Episode 104
Can't Fix Stupid, But I Can Sure Point it Out
Ever feel like your negative thoughts are dictating your daily actions and outcomes? This episode dives into how different generations manage their "head trash" and offers actionable insights to shift your mindset from negative to positive.
We explore the concept of "head trash" and how it affects workers across different generations. Also discussed are the impacts of negative self-talk on beliefs and actions, and provide strategies for turning these thoughts around. Along the way, they touch on generational differences in dealing with psychological barriers and emphasize the importance of personal responsibility in shaping one's future.
Impact of Negative Self-Talk: Learn about the disproportionate impact of negative thoughts versus positive ones, and how these internal dialogues shape our beliefs, actions, and outcomes.
Strategies for Positivity: We share actionable strategies for converting negative thoughts into positive beliefs and actions, emphasizing the role of personal responsibility.
Real-World Examples: Hear anecdotes and real-life scenarios that highlight the consequences of unchecked negative self-talk, along with the benefits of adopting a positive mindset.
Generational Trends: Understand how different generations managing their psychological barriers, with a specific focus on Millennials and Gen Z taking control of their destinies.
Resources and Recommendations: Get book recommendations and practical advice for fostering positive change within yourself and your team, ensuring a more optimistic and productive work environment.
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Brad Herda:
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Transcript
Welcome to Blue Collar B's, a podcast that busts the popular myth that we can't find good people highlighting how the different generations of today, the boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z, are redefining work so that the industrial revolution that started in the US stays in the US.
Brad Herda [:Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar B's podcast with your co host Brad and. And Steve. And Steve. And with the first pick of the 2024 draft, the Chicago Bears have ruined the career of Caleb Williams. That was fun to watch last night. That is going to be very. As an NFC north, uh, obviously you are central wherever the fuck it's called now as you are.
Brad Herda [:I am also a Lions fan. Watching that, that dumpster fire of what's going to be a quarterback situation over there is going to be interesting, right?
Brad Herda [:Yeah.
Brad Herda [:What I find more interesting is what's going to happen with the Vikings because I actually think JJ McCarthy is going to be a really good NFL quarterback to be able to manage things and go forward because his expectation levels are very different.
Brad Herda [:Correct.
Brad Herda [:Right. So which leads us right into the topic that I want to go through today.
Brad Herda [:Yes. Which is what, Brady?
Brad Herda [:Which is, you know, we have all these generations in the workforce, but yet we all have some things in common. We all have head trash.
Brad Herda [:Yeah, we do.
Brad Herda [:All of head trash. And the way we deal with that head trash is very different across the generations. You know, myself and the boomers. Right? It was there. He didn't talk about buried his deep here.
Brad Herda [:He just called himself a boomer.
Brad Herda [:Nope, I did not. Myself and the boomers, not my, not. That was not inclusive. That was a comma, comma. Read the transcript.
Brad Herda [:Wow, sorry, not so.
Brad Herda [:You win one award and you get awful arrogant there, Mister Doyle. Right. We all have our head trash. As I was saying. And myself, as part of the gen x generation, the boomers, we would bury that shit deep and not let it come out ever because it just wasn't what was expected. It was a different time, different world, different thing. And that's how we learned from our grandparents, our great grandparents, our parents, et cetera. And over the course of time, talking and going through things and making it all happen has changed.
Brad Herda [:But at the end of the day, you know, when we talk about, you know, our head trash, what is our head trash? You know, the thoughts in our head. What? What talk. Talk to me, Mister Doyle, as you are a millennial at heart and in behavioral style, what, you know, what's trans? What? What have you seen transition over your time? And even within your client organizations, across the generations on those thoughts and how people are handling them and communicating them.
Brad Herda [:Yeah. Just from a thought perspective, I would say people are spending more time right now not verbalizing what's going on, keeping it in. And this is, this is across millennials, Gen X and the boomers. While they're keeping it in, the stories that they're telling themselves aren't usually the best stories. They're always going down the negative side of things, of thinking about, hey, this is, this is what I believe is happening. Nothing positive. It's all negative. And I'm not sure how to get out of this, but I'm going to continue to tell myself these negative things because that's what comes natural to me and I have to prepare for the worst.
Brad Herda [:Yeah, there was a, I forget what book it was. It might have been a tractor factor or one of the other books from a few years ago that read. It's like ridiculous. From the research studies that have been done, the ease of negative thoughts versus positive thoughts, it's like five to one or something like that. Right. It's something insane. So I'm going to challenge our listeners as you go through your day or make yourself consciously aware of. The phone rang.
Brad Herda [:You saw the number on the phone. What was your immediate reaction?
Brad Herda [:Oh, yeah.
Brad Herda [:Was the immediate reaction, great mom's calling or, oh, great, mom's calling? Right.
Brad Herda [:It always depends on what's going on in the environment, what's going on around you. Are you going to pick up the phone or are you just going to send it to voicemail? Are you going to do the polite thing and just let it keep ringing and go to voicemail.
Brad Herda [:Or just not even let it get the voicemail and just hit decline?
Brad Herda [:Yep.
Brad Herda [:Not that you should do that to your parents and. But I'm just, but you all have, we all have clients or different things or different people in our lives. Oh, okay, great. But think about that. Think about, you know, three, four, five to one from a daily basis, from a negative perspective.
Brad Herda [:Yep.
Brad Herda [:But we get bombarded with that on the media side and on news and everything else because that's what everybody wants to hear about and everybody wants to, that's what makes people interested for some reason. I don't know why. I don't know why that always has to happen, but.
Brad Herda [:No, but I would also challenge yourself when you can you catch yourself thinking about those negative thoughts is to say, this isn't like me, and I'm going to change. Like, this isn't like me. Okay. Then what is? Like you? No, I want. I want things that I need. I want things to change. I want things to be different. I want things to be positive.
Brad Herda [:Okay, well, we have to stop talking in the negative, negative tones to ourselves.
Brad Herda [:Correct. And those thoughts, often all those negative thoughts happen to be inside. And then those thoughts lead to what? Typically, Mister Doyle, your educational savant, you went to that University of Michigan where Mister McCarthy has come from to go lead the Minnesota Vikings into glory.
Brad Herda [:Yep. And those thoughts, they actually, you start to believe them. They lead to your beliefs, your feelings of what's going on. So now that you've talked yourself up, whether it's negative or positive, you're mentally are now believing that. So if you're charging yourself with negative emotions, negative thoughts, you start to believe it. And you consistently believe it. If you're consistently doing it, versus if you're telling yourself positive things, working on the positive side, you now have positive beliefs. Yes, this is going to happen in the way or no, it's not going to have whatever your thought is, is the same goes whatever you think is going to happen.
Brad Herda [:If you think it's going to be a great day, it's going to be a great day. If you think it's going to be a shit day, you're right.
Brad Herda [:It's going to be a shit think or believe.
Brad Herda [:Right. Your thoughts lead to your beliefs.
Brad Herda [:Right.
Brad Herda [:So if you think about it and you keep telling yourself it's going to be a shit day. And this is a shit day.
Brad Herda [:So if I think Steve Doyle's a millennial, and I believe Steve Doyle's a millennial, he must be a millennial. Got it. Perfect.
Brad Herda [:I ain't got nothing, man. Other than the fact of when I was born, I could choose to let Brad impact me. Or I can just go, yep, okay, if that's what you want to believe. Facts are facts. And I got the facts, Jack.
Brad Herda [:Right. But those. So, so as leaders. So, so, regardless of the if, if you're leading a young team, an old team, the key here is to really understand that if you let people tell themselves their own stories and let that fester and let that go through, you have a very difficult battle to overcome. And I'm confident you've all had people on your teams where they are the arsonist and the firefighter. Yep. They believe all these things and they take all that stuff and they go ahead and set all the fires, but they want to be the hero and they end up being the firefighter. Because in their mind, that's how that has to work.
Brad Herda [:And managing that and even getting through that to those individuals, it's very time consuming and difficult. And often we just let it fly and it creates all sorts of other chaos inside your organization. Right. Yeah. Because those beliefs lead to actions. Right. So I, so if I thought this was going to happen and I believed it was going to happen, now I'm going to take action to let everybody know that all this shit's going to happen. Hey, we're going to have this happen.
Brad Herda [:We're going to have, oh, the Smith residence is three weeks behind schedule because we couldn't pour the foundation in time. And it's not, because it isn't, but we're going to get it out there. We're going to get the Smith family all engaged and eager and energized by sending them some communication. And now I got to be the hero. Oh, yeah, we're back on schedule, right?
Brad Herda [:Yeah. You know, and it's, it's really interesting when we talk through how the beliefs actually start to lead to the actions, because we start taking steps to make those beliefs actually become true. And that, that I find very interesting. So, you know, case in point, we've had, and so with one of my clients where there's been some, some things happen. Let's say there's things happening between employees and, you know, quote unquote, this employee, quote unquote, said something. Well, did you hear it from that in person? Well, no. This person that had secondhand knowledge of the conversation said that. This person said this.
Brad Herda [:Okay, so now I've got some thoughts put into my head about what people say. Now I'm getting pissed off about this. Now I'm getting worked up. Now I'm going to take action because I'm not going to let that person ruin my day, because now that person has fucked me off. Now what am I going to do? I'm going to, I'm literally going to go, let's go belly up. Let's go toe to toe and address the issue. What's the issue? Well, the issue is, is that I heard from so and so that heard that you said this.
Brad Herda [:No, I didn't.
Brad Herda [:Right. So those actions. Right. Those, all of those negative, those negative thoughts, those negative beliefs are leading to a negative action. That. What are those? What is the result?
Brad Herda [:Conflict and not conflict in a good way? Conflict. Conflict can be very valuable.
Brad Herda [:Correct.
Brad Herda [:That example you just went through is not valuable conflict, correct.
Brad Herda [:It is not. Right. But, but that's what happens when we allow our negative thoughts lead to the negative beliefs lead to the negative actions and you get the results from that that are negative because you have put all that negative energy into it.
Brad Herda [:Correct. I've got a friend of mine that's going through some in the transportation industry that is just going through some very horrific things right now. And it's like, oh, well, this is ABCD and all this, I'm just a shitty person, blah, blah, blah. No, no, this is nothing that you did. This was things that were done to you. So let's remember who you are, are as an individual. All this is circumstantial. This is all other people on the outside.
Brad Herda [:Not that I want to place blame, but what are the opportunities? What are the things, what are the steps that you are taking accountability for to make sure those things don't happen again? Because there's assholes in the world that just like doing stupid shit. So you can't fix stupid, but I sure can point it out.
Brad Herda [:That's right.
Brad Herda [:As you have identified.
Brad Herda [:Ding ding.
Brad Herda [:You know, so getting her to understand that it is a opportunity to reevaluate, look, and that there are things in place all around to try to recover, not just woe was mean, right? Taking, getting out of that cycle is very difficult. And we're not talking about being woo, touchy feely. Here's what it is. But be real with your own thoughts. To take those beliefs through and have that. Have that, because it's going to take that positive action along the way, which is going to get you to those results that you're looking for in the day. Right? So if you think you deserve a promotion and you believe you're getting passed over because the ownership group or the other, because, well, they just like those guys better and you're not going to go put forth the effort and make the change to go to make that happen, well, then you're going to be a shitty employee and you're going to sit there and you're going to be grumpy and you're never going to get the promotion or the opportunity because, right. You're being the grumpy pain in the ass that doesn't want to do anything.
Brad Herda [:Correct.
Brad Herda [:Because you believe that. So go have the conversation. Go have the difficult conversation. There's a. I believe you've read that book, Steve, crucial conversations in the past and have leveraged that opportunity slightly outdated today, but it's still very valuable and it's still a very valuable book to understand the concepts of those crucial conversations. Go download it. Go listen to it, go figure it out. Right.
Brad Herda [:Take. Get the energy level to go have the meaningful one on one conversation with your leaders and take control of your own destiny instead of letting others control it for you. And that's where the last episode we talked about the Stanford study, right? Taking control, doing those things. That's the difference. Where Gen Z sees things, in my opinion, is that they're going to go take control over what they can do versus have things done to them. And that's where I think, you know, millennials think again. Got it right. As I said previously, they took control of being treated, going after what they wanted to go get.
Brad Herda [:Right.
Brad Herda [:And if you weren't going to allow that to happen, cool, they left.
Brad Herda [:Yeah.
Brad Herda [:Did they always do it correctly with the conversation and get the opportunity and. No, no, not always. But if you do the right things along the way and treat other good as good humans, most things will work out accordingly.
Brad Herda [:Yeah. It really comes down to someone. We take. We talk about take control. It's really about taking responsibility and taking personal responsibility for your actions. So if you go in, if you bet you believe you've been passed over, if you go in and start the conversation negatively, like, hey, listen, you're passing me over. What the hell's going on? I've done x, y, and z, right?
Brad Herda [:I've been here 35 years, and that son of a bitch has been here six years, and he got the promotion and I didn't. Well, you've been here 35 years, and you've done nothing but the same thing for 35 years. You're really good at the one thing, but you've not done anything to grow or be a part of. You have two years of experience over 35 years because you do the one thing and that's it.
Steven Doyle [:So, you know, take responsibility, but do it in a positive way. Because if you go in and you have that conversation with a negative tone, negative results are going to happen, and you're going to end up leaving pissed off, and you're end up going to leaving, you know, saying a lot of negative things because it didn't go the way you wanted, because you didn't take responsibility for your thoughts, your beliefs, and your actions, because your actions led to the negative results, because you were negative in the negative context. So think about that the next time you start to, quote, unquote, feel like you've been at a disadvantage for some, for some reason, evaluate why.
Brad Herda [:How'd that work out in December 16? Steve.
Brad Herda [:Really? We're going to go there.
Brad Herda [:Okay.
Brad Herda [:It worked out really well. Worked out really well.
Brad Herda [:You want to know why?
Brad Herda [:Because now we're sitting here and we're having a conversation. It worked out really well. We learned a lot along the way.
Brad Herda [:Eight fucking years. But here we are.
Brad Herda [:Here we are. Right. So again, I could go down that path negatively, but you know what? It led to where we are today. So I look actually forward to embracing the challenges that I had in December of 16. Jerk.
Brad Herda [:Oh, there are some negative actions.
Brad Herda [:There it is. There it is.
Brad Herda [:There it is. There's the real feelings. I wish TMZ was here. Is there a breakup? Is there not a breakup? Is there going to be a split between BNS?
Brad Herda [:Oh, no, we just bring the b's back.
Brad Herda [:Right.
Brad Herda [:But I mean, in reality, it's Brandon.
Brad Herda [:And Scott.
Brad Herda [:But in reality, when we look at it, you have to take responsibility for it. Right there. That's the personal responsibility we have that leads to that. So. Yeah. So let's pick on that example. Right.
Brad Herda [:Those.
Brad Herda [:If you start piecing back everything. When we went, Brad and I went to certification and training together. Yeah, I had a difficult go with some of the training classes. Absolutely.
Brad Herda [:You weren't the only one, so don't worry about it.
Brad Herda [:I wasn't the only one, but it's. Sure, I wear things on my sleeve, so if I'm having a difficult time, it shows, you know, I could have had a lot of negative ta. Lot of negative self talk. There was that going on a little bit. Right. Which led to the negative. Some negative beliefs, and it led to. It didn't actually lead to any action.
Brad Herda [:It was inaction. I just sat like, but that's action. Inaction is action. It's a choice. You can shut down so we can choose to learn and learn from that and. Yeah. Does it take time? It's. You're uncomfortable.
Brad Herda [:You're learning something new. It's a whole new skill set you're learning. So, yeah, there's a lot of self talk, whether both positive or negative. Yeah, I can stand in front of the mirror, say I'm the greatest there ever was, but if I'm not believing it, you know, I'm speaking it, but not believing it. I lean to certain actions. I lean to whatever I'm believing.
Brad Herda [:Right, correct.
Brad Herda [:So I had to learn a lot of stuff along the way on how to be where we are today. And it's through people like Brad and some of my other mentors. But I had to get out of that negative self talk. I had to start talking positively, like, yes, I know what I'm doing. Build that confidence, build that competence up so that those started, those thoughts were positive, the feelings and beliefs were positive and the actions were positive which lead then to positive results.
Brad Herda [:Right. This show still exists for that very reason. Right. So remember Scott up in Green Bay, the pedal tavern dude that sent us the email after like the first six months of the show to, to be able to say, hey, you know, you really helped us get through, you helped me get through to understand and realize. And his big brother big, his little brother from Big Brothers big Sisters program of going out and working the auto industry and hustling and grinding and making, you know, a life for himself, you know, that was hugely important to us at that point in time in the show. Now that we're big stars with our tens of listeners, you know, it's, it's quite not, you know, but we're not. It's okay. We're still humble.
Brad Herda [:Yeah, Steve, Steve wears it well.
Brad Herda [:Yeah, wear real well.
Brad Herda [:But yes, that, that is part of that. And I guess one of the things I guess I want to share with the audience, right. There's two. Because I went through a lot of the same stuff with the negative feelings and thoughts and beliefs going through and like, am I doing the right thing? Am I going through this path correctly? Can I really make an impact? Two books that really supported me through that process was you are a badass by Jen Sincero.
Brad Herda [:Yeah.
Brad Herda [:Which is a really great audiobook and a very simple read. And the other one was a tractor factor by doctor. Is it vitaly? I think we're just talking about how to go through that process a little bit. And it might seem stupid and ridiculous, but there are resources out there. It's okay. And if you're looking for resources to talk through or understand how your employees might need some support along the way, we've both lived that, done that. Don't be afraid to leverage the show as a resource tool for you and your folks in your industry. So, Mister Doyle, thank you for going through and sharing a little vulnerability in a fun and exciting way at the same time.
Brad Herda [:And we'll see how Caleb Williams goes through his process. Right. Right now he's walking on water with, hey, I'm the number one pick overall and he believes what's going on and we'll see what the bears do to him.
Brad Herda [:That's right. It's. We'll save that thought for another show.
Brad Herda [:Exactly. All right, sir, have a great weekend. All right?
Brad Herda [:Yeah, you too. Thanks.
Brad Herda [:Thank you for listening to blue collar B's. Brought to you by vision for business solutions and professional business Coaching, Inc. If you'd like to learn more on today's topic, just reach out to Steve Doyle or myself, Brad Hrda. Please like share, rate and review this show as feedback is the only way we can get better. Let's keep blue collar businesses strong for generations to come.
