Happy Fire Friday, 🔥

This might be the hippity-dippitiest thing I say, but it was the first step in learning how to treat people in all walks of life with consistency, and without judgment.

I try to live out my days with these three understandings:

1. Everything comes from a place of love.

2. Successful people have difficult conversations.

3. Hard truths must be communicated.

 
#1 - Everything comes from a place of love.

When a stranger smiles at you on the sidewalk—it’s fair to assume they’ve had a good day.

At the foundation of feel-good, put simply: they felt love (either from themselves or from someone else) and through an unprovoked smile, they spread that to you. 

When someone’s rude to you—it’s not because they’re a terrible human. It’s because something in their life has caused them not to feel love in that moment. Maybe it’s been like that for a while. So, they project what they’re experiencing onto their environment.

It’s something we all do.

I don’t know that this frame of thinking is the “right way”, but it’s the way that helps me view people for where they are in their journey without casting too much judgement on “why” they are the way they are.

Learning to love people for where they are at is the greatest skill we never talk about.

This understanding of how to love other people without judgement also helped me learn how to love myself the same. How to give myself the same grace that I give others.

And in my professional life, adopting this frame of mind has helped me take feedback in a really incredible way.

There have been times when my leaders have come across as a jerk, or their tone is off when they’re talking to me. In living out this first piece, I’ve found myself able to receive the meat of it without getting too upset. (Note: This does not excuse disrespect – we’ll get to how we handle that in a moment.)

#1 has also helped me continue to believe in myself, even when I’m not at my best. If something does upset me in the moment because I’m not in a great space, it helps me reflect later on the actual words and not the delivery.

#2 – Successful people have difficult conversations.

Success does not spark without friction.

Being your own spokesperson can be hard for anyone, but I think it tends to be even harder for those of us who were athletes growing up.

We were reinforced to hold in our thoughts.

That the coach’s word was the end-all, be-all.

Speaking up often resulted in suicides or punishment.

This was the hardest thing to break.

But the truth is, there’s a way to have difficult conversations in a way that is advantageous to everyone.

I outlined this formula last week, and if you’re in a place in your professional or personal life where you know a difficult conversation needs to be had—I recommend you give that a read.

It has saved countless of relationships for me (and gently ended ones that had run their course), and I have gained respect from leaders I admire for the care and courage it takes to have these types of conversations with grace.

In every profession, networking is everything. Be the person who is known for stepping up to handle such fragile things with care. You won’t regret it.

#3 – Hard truths must be communicated.

It’s one thing to be able to handle a difficult conversation when it is upon you, but it’s another thing entirely to choose to give someone truth when it feels scary for you, or when you don’t want to hurt someone’s spirit.

But deep down, you know you would want truth. Be the one who is brave enough to give it.
This one takes practice. Start small and work your way into bigger.

Kindly tell the smiling stranger they’ve got a little something in their teeth.

Tell your team you see them, and they’re killing it, and they’ve got more to give.

Let your partner know about the small thing they did that hurt your feelings.

In each of those scenarios, the cost of not sharing is much worse for every party.

Hard truths save time and propel us forward—where we’re bound to go anyway.

We're all just doing our best. But your best cannot be done while sitting idly by.

Say what you need to say. 

Say it with love.

Set your boundaries.

And as always,

Keep shooting your shot.

Tomorrow (read: in like 7 hours) I'll be jumping on a plane to Chicago to run my very first Shooters Shoot Clinic on my own!!!! 

And..... there's some other big news too (I'm feeling a snowball of momentum these days)... but you know me--I like to make sure it actually comes to fruition before sharing all the deets. ;)

Stay tuned. :) Can't wait to tell you all how my first run goes!!

Wish me luck.

BriAnna