from progress and moving forward and taking a positive outlook and action on it. So what do you think about that, Rick?

No, I agree a 100%. It was a very surreal moment. I think in that ride home for forty five minutes when we didn't talk, in my mind I was just processing like, did that just really happen? That couldn't have just really happened. Okay, how am I gonna respond to this?

Right? And I also learned in that moment that typically when there are people who go out of their way to do something like this, there's an anticipated response that they're looking for.

Oh, you're right.

And you have to be wise. Man, you have to be wise. Do not give them the response that they're looking for.

Oh yes.

Right? Because that type of situation is so calculated before they walk in, before you ever walk in the door, they already anticipate your response. So being able to take, a moment for yourself to process your emotions away from everybody else so that you can determine what perspective you're gonna take and how you wanna present yourself is crucial. You cannot respond to the first emotion that comes to mind. Right?

Because those are the moments that could make or break your career. Like in company that you may have been with for ten years, should you allow yourself to go the route of anger and blow up, it doesn't matter how much good you do or have done, you'll always be compared to that one moment. This is why it's so crucial that you take some time to allow yourself to process your emotions, you know, private and then make and be very intentional like Teri said, to determine what your perspective is gonna be and how you're gonna present yourself. Right? Because again, some people have preconceived ideas, you know, about us as men, you know, aggressive, loud, you know, whatever the case may be.

And I'm not saying that everyone does because they don't, not everyone does, But there are some who do. And when you play into that stereotype, then you give them the ability to label you. And that was something that we chose 100% not to do. We were gonna choose our perspective. We were gonna choose the way we were gonna look at this situation.

We were gonna become better and not bitter. Even if it meant moving on to another location, the reality is this, at the end of the day, if everybody who worked with us at that time was honest, in their own private time, they would say, okay, these two guys walked the line. They did their best. They served with excellence. Right?

And nobody can ever take that away from me just because so I guess what I'm trying to say is this. Believe I was at the company for nine years, had done all kinds of great work. I could have ruined it all in that one moment. And from the time I would have left the company, I would have always been compared to that one moment and everything else that I did for the other eight and a half years wouldn't have meant anything. Right?

You always take into consideration exactly how you want to be responding. You never respond off of your immediate emotion because you have to look at the downstream impacts of this. Right? Sometimes you even have to even if it takes you saying, I need this job so I can feed my kids. Right?

You got to put something in your mind that says, okay I need to take a step back and control the way that I respond. Because Terry and I say this all the time, this is this is essentially a game.

Thank you for being with us today on Leadership Sovereignty. Stay connected with us on X, formerly known as Twitter, and on Instagram by searching for Leadership Sovereignty. And just like this podcast, let's all collectively grow as we go. God bless.