Decisions Set the Stage, Actions Steal the Show
[00:00:00] Kyle Jetsel: I think many people, when they look at this, would, would assume that easy decisions means, like you said, the action that goes with those decisions, right?
[00:00:11] Cameron Watson: Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I live in a household where my kids decide all the time to be good. My wife decides to follow your program every day.
That doesn’t mean they actually do it. And they don’t get the reward for making the decision. I’m sorry. This is not overtaking anything. Nobody gets credit for making a decision. They only get credit for following through and doing the decision. I decided when I was a young kid, I wasn’t going to drink alcohol.
Well, that’s great. You know what? The action of me being drunk all the time kind of outweighs that decision. Of course, I choose not to be drunk all the time as I drink my A& W root beer, not the Coors, whatever you thought it was.
Well good morning. Hello Cameron.
[00:01:03] Kyle Jetsel: How are you this
[00:01:03] Cameron Watson: morning? Doing fantastic. How about yourself?
[00:01:08] Kyle Jetsel: this is all just fake because we’ve already been talking for the last 10 minutes. Just so everybody knows.
[00:01:12] Cameron Watson: Yeah, but we’re really authentic in our fakiness.
[00:01:17] Kyle Jetsel: We want to make sure we’re authentic in our fakeness.
Good morning. As if we just saw each other. Yeah, we’ve been,
[00:01:22] Cameron Watson: well, you know what? Actually. I take it back. I take everything I said back. It wasn’t true. It’s not a good morning.
[00:01:32] Kyle Jetsel: It’s always a good morning. Is that A& W root beer, Cameron? Let’s be clear. It is A&
[00:01:37] Cameron Watson: W root beer. It’s my favorite root beer.
[00:01:40] Kyle Jetsel: Because it’s looked like the same color as a Coors can.
Not that I would know the differences in different beer cans, but you know, just
want
[00:01:46] Cameron Watson: to make sure. Coors? Well, when you, with
[00:01:50] Kyle Jetsel: your, with your big giant hand over it. Yeah. It
[00:01:56] Cameron Watson: makes it look like a mini can. It
[00:02:01] Kyle Jetsel: kind of does. Yeah. It looks like Shaq drinking,
[00:02:03] Cameron Watson: uh,
[00:02:06] Kyle Jetsel: yeah. So here’s where we’re going to do what we’re going to do today.
I’ll just start because I saw a picture and you want to, you can pull the picture up as, as I talk, if you want, I saw this picture and I liked it because it said, here’s the, the caption with it said, here’s the picture I showed my kids today. And I thought it was pretty good, right? It was. You can see that it’s easy decisions as a child to slide you down into this, into this gully where it becomes a lot harder.
To climb up to what they call an easy life. Now I’d probably change that easy life to something else, but let’s not talk. Let’s not do that just yet. Cause there’s, I don’t think there is any such thing as a real easy life, but it got me to thinking about where I, where, where I went with this was that as parents raising kids.
If we take the easy way out when it comes to our kids, we’re going to slide down into this chasm where we’ve got to work a lot harder to help our kids get where they need to get and us. Right. I guess my point being it’s going to be hard raising kids either way. Even if you, even if you, uh, you got to choose your heart.
Let me just put it that way. Okay. Right. And let me, let me give you an example. So pull that, pull that picture down, Cameron, and maybe this will, we’ll, we’ll do a, uh, because just recently I was chatting with the parents. who had a little girl who was very, very, very challenging. And this little girl here was their biggest challenge.
Okay. I talked to the mom and dad and they said she will not put her clothes on to go to church and for school, or I’m sorry to go to school. And she fights us and argues with us and fights us with every stinking morning. It’s like this big, nasty fight. And then by the time we finally get her, force her to put her clothes on, she’s mad and my wife is mad and I’m leaving for work mad.
And then I get to work late and she’s late for school and my wife is ticked off and it ruins our day. Right. And I said, you know what? I might have a strategy that works. Right. And so I have a son that’s been diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder. And I worked on a strategy for about a year. I mean, I really worked on creating something to help me.
Manage that part of him, but he was so bad, I would ask him if he wants to do things that he liked, and he would say no, I would say, Hey, Eric, let’s go get ice cream, and he would say no, and I’d be like, Why would he say no? He loves ice cream, right? And so I had to really figure out how to work with him to work within the parameters that he needed to get him to accomplish things in a reasonable amount of time.
And so I did a lot of work and I created this strategy and my strategy worked tremendously well with And so I shared this strategy with mom and dad and I said, here are the steps. Here’s how you do it. Follow these steps, right? You know, my cost formula. What’s the challenge? What’s the objective? What’s the strategy?
The tactics. I said, follow these tactics to the letter and see what happens. Well, in response, the dad says, You know what? I’m the dad. It’s my house. That’s, it sounds like a lot of work. First of all, it sounds like a lot of work. And I said, well, it sounds like you’re spending about an hour fighting every morning.
That sounds like a lot of work too. I said, try this work instead. It’s still work, but try this work. And see if it works better than that work, because right now you’re working like a maniac and you’re failing and you’re mad and your wife’s mad and your daughter’s mad and you’re late to work. Your daughter’s late to school.
Your wife is upset. I said, that’s work. I said, what I’m proposing is different work. And so in response, he said to me, you know what? I’m the dad. She’s the daughter. She’s going to do what I say, as long as she lives in my home. And I said, how’s that working out for you? And immediately he realized that attitude was getting him nowhere.
And he had to either, he was either going to keep doing the same things he’s always done and be mad, his wife mad, his daughter mad, and fight for an hour every morning, or try this and see, just see what happened. Try these tactics. Well, the very next day. He calls on my hotline. I have this little phone hotline where people can leave messages and it’s pretty early in the morning and I could hear his voice in his voice.
He was really excited and he said, you can’t believe it, Kyle. It took about, we followed the tactics. It took about 20 minutes. She’s happy. My daughter, my wife is happy. I’m on my way to work on time and it worked. It’s work, but it’s, it’s different work. It’s work that actually gets us to the objective we want instead of just it.
screaming and yelling and fighting and angry, right? Yeah. And so as I, as I looked at this little picture, right, it reminded me of that specific event, which is some, you’re going to work either way, right? You’re going to, you’re either going to work hard and be angry and frustrated and discouraged. Are you going to have a plan that’s going to get you the objective you want and you’re going to work happily and joyfully and it’s going to longterm be better for you, for your kids, for your spouse, all those people, right?
And it’ll keep you in a better spirit as you do things, right? So, so in that picture, it says easy life at the top, and I don’t really think that’s a good representation of what life is, because if you’re after an easy life, then you’re not in the, you’re in the wrong game here, right? This life that we live in right now, I don’t know that an easy life is ever going to be accomplished.
There’s always going to be challenges and difficulties and struggles, right? But I think that does a good job of saying making doing the right kind of work is going to lead you to a better outcomes and better results in a more loving, kind world. You’re still going to have challenges, but making, but just doing things by default, which in my mind is easy decisions is going to make it twice as hard.
You’re going to be frustrated. You’re going to be angry. You’re going to be, you’re going to be climbing upside down, right? To try to get out of the hole that has been developed because you’re not doing the right kind of work. Does that make sense?
[00:09:17] Cameron Watson: It does to me. Um, let’s give a shout out. Okay, so let’s give a shout out to, it says at visually needed.
That’s the little thing on there. Whoever that person is, great. I love this simple. It’s so simple. I love the representation. That is that simple. So, my problem with, uh, this image is actually hard decisions versus easy decisions. Which is funny because you, you picked up on easy life is not necessarily what we’re going for.
That’s the wrong game, but, uh, making decisions that doesn’t do anything. My favorite little example that I use, uh, way too often. I’m sure my kids and employees are sick of it. It’s like, all right, two or three frogs are sitting on a log. One decides to jump off. How many frogs are left on the log? And, you know, they’re like, I’m like, no, three, three frogs are sitting on a log.
One decides to jump off. How many frogs are left on the log? They say to like, no, because making a decision doesn’t cause anything to happen. You have to act, you have to choose to get engaged. And so I love that. And so for me, if I was going to change this, I would say doing hard things. Versus doing easy things
[00:10:44] Kyle Jetsel: that, that, and that it’s action.
Yeah, that’s a great distinction. I think you’re an overthinker. We’ve talked about
[00:10:53] Cameron Watson: this. I don’t know about overthinker, but I am a thinker,
[00:10:57] Kyle Jetsel: but, and I’m a thinker too, but I’m a simple minded thinker. Maybe that’s, maybe that’s the difference. So I think many people, when they look at this, would, would assume that easy decisions means, like you said, the action that goes with those decisions, right?
I
[00:11:13] Cameron Watson: live in a household where my kids decide all the time to be good. My wife decides to follow your program every day. It doesn’t mean they actually do it and they don’t get the reward for making the decision. I’m sorry, this is not overtaking anything. Nobody gets credit for making a decision. They only get credit for following through and doing.
The decision I decided when I was a young kid, I wasn’t going to drink alcohol. Well, that’s great. You know what? The action of me being drunk all the time kind of outweighs that decision. Of course I choose not to be drunk all the time as I drink my A& W root beer, not the Coors, whatever you thought it was.
[00:12:01] Kyle Jetsel: You know what, Cameron? I appreciate that because you’re, and you’re, you’ve just identified a distinction for me, which is. It’s intentions, right? We all have the best intentions. And I think, I think this we’re, we’re barking up the same tree here. You know, one of the things in my program that’s really that I think is interesting is people read, you have to take action in my program.
And by action, I mean, you have to sit down and you have to think through and write out some things, right? It’s kind of required that you write out things. Because that is an action step, right? And it requires you to think, take that action, and then go back and review, right? And here’s what I would suggest is the reason why I do it the way I do in my program is we’ve all read hundreds of books probably, and we all know what we should do.
Can we do it when we’re supposed to do it? When times get harder, when difficulties arise. Right. Can we, and do we do it? Do we take those correct actions? Right. Uh, I was, uh, I was at the basketball court last night at the Y and I shoot a lot. I shoot almost every night. I probably take 500 shots a night for no other reason than it’s my exercise.
Okay. I love to shoot the basketball. I love the feel. I love the sound of it going through the net. without even hitting the rim. I like the right. I just love that. That whole thing is my thing, right? And because I shoot so often, I’m reasonably good at it. And by reasonably good at it, I mean to a point where people go, people that are basketball players will say, come up to me and say, holy crap, you’re a good shooter.
Right. And I’ll say, hey, thanks. And occasionally one might even say. How do I shoot like that? Right? And I can identify the steps for him pretty quickly. And not only can I identify the steps for him, I can identify the steps and show them what to do right now. They’re at the gym with me. They’re in the same gym and they could start that moment.
And 99 percent of the time they don’t, they go back to what they were doing. Now, here’s what’s interesting. One kid did right after we talked, I watched him and he went over and he started doing. What I said to do just basic stuff, not nothing crazy, still fun. And a couple of weeks later, I saw him again and he said, you got, I can’t tell you how much better of a shooter I am already.
It’s only been a couple of weeks, but the simple little things you told me are working in my coaches. Like you’ve been practicing. I’ve always been practicing, but I haven’t been practicing on the exact right stuff. You know, it’s interesting. It’s not, it’s not rocket science. It’s very, very simple, but nobody wants to do the very, very simple things.
In that moment. Sometimes, right? Nobody wants to do the right work. Everybody thinks about going to the gym and shooting a thousand shots you’re practicing. Well, practice doesn’t make perfect. It makes perfect. Yes. Perfect practice makes perfect, right? Okay. Yep. And what I’m saying is, yeah, if you’re, if you’re gonna, if you want to, if you want to do something, you should do it as correctly as you can.
Again, nobody’s going to be perfect, right? I mean, even, even with nobody guarding me, I’ll never shoot better than 80 percent just because of the variables in life. Right? Sure. But 80 percent to most people when they’re watching me is like, holy crap, this old man can shoot. Right? Yeah. You know, and people stop regularly once a week or so, somebody will walk over to me and just fist bump me.
And I know what it means, right? They’re seeing me shoot, and they’re like, this dude can shoot, right? So, and, the point is, the right, it takes the right work, right, and we’re still never gonna be perfect, you know, I mean, we’re still gonna, but I think, I think, are you willing to do it, and can you do it, and are you willing to do it, when you’re supposed to do it, even if it’s not the funnest thing, or the easiest thing, or the most glamorous thing, or, Right?
All those things that don’t, that don’t give you that feeling, so to speak.
[00:16:54] Cameron Watson: So, uh, and I heard a, I heard a, um, definition of character from Hiram W. Smith, and it might be like he, he was quoting someone else. So maybe he was quoting Stephen R. Covey, because this sounds like a Stephen R. Covey thing. But he said that character, by definition, is the ability to act after the emotion, which, or to act upon a decision after the emotion that caused you to make that decision has passed.
And I, you know, it stuck with me. I’m a big fan of Hiram W. Smith. Just so you know, I enjoy his style of teaching. I love the things that he teaches. I also enjoy Frank, uh, Stephen R. Covey, but, uh, when I was younger, I think I was probably 21, maybe 22 when I, um, heard that I, it, it made me think about how hard it is for me to continue to follow through After the emotion that caused me to make the decision is there more importantly for me after another emotion is introduced.
So it’s not the, the original emotion fades. I still want to be healthy, but it’s the other emotion that gets in the way of wanting that, whatever it is for me at stake, I don’t care about ice cream, but you get, you know, I would rather have another sandwich then. piece of cake. I would rather have a steak over ice cream.
So for me, it’s that. So I, while you’ve been talking, I’ve been drawing a little bit. And so let me share, show this with you. And let’s, let’s get this look in the way that we can agree upon.
[00:18:45] Kyle Jetsel: We might never agree upon something, right?
[00:18:49] Cameron Watson: Yeah. So you do have to decide. And I think maybe we should have a, like a planning session, uh, in there, uh, you know, before we get to that part.
Maybe, you know, cause you’re right. You kind of need a plan.
[00:19:10] Kyle Jetsel: Even, even if you don’t have a plan, even if you act, you can, you can, the action alone will give you feedback. Correct? Yeah. And we gotta pay attention to our outcomes, right? And so maybe, yeah, little micro, maybe as you’re acting, maybe as you’re acting, you’re paying attention to the outcomes and adjusting your action, right?
So , right? Because you can act, for instance, you know, let’s go back to basketball. The kid that I told how to do it, he could continue to do what he was doing and he’s taking action. He’s practicing. Mm-hmm, , right? He’s just practicing on what he’s already doing, and. You know, that may not that, and if he doesn’t adjust to the fact that he’s not getting the outcome he wants, right?
And let me, let me, maybe
[00:20:09] Cameron Watson: I