Let's Chat with Will & Tony
Let's Chat with Will & Tony
"Grit", the Key to Success: SEG 2 of 2: Cultivating Resilience and Tough Love for Life's Toughest Lessons
Failure hit me hard during my early days in nuclear engineering, particularly at my oral board exam. The sting of defeat was a critical juncture, forcing me to choose between giving in to dejection or harnessing it as fuel for persistence. Together with my co-host Tony, we unravel the fabric of grit and resilience, the twin forces essential for triumphing over life's relentless hurdles. Our discourse takes you through the trenches of the military's most elite units, where mental toughness is forged in the crucible of the most grueling training imaginable, proving that resilience is not exclusive to physical capabilities but extends deep into the psychological realm.
When the conversation turns to the art of parenting, it's a delicate balance between nurturing and tough love that we dissect. Reliving a watershed moment with my daughter, I reveal how shielding our nearest and dearest from adversity can inadvertently deprive them of crucial growth experiences. As we navigate these intricate dynamics, we clarify the distinction between firm guidance and outright cruelty, always advocating for struggle as a natural part of developing resilience. By the end of our talk, you'll understand why letting go is sometimes the most supportive act of love and how it can empower those we care for to build their own character, much like a fledgling bird learning to fly.
Common Sense Advice for Life, helping with self-awareness, family and relationships in a complex world. Now here's Will Kesley and Tony Peck.
Speaker 2:Alright, welcome back, let's chat. How's it going With Will and Tony and Tony Today, my good, long lost friend, that's right, we're talking about grit today. I was just thinking have you been like my lost friend or have you just been my? I think I've been your found friend. My found friend, he's my brother that had a different mother, that's right. Right, a kindred spirit, tones, you said, did we come back? You can talk about some grit, tony grit.
Speaker 3:I have a little story. So, this is Is it? Going to bit a little time a little, play it out a little bit. So I was early in my career and I was in a fairly demanding field nuclear, uh, engineering. So boring yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:so my job was to run nuclear operations, move nuclear fuel around, and it takes a long qualification, which is like a six months of studying, and then it culminates with this thing called an oral board, where they put you in front of a panel of people and they just drill you with questions, scenarios, what are they afraid of?
Speaker 2:It's just nuclear. Yeah, it's just nuclear stuff. What are they afraid of, right, good grief.
Speaker 3:And so they just and it's a big deal, because if you fail your oral board, you're toast. You only get two shots at it. If you fail twice, you're out of the program. They bounce you to some other job, okay, and so I'm going up for my first oral board and I get in there and it's this big event and all these senior managers and they're just grilling me and I end up blowing it. I failed it. I get to the end and they get. It's brutal, you, they give you your scores right there to your face, like hey, uh, you didn't cut it. See you later, go back. Did you cry? Yes, so here's the deal. So you know, I held it together in the moment I walked out of the room I'd failed and I knew I only had one more chance and I, I remember I went to, I went to one of the stalls in the bathroom right there close, and I cried and I, I was emotional because just all sorts of emotions, right, yeah, and you know this is a bit is important for my family.
Speaker 3:You know, I just put in like six, seven months of studying and hours and hours of testing and everything, and I just failed. So I'm standing there and I was hot. You know because part of me was going down the bitter path of all. You know they cheated me. You know all this stuff. And you know because part of me was going down the bitter path of all. You know they cheated me and all this stuff and you know the mind's doing all these things. So I get back to work, like you know it was on a weekend, so I spend the weekend. I come back to work the next Monday and I'm still just like I was.
Speaker 3:I was emotionally messed up. And I got this manager and he pulls me in his office this is a great grip moment. And I got this manager and he pulls me in his office this is a great grip moment. And he says he goes. Tony, here's the deal. You can either be all bitter about this event and and get mad and that's going to obviously result in one path or you can suck it up and get back to studying and go prove that all those people wrong and that you do deserve to be here.
Speaker 3:Which one do you want?
Speaker 2:which one did you choose, by the way?
Speaker 3:I chose this day suck it up.
Speaker 2:Suck it up and did you get it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I went back and I studied hard and I went back to my second board and knocked it out of the park. By the way, that springboarded my career in so many ways I don't have time to explain on the radio, but all sorts of ways that was almost better than if I would have passed before.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I've gotten to counsel a handful of guys in the military. I got to go back to Fort Bragg and some others and do some training my son's in the military. He's captain of the army and I've gone back and done some training to his group and his squadron and stuff. One of the things I was learning is these kids are going to ranger school and they go to become Green Berets, that's an intense program.
Speaker 2:Intense program what I found out by talking to some of the instructors where they weren't trying to determine as much that you were physically fit, because guys come in pretty physically fit for this stuff.
Speaker 2:They really want to know I can lift so many pounds and I can do so many push-ups or whatever they were really weeding people out on their mental capacity, so what they tried to do is break them down by fatigue and food, starvation and everything else to get them to mentally break down. He also said they just, out of spite the, bust them out.
Speaker 3:The goal is if you don't bust them, 50% you're too easy on them.
Speaker 2:The reason they're busting them out for is they're trying to find guys with grit. Yeah, he says we'd bust a kid out here. He's totally prepared to be here. He should fly right through the system. We bust him out.
Speaker 1:No grit and he doesn't show up again.
Speaker 2:Huh, what they weeded out. He says no grit. They want to know if they've got that fight in them to stay in something that's difficult because they're about to become special forces.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're about to be put in some of the most heinous situations known to man.
Speaker 2:So these guys go home going how did I fail? And they go home thinking they're failures. No, all they're trying to do is find out if you have grit. They want to see if you'll pack it up, work harder and come back. Then they'll bust you out, I think four times, and the next thing you know, the guy goes right through and wins, because they've watched the guy put together the grit. So these guys think that they've lost because they're failing. No, they didn't fail anything. They actually are successes and that's why they got busted, because they keep coming back. But because they come back, they prove they have the grit.
Speaker 2:Yes, but the guys go this guy's awesome, he's got to be a great. Let's see if he's got the grit. That's the only thing missing. Bust him Because they know if they just let him through, he's coming through with an ego yeah, look at me, I'm so good. That's not what they want. They want a guy that knows how to fight for something when it's tough and when they're down and when they're yeah. This is why we I hate that word only because tough and love don't go together well. For me, love should have nothing to do with being tough, except that you love them enough to be tough. Yes, they get this tough love, saying well, I like that point. I'm going to restrict my love. No, don't ever restrict your love from them. My children deciding to have to pay for their own missions by working to make their own missions had nothing to do with me being tough.
Speaker 3:Well, it didn't have anything to do with you not loving them.
Speaker 2:It had everything to do with me saying I love you enough to allow you to have this experience with God that you'll see God's hand in your life. If you'll put the effort in, I can promise you you'll see him intervene and you will find a way. Even though mathematically you have no way to earn your way on a mission, every one of them were able to do it. I had one that was up all night long picking up dead people.
Speaker 2:Working for a morgue. Working for a morgue Called out twice a night. Go out, pick up dead people, come on, go to sleep for a couple hours, go back to school. Some parents would be like, well, he's got his schooling to do, he's not going to get very good grades. I don't care about the grades. What I cared about the grit.
Speaker 3:If you had grit you know it's a, it's a, it's great. And so many times I've seen in sports events where somebody will come off of a loss and the blame the refs, the blame the blame and justify blame, blame, blame, blame, blame why you shouldn't have lost that game.
Speaker 3:Parents, if you're hearing me, please do not do that to your kid. You are taking away their future grit and their future ability to succeed. They can come off and you can put an arm around them and say, hey, that was a tough loss, but they got to know that they lost. They got to go through that pain. They got to go through that suffering Because otherwise they just say, oh well, it wasn't my fault and they don't have to change. Nothing has to change. They don't never feel the win.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, and it also degrades the win you know, and the win, and you just don't get that feeling of success you brought up a window.
Speaker 2:I want to make sure we point out, if you have somebody blaming, oh, I can't do it because I'm in school. I got the studies, dude, I got this, I got. Blaming and justifying are dirty motives. Dirty motive. You don't pick up 100 accountability which gives you grit. I own what just happened. It's well, the guy got it. I don't care what anybody else did. What did you do to handle it? And this is something parents in particular. You've got to push back on your children when you hear them blaming something. Don't allow them that dirty motive make them accountable for what role they had I love it.
Speaker 3:Make them accountable for their hand and their decisions that they made.
Speaker 2:And it worked. I see this all the time, being somebody that well, bob didn't get his job done. Stop, you're blaming. What role? Well, if you're going to own it, then you do make sure that. Make sure he gets it two weeks early, because you already know he's a loser and he's not going to get the job done in a. Are you willing to own? Yeah, but we don't want to have grit. We don't own that because that's tough. We want to blame it and put it on something else's back. No blaming, no justifying.
Speaker 3:If you're going to get grit yeah, a person with grit always owns it. They're all they do. They own it. They come off the field and said my bad, yep, that was my bad, I could have done this, I could have done that, I could have done this.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's not the refs if we saw this at what we call a heart of a champion and I can't remember, I need to find the quote again. It's one of the early, like Lombardi or somebody. During one of the big Super Bowl games, their quarterback went out and the first couple times on the field they're just a mess and he'd come off and go. Well, the line wasn't blocking this guy. That guy ran I need different cleats blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he benched him. I slipped, he benched him and after the interview he said why did you bench your number one quarterback? He goes because he lost the heart of a champion, because people not running their routes, that's football. The grass being wet, that's football. You know all these things are football. Winners Do it despite all those things, exactly, and and the reason they do they have grit.
Speaker 2:That grit came so important. So one of the things you got to do is find a passion.
Speaker 1:If, you don't have a passion.
Speaker 2:we're going back to this conversation about a mission. If the child does not have a passion to go, I know parents it's real good to send them because hopefully they'll get a passion out there. Not the place to learn a passion, that's right. Have them learn passion before you send them out there. Get them to find the passion before they go, even if it's a little passion. Find a love in God and why they're going. Find out in their soul why they're going, what is in them that makes them want to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, hey, that's a good point, even for college. Don't push your kids to college if they don't have passion for anything. Otherwise, you're going to spend a bunch of money for them just not going anywhere.
Speaker 2:Send them to a trade school. Yeah, go, go work for a while. But I know parents find yourself. If you don't do that, then they're gonna wait. Parents, it's not your failure if your child doesn't have when did you become a psychologist?
Speaker 3:what age, 45, there you go. Did you find a passion?
Speaker 2:I had a passion you found a passion, right, I had a great corporate job. I was a ceo of a national marketing company, making great money, doing great things, hated every day of it. So you found a passion. I found I had a great corporate job. I was a CEO of a national marketing company, making great money, doing great things, hated every day of it. So you found a passion. I found my passion, and it was actually working with Dr Taylor Hartman of the Color Code. Beautiful, right.
Speaker 2:I was running his company as a CEO and then went. This is my love. I love this kind of stuff. So I'm back to school, had a family of five kids, had a great big house, had a bunch of bills Nope, I worked a bunch of jobs on the side because I had a passion and along my life I had to do hard things which gave me grit to fight through it.
Speaker 3:See, I love that story because it just proves the point you don't have to do the little path that everybody else is doing, but you got to get excited about life and you got to go find your passion. You got to have grit to take it through. And, parents, please don't take the grit from your kids.
Speaker 2:Don't steal from them. You know I told the story back about half a year ago about this family that were going to Disneyland for Christmas, remember that and all the kids had earned money to go. And one of their daughters, just before they went, came home and said hey, I'd like to use my money to donate to my friend who's got leukemia.
Speaker 3:Hey, great motive.
Speaker 2:And so the question I presented is well then, she did a great thing, she gave her money to a friend, do you let her go to Disneyland?
Speaker 2:And the answer was no. And this one I'd love to debate with people. It's my family outing the reason you don't have her go. She knew she needed $250 to go, but you steal from her the joy that comes from the give, from the sacrifice. Yeah, what you did is she gave it and then you just covered for it. So who gave it, you or her? Yeah, don't steal opportunities for your children to get grit, because grit is what carries them through. It was going to be much more important for her future success than going to Disneyland. I agree, that's a debate for another day.
Speaker 3:It is a big debate.
Speaker 2:We got to take a quick break Like join the show 607-414-CHAT or just text us there too, or you can email us at letschatwithwillantoni at gmailcom. We went over a letter today from a listener, but it's the letter. We get a lot right, which is about how do I help my kids do hard things and how to help my husband do hard things, and that's what this is about. Tough love. We want to continue on tough love as we close up the show, because there's a bunch of things we need to keep in mind when we're tough loving.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we got to make sure there's. You keep the love while you're doing the tough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, back in two common sense advice for life, helping with self-awareness, family and relationships in a complex world. Now here's will kesley and tony pack. All right, welcome back four.
Speaker 2:We left it, we only have a short time short time. I just blew up the phones, tony, I know you did I love this story about going to disney.
Speaker 2:People are like how do you leave your 16-year-old home and you Settle down. Everybody Settle down, settle down. The idea here is and again we got to get to tough love real quick because the show's closing up on us. The idea is don't steal from your daughter the gem she disagreed to, which was to do something good for someone else. Do not steal that from her soul. Yeah, don't let her have the sacrifice. Let her have the sacrifice Now, if you can find a way to allow her to have the sacrifice. One suggestion was let her have the sacrifice and say good job, way to go, great granted. Now we as a family like to have you come to Disneyland, but you're going to have to work over the next two months to bring up the $250 to pay back to the family. Yeah, okay, I could probably live with that one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I could live with that, because you still had the accountability for it right, yeah, so I'm like I could live with that one.
Speaker 2:Now what if your daughter goes? I'm not doing that. Well then, she ain't got no grit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no grit and no sacrifice.
Speaker 2:Not Okay. So there's just an idea to it, Don't. The point of this is don't steal away the pain, Don't, don't lessen the pain, Like the kid that wants to go to his friend's house. He really wanted to go to his friend's house, but he broke all the rules and so he's grounded. But you let him go anyways because he's that careful. Let them understand there are consequences. That was a grit reduction activity. You're taking away their grit chance with them. Have great. Let's talk tough love as we close up okay.
Speaker 2:So love and tough those things don't go together. I think we both agree that there's a way to be uh accountable, which is the word I want to use make sure you allow and hold your kids accountable as you hold yourself accountable to good principles, yeah one of the things my problem with the word tough love is people misconstrue it a lot of times.
Speaker 3:I'll see parents want they put being actually cruel in the guise of tough love.
Speaker 2:Wrong way to do it, that's harmful.
Speaker 3:That's harmful. That's harmful for a kid's psyche. Anytime you cross that line into abuse and you think it's just tough love. Well, it's abuse. You don't have to be mean or cruel or abusive for it to be tough love.
Speaker 2:Tough love.
Speaker 3:What I'm talking about is you are allowing them to be accountable the word you're using accountable for their decision, accountable for the consequences of the things that are happening. Let them feel the consequence While showing them, just embracing them and hugging them. It doesn't hurt to hug them. It's like my kid who lost the wrestling match. I walked down there, I didn't say a word to him, I just put my arm around him, Let him gave him a squeeze, Because I knew it was tough and I knew I couldn't take anything away and that's going to be tough on him for a long time actually, but I let him just be.
Speaker 2:I'll bet he never pulls that move again where you get stuck. You won't get stuck that way, right? Because that's how we learn it. So just keep in mind, if you make life a bed of roses and you just give the kid everything everyone wants because you want to be happy and you want to be successful, I get the desire. Parents, just be careful You're stealing from them. What makes them tough? There's an example of a chick. You ever seen a chick? An egg that's trying to hatch. Yeah, they have to fight out of the shell. I remember as a little child watching that and just horrified by this chick. I thought they were going to die and I wanted to go peel the shell off it, help the chick be born. The teacher's like you can't take that shell off that chick, you'll kill it. You'll kill it. It doesn't learn anything. It doesn't get any strength that it needs initially to start out the game.
Speaker 1:So there we go, let's go work on grit.
Speaker 2:Grit happens by first understanding why things happen in your life, to put them in the right perspective. It's not your soul always that's bad and pick up a higher power and understand they have a higher power in your life. Let them have that power That'll help you get grit when times are tough. All right, we're out of here, we're out. See you next week. It's a good show.