[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
Hello, my friend and welcome to this episode of A Call to Leadership on this two-part series, we are diving into such an important topic of the social expectations, the ways that we feel as though we are in bondage to what others expect of us how others create our own identity, how we can break free of that, and truly live fully to communicate messages with meaning and to live our purpose. I've invited a friend, an expert in this space International Best Selling Author, keynote speaker, Gordon Melville to help me unpack this, you're gonna hear some really sage advice, can't wait for to listen. And I'm Dr. Nate Salah. And this is A Call to Leadership. Gordon, so good to have you today on the show, man.
[00:00:53] Gordon Melville
Great to see you. It's been too long.
[00:00:55] Dr. Nate Salah
I know, man, it's so true. And today, it's a special treat, because we get to pick your intellect and your experience in areas that are so critical to the journey of a leader, the journey, whether it's business, whether it's family, even in life, when it comes to how we connect with one another appropriately. And you know, this just as well as I do, there's a disparage in humanity, and how we message how we communicate. You know, we're not taught this. We take communication classes in high school, but not to the level of really true deep engagement. We miss it, man, I find, and I want to hear what you think about this. In relationships. One of the critical aspects of why we miss it, is because we simply are missing the message. It's fragmented, perhaps it's misunderstood. We have some problems there.
[00:01:55] Gordon Melville
We do want to think we've been programmed in a certain direction, right? When we meet somebody for the first time, it's like, how are you? We don't really care. Matter of fact, if the answer is we get upset. Yeah. How much time do you have? Right? Exactly right, right. It's just something we say to be polite. But I think the same thing happens when we say what do you do, right with a new person. So what do you do? I really do I care. Yeah, I care. But I'm at a place in my life where I'm in my mid 50s. And I'm in a place where small talk, you know, we can talk about the weather, and we can talk about sports and whatever. But I want to sort of get to the nuts and bolts of what's going on. And so when I asked people, especially brand new people who you be, and they go gorge, your grandma's bath, buddy, and I'm like, I know, but I'm asking that way on purpose, because I'm trying to kind of interrupt their thought pattern.
[00:02:43]
And go, what did he really asked me, and so who they're being is a completely different thing. We conflate who we are with what we do. And so when we're trying to get to know somebody, most people can't tell me who they're being. Most people don't know who they're being, they focus on what they do, they can tell me that, but they can't tell me who they're being. And I think if we can understand who we're being, and we're human beings, we're not human doings. So if we can focus on who we're being, then what we do becomes an extension of who we be, in which case, we have alignment, and now we have flow. So that's a much bigger deal. But we've been conditioned the other way, we've been conditioned to talk about stuff that really in the grand scope doesn't matter. That's all we talk about.
[00:03:26] Dr. Nate Salah
This is gonna be good. How do you determine in the grand scope? What matters? That's a big question. And if our listener will have heard me talk about the necessity of sensuality, of Envision, to determine the destination first. And this is where the part of life that you think about everyday someone has their unexpected last moment or the last moment, and it's inevitable for all of us. And the question is, what will I look back on and be thankful, appreciative, have gratitude, have comfort, meaning and value and massive purpose in on that day, and it's rarely what we're talking about. But unless we live in that space, and it's not necessarily morbid, I think it's free. I think it's liberating the live in the space of one day, I will take my last breath. And on that day, I want to look back and be satisfied. And that satisfaction is not derived necessarily, in many of the things, many of the approaches many of the pursuits that we believe are necessary in life,
[00:04:35] Gordon Melville
right? You know, what you're talking about legacy in you and I talked for a long, long time, you and I are on a similar type of wavelength for a lot of this stuff. Legacy is an awareness thing. We think of legacy as end of life. I need to leave a legacy, whether that's money or stuff, or whatever it happens to be right. But legacy, by definition is just what we've left important to other people. Well, we do that every day without realizing we're doing that every day. Right? So an interaction with people at the grocery store at the banker, that may be the only time they've ever seen us. But what kind of a legacy did you leave in them? I remember a story in Reader's Digest from years and years and years ago, where this young man was walking in New York City, he walked 10 blocks to work 10 blocks home every day, but no family, no friends, very much a loner.
[00:05:20]
And he said, this is stupid, like my quality of life is in the toilet. No, I could disappear, nobody would ever know. And so he made a pact with himself and true story. He made a pact with himself one morning and said, I'm going to walk to 10 blocks to work and walk home. And if nobody smiles at me, I'm going to end myself, when I come home from work today maybe know even better than me. I've been in New York a bunch, but that's not the place to try and get people to smile at you. But he did. He walked the 10 blocks to work. Nobody smiled at him. And he walked to 10 blocks home. And one gentleman smiled at him. And one smile in the grand scope of everything may or may not be anything. But on that day to that young man. It literally saved his life. And the gentleman that smiled at him could have gone home and gone, I'm not making an impact. I'm making no impact, he will never know he saved that young man's life. And so we talked about the awareness around, you know, dropping pebbles in people's lives and watching the ripples. That smile did not create a ripple.
[00:06:17]
That smile created a tsunami, it flipped that young man's life over in a blink of an eye literally in a blink of an eye. No time, no money, no relationship, that literally in a blink of an eye, we can make that kind of change in each other with something as small as a smile. And we don't think about it because we're not aware of that. Right? So somebody cuts me off on a roundabout and I give them the burden. I'm all animated. And I'm upset because I think I've been wrong somehow. I'm probably never see that person again. But if they could speak at my funeral to your point, and go, Well, this is what he poured into me. I think he thought I cut them off because he was animated. And that's the legacy I poured into that person acutely aware. And to your point about the morbidity of it all. I don't think of it in terms of the morbidity, I think of it in terms of what's the positive legacy day to day to day to day that I'm acutely aware of what am I pouring into my kids? What am I pouring into you and the audience? What are you know, I want to make sure at the end of the day, my teeth and go you know what, yes, I poured good legacy today. And then the song about living like you're dying.
[00:07:25]
That concept, because one day you'll be right, right? One day, it will be your last day. But at that point, it's too late. Right at that point, you can't change what is you can't change what has happened. And what I hear is a lot of people on their deathbed, they don't lament what they did, they lament what they didn't do, the risks they didn't take. And so, you know, having spent a long time with Grant Cardone, he taught me a lot about having goals. And I've been a goal guy for a long time. Write them out. But once I got to a point when I started to learn about Napoleon Hill, some of the mindset stuff that he talked about goals was the last step. Right? That was the last piece. But that wasn't taught that way. And so to your point, yeah, what's the vision for my life? What do I want on my tombstone? What do I want to be remembered for, as the lighthouse as the North Star, that always to reverse engineer that to find out what my definite major purpose might be, and then reverse engineer that to find out what the goals are to get to the definite major purpose, the goal is just write themselves, they're not hard to figure out the many steps it takes to get to my definite major purpose, but it's all in view of what my vision is for my life. I had this conversation on somebody else's podcast recently about these interviews, trying to find what their purpose is.
[00:08:40]
And I said, I don't think it's different. I think it's the same for everybody. And they were like, Okay, you need to explain that. As a spiritual guy. This will make sense to you When Papa was here when Jesus was here, and they asked him what's the most important commandment he said, Love Papa, and I call God Papa because of my relationship with him. But love Papa, and then love each other the way you love yourself, and then he put the mic down. So to my mind, our purpose is to love each other, how we get to that and how that lives out through my life, or how it lives out through your life will be completely different. Because you have a different personality or different human so but the purpose is still the same. The purpose is still to love each other when you boil it all down, take off all the external crap that just sort of doesn't matter. The goal is to love each other. That's it, right? I want on my tombstone. I always knew he loved both because I know he's no Papa loves me. So I always know that right?
[00:09:37]
But I want my interaction with people on the planet, even if it's a second, I want them to know Hey, board cares about me. He gives a crap about who I am beyond business beyond everything else. At the end of it. We may not agree on stuff. There may be stuff we disagree, that's fine, but at the end of the day, I always knew he loved me and to leave that as a legacy. I think if more of us left a legacy of love instead of a legacy of judgment, and anger and frustration, and it's just there's so many things that if we can boil it all down and go, You know what I'm going to focus in this one space and just try to love everybody as much as I can. I don't have to agree with them to love them. I don't have to agree with their decisions to love them.
[00:10:19]
It always blows me away, you get people that go, Papa loves everybody unconditionally, doesn't matter. He'll meet you exactly where you are. And then as humans we go, he might love you. But I can't love you because of this. My standards are higher than his. So it's like, you know what, we need to get over ourselves. And go, you know, what, if Papa can love you just the way you are? Likely to go, Hey, I can't love you. Right? So it's being able to put that in perspective and go okay, so what does that look like? Am I like, how am I showing up? 100%? authentically, right?
[00:10:49] Dr. Nate Salah
And that's, I'm so glad you brought up the epitaph because that is a question that we should all ask ourselves, let's say should we must ask ourselves, what is the epitaph? What is it that one phrase that you would want on your tombstone that clearly encapsulates who you were, what you believed, how you behaved, what you valued on this planet, there's great power in that because it creates a pathway, say this is the non negotiable, that drives all of my decisions, it drives all of my actions in life. And then it directs in orders every step I take. And so for you, which absolutely very close to my heart, the purpose that you described, in fact, I just did a 15-part series on the subject of love from a leadership perspective, we took the scriptural verses in the ancient scriptures, First Corinthians 13, four through eight.
[00:11:52]
And every single one of those characteristics, those virtues, those attributes, applied them to what does that look like manifesting itself in leadership? What is patience look like? What is kindness look like? And so on and so forth. And the grand picture, as you said, is a grand picture of love. And I really I agree with you, I believe that is the antidote that is the answer. That is the way that we release the critical judgmental, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, power, prestige, position, mindset that is so entrenched, and how we behave as human beings. And when we do that, then we become released, it's a liberation, you can truly live at that point. And you said something that I want to go back to, because it was such an important aspect of this journey. When you talked about the goals and the steps that order your behavior. It's the message that you send every single interaction you have, but not just with humanity as a whole. It starts with you. It starts with me. You know, what is my self messaging? Absolutely.
[00:13:00] Gordon Melville
Amen. I was asked recently, because I'm a big mindset guy, right? Like nothing happens without your brain, nothing. Even the things you're not thinking about. You don't think inhale, exhale, inhale. But it's happening. Your brain is controlling, right? Okay, heart pump. I don't have to think that but it's happening because my brain is controlling that. So mindset is foundational, but I sent that to somebody, and then I must have glitched, a little bit and he said, Are you okay? And I'm like, Yeah, I'm getting this download in the moment about, there's something underneath mindset. And he goes, What is it, I said, your worth and your value, your worth, and value is skewed. If you don't think you're enough, or you think you're lacking somehow or you think you're not lovable, then the mindset that gets created out of that is skewed, because you're trying to compensate for something that you don't need to compensate for. Right?
[00:13:45]
And so if I can understand and I get my value and my identity from puppet, so I anchor myself there, because it'll never change. Right? My opinion of me changes day to day, some days, I wake up and I can jump a small building in a single bound and some days I wake up and I have not enough and I can't write, so my opinion does this. But Papa's opinion just stays the same every day, every day, every day every day and he sees completely sanctified human being child of his Well, if that's the case, then if I live out of that, plug into that and live up to that my parents and I, we bumped heads, I was raised very strict Baptist for a long time. And we didn't question anything because we've been told hey, this is the way it is and they went okay. And then once I started to think for myself a little bit and go, Okay, we there's some inconsistencies with what I'm being told and what I've been taught and I need to investigate on my own.
[00:14:33]
One of the things that we bump heads about Mum and Dad always telling me, God will come in probably will not come in to you unless you invite him because he's a gentleman. I understand what they're trying to say on the one side, but on the other side of that, I say to them, I don't think that's right. And they're like, why so is there life without Papa? And they're like, No, He breathed life into there is no life without him. If he's not in it, there's no life. And I'm like, okay, that means anything that's alive. He's already there. Because if He wasn't, it wouldn't be alive. And they're like, Okay, I'm like, so there's a difference between acknowledging, yes, he's already in me. I think what's happening is Papa that's in me is responding to Papa that's in you. And when we say, well, all the answers already inside of us, I believe that's right, because Papa's inside of me, all the things I need are already inside of me.
[00:15:22]
I think of Prince Harry, he wants to abdicate the throne. He does abdicate the throne, he brings Megan and comes to California does his thing. He had no connection to the royalty stuff anymore. But is there anything Harry can do in his whole life that will ever change the fact that he was born to Prince Charles and Lady die? Nothing. his birthright is royalty, whether he plugs into that and lives out of that it's a completely different choice. And I think it's exactly the same pop is already inside of us. But we have to choose to plug into that and live. And if we don't, then we're missing some stuff. Because we're not living as fulfilled as we could and being able to say, most humans don't want to be subservient to anybody else. No, no, I have to be independent. I want to be the boss.
[00:16:07]
Oh, that's great. How's that working for you? He already knows, I say to people all the time. Kappa loves us. And he likes us a lot. And I think there's a differentiating there, right. I know people that I love, because their relatives or their people that I'm supposed to love them. So I do. I may not like them very much, right. But Papa doesn't just love us. He likes us all a lot. And I got a done, he wouldn't like me that much. And I'm like, You're not serious, right? Like, do you understand? He knew how many hairs were going to be on your head at two o'clock any day you've been alive, that you can tell me exactly how many hairs are on your head. He knows us better than we know our so he knows what the end is. We want control. Control is an illusion outside of what I think and what I do. Everything else is I try we want to but it's an illusion. If you have pets or children, you know very quickly you learn really fast control is an illusion. There's no such thing outside of ourselves. And when I looked at people and go, so how much time do you spend learning how to control or master you. And they go, I don't spend any time mastering me. And I'm like, well, that's a problem.
[00:17:14]
It's the only thing you can control. And it's the only thing that you don't do. But you want to whine and bitch and complain about the fact that you can't control anything else in your life. Well, maybe focus on first focus on papa but then focus on becoming and one of our friends, Dr. Oliver Reed said, you can't become who you already are. We're already children of a king. You and I are princes, our wives, our princesses. Right? But we don't think that way. Right? Do I have to become No, I'm already a fully sanctified child of the King. What I need to do is plug into that and live out of that. And then all of a sudden, everything starts to line up, right? It starts to become aligned, and start to have flow. When I focus on who I'm being every day, I focus on how am I showing up for myself, as well as for anybody around me, because we talked about not being able to pour out of an empty cup.
[00:18:06]
And I had saw an illustration last year I went, Oh, that's beautiful. The lady said, you know, we spend all this time and energy and she had this clear mug sitting on her deck. And it was full right to the top with water. And she said we spend all this time and she reaches over very nonchalantly and she takes the scoop, she's on her back deck and there's this beautiful plot plant and she takes a scoop of the dirt and she drops it in the water, she stirs it up a little bit. She goes That's all the crap in your life. But then we spend all this time and money trying to get the crap out of our life. And she's trying to sift the dirt out of the right and we pour out of it right we're trying to pour into pits lower and lower and lower right. She says What have you do this focus on pouring good stuff into your life focus on the positive things focus on adding value to yourself.
[00:18:50]
And she takes his great big jug of clear water and she starts to pour it in the top of the cup and it fills up and then it overflows. But the more she pours to clear the water gets, the more she pours, the clearer the water gets now is your still crap coming into our life? Yep, can't control that. But by focusing on pouring good stuff in constantly, don't ever pour, allow the overflow to go to the people around you. And the more positive you're pouring into top, the less of the crap from your life will dump on the people around you because there'll be less and less and less and less of that right as you get refined.
[00:19:26] Dr. Nate Salah
And that is a great place to transition. And I want to talk next about some of the ways we do or good, healthy, clear liquid into our lives and eliminate some of that toxic liquid from our lives. Well, what a good place to end this first episode of this two part series. Stay tuned. He goes deeper and deeper and unravels the essence of human purpose in his own experience. Yes This is the next episode. You have to wait a week, but it is so worth it. I can't wait for you to be with us again be well I'm Dr. Nate Salah and this is your Call to Leadership.