 You're listening to barbell logic brought to you by barbell logic online coaching where each week We take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary hardship You're listening to the barbell logic podcast. I am Matt Reynolds. I'm here with my little brother Chris Reynolds And today we are going to talk about something that you have always been good at and I struggle with and that is That is self-honesty and so I have always considered myself a boyishly good-looking human being well endowed in all places and And none of those things are in fact are very true But you have always had the ability to be honest with yourself and you've continued to sort of Flesh that out in your in your in your tired days as a senior citizen that you are now at the ripe old age of 38 So let's talk about self-honesty Yeah, I mean, you know, I think about self-honesty like a Map, you know, you're given a map When you're born even though we don't really know it and then and then we go on this, you know Maybe if we're lucky like a 90-year journey or something through life And the map that we're given is the map given to us by our parents It's our parents map and our parents map is a perfect copy of their map basically when we get it but immediately we start Modeling and changing that map as we go and sort of think about things that our parents didn't know and I think about self-honesty as another one of those core things that people Have to continuously work on But also if you do work on it, it improves your life enormously And so it's just it's another good example of a place where You need to focus some attention here and think about it And it fits well within all of the other things that we normally think about as self-improvement, you know working out reading, you know growing as a as a Parent as a, you know partner to people. I mean all of these things are really really important But when we think about self-honesty the basic idea is Trying to get to the point in your life Where you are not deceiving yourself Specifically about yourself, right, but also maybe about other things as well. And so when we think about this You know we use the illustration of a map What happens as you grow up and you learn new things is that you come to find that the map you've been using To go from one place to the other through this journey of life Wasn't wasn't perfectly accurate. It also wasn't perfectly inaccurate, you know, and that's important It's not like you're getting a brand new map. You're not burning the old map You got to pull out the eraser and you got to modify the map a little bit But the problem is and I think this is where most people get hung up It's really painful To change your map it's and it's there are things that can happen in life that make it even more painful to change your map and so basically if I'll use a very simple example if If If I am of the opinion that left-handed people are all, you know They're all terribly irresponsible all left-handed people terribly irresponsible the map that I got tells me that left-handed people are responsible And I I go on, you know radio shows and whatnot and Tell everybody about my position on it. I've written three books. Let's say on how left-handed people are irresponsible Very difficult when I'm confronted with evidence That left-handed people are just like right-handed people right right and I mean I've spent a lot of time doing it Sure, and this is another concept that that I think about the idea of being pot committed Which is kind of a term that is used I think in poker or something You've just got so much time and energy and emotional investment in believing something you maybe even have a group of people you're all the people that are against left-handed people and So in order to change your opinion about this It's more painful in our lives. There are so many things. We didn't know as we were coming up There are things we don't know now that when we're confronted with new information new data It's it's kind of the adult responsible thing to do to evaluate it seriously Sure and determine whether or not something about our map maybe needs to change And you don't want to be necessarily too quick about this but overall if In the face of new evidence you don't change your opinion on something That's an irresponsible thing to do sure and so it there has to be some framework by which we we Deal with that and when we talked about several podcasts ago We talked about reading and how important reading is There is nothing that will bring more new data into your world more new Perspective into your world and getting into somebody else's head sure and reading an entire book from their brain essentially And so when that happens, there's a lot of things that you can do with that information What most people tend to do when information comes to their attention that is outside of The way that they have typically seen the world is they discount it until they reject it. That's right There's like no, that's just not true easy hashtag fake news. We're done right don't have to worry about it Nope, sorry. That is not that is not an appropriate way to deal with the world There was there there have been a lot of good studies on this The best thing you can possibly do in a circumstance like that is to look at that information and try to Wrestle with it a little bit figure out how you know, you might be able to weave it into your own World view and even if it's painful I mean even if you have to do things where you go in I was wrong about that The best approach to life is to be wrong quite a bit and to be very Be forthcoming frequently sure with how often you're wrong because then it's easy Then if you're if you're the person who always is like I can never admit that I'm wrong Then that's a tough position to be in sure you really want to be in a position where you're wrong a lot And you're like, you know, I was wrong about that. That's right. You're willing to be yeah Yeah, I I think that this podcast has gone well For me personally Over the last few years because my humor is often self deprecating humor And so when you're the butt of your own jokes and everybody's always I can't pass up a great story Where I am the butt of the joke or like that, you know, like the kind of like the jokes on me sort of thing I like telling those stories because I don't have to hurt anybody else's feelings because I'm there And so, you know, I've talked before too on the podcast about people who are so rebellious That if somebody shows them if some if another person shows them Hey, this is a better way to do it Their natural inclination is to say I'm never going to do it that way because you told me that that's the right way to do it What a terrible way to live your life I want to live my life where everyone tells me the best way to do it and and the right And then I just follow I'm like, yeah, that is now that I think about it. It is the best way I'll just do it that way. Like I don't have any problem changing My ways on things, right? And so it's um, and I think for both of us, you know, we Neither one of us while you and I sit on pretty opposite spectrums Sort of like especially with those big life things like like religiously and politically Neither one of us are holding the same map that mom and dad had Like we have both completely like one of us went one direction one of us went the other And you and I get along just fine But I think part of the reason about that is that we've both thought a lot about it And so I think a lot of people just take mom and dad's word for the thing And and often they're ingrained their their culture ingrains that into them. They never leave that culture I think one of the things that business and business success has offered us is it's exposed us to an outside world Outside of the Ozarks, you know outside of Arkansas and Memphis and Springfield, Missouri like we've been exposed to the rest of the world And so it allowed us to think about these things and maybe maybe the way they looked at it isn't exactly correct And maybe some of it is and it is some of it that they thought was great They left us with a lot of great things and so um, I think it's super important So what um, where's the place you start with this, you know, we've talked about the philosophical I'm thinking about things like have you done or do you recommend things like The the Myers-Briggs personality test or jordan peterson's understand myself or the enneagram Have you taken those before? Yeah, I've taken some I may have taken so many personality tests this point I I can't actually I have to go back to the paperwork that I printed off with the results to remember which test is which Yeah, sure. None of those None of those exposed all that much for me on this front Okay, that I could tie A a inborn personality thing or even, you know, whatever a developed personality Trade into this quality. I think the biggest thing about this quality is that it's about Being comfortable enough with yourself That you can understand that you that you were wrong about something or that you needed that Correcting your own perspective or your viewpoint or something about yourself is okay. I'll tell a story on myself So I'll do exactly what matt just said whenever You the the covet thing hit um Me and and matt and our mom and our sister We're all texting we've got this text stream that we that we go back and forth on just to keep up with each other And keep family ties closed and make sure everybody's okay And my mom one night she said, uh, okay What I want to know is what is the actual definition of presumptively positive for COVID-19 I was like, oh no problem. I got you That means that you have all the symptoms, but you know, the test hasn't come back yet and matt called me out He was like, uh, uh, that's wrong Exactly in those words And then he he he corrected me. That's when you actually get tested But the cbc has got confirmed the interesting thing about this is I had to stop for a second and think about this for myself I was like, man, I was totally wrong. I looked this up and I was totally wrong And there are it was a time for me to look back at my own like why was why that happened? Right and some people would just dismiss it and sort of laugh it off and walk off I don't I actually look at and go wait a minute. I really don't want to spread misinformation ever So this is a tiny microcosm. But what is what is the source and here's the source When you read as much as I do as frequently as I do Because it's my job. I mean this is all I do Uh, I can't always tell you where I learned something I'm accumulating information really quickly, but I don't really necessarily know that I got it from a certain place And I don't know always what I've learned from let's say a very credible source inside of a book and I don't versus What conclusion I've drawn on my own, you know, or what I've read from a newspaper. I don't know and so, um Oftentimes I'll think that I'm right about something and I'll just say it with an enormous amount of confidence Uh, and I'll be totally wrong. Yeah, you have to be called out and that's that's a trait about myself I would like to change sure to do so. I have to take certain actions to do it and I'm okay I'm comfortable going no one attacked me no matt didn't attack me in that thing It's just I need to notice this thing about myself and find some way to To do better in that sure. Yeah, I have uh, I've taken all of these personality tests And also have lived I've told some of my story in the podcast Especially in the early days of some of the hard things we've gone through in life and in marriage, you know 10 years ago more than that now 11 years ago marriage was not in a good place mostly because I was a dumb ass and um, and then just like the the the hard things of life and the gravity of life we've had miscarriages and we've had tragedy in our family and we've had major career changes and um, you know all those things have have occurred and then of course now is the business has grown and we've got You know 70 employees or whatever like that you learn you have to be self aware and self honest about Especially when you when you're the the owner and CEO of the company where you're strong and where you're weak And I don't want to ever surround myself with yes men That's the thing I'm most scared about the thing I've seen in other mentors in my life that ruin them Is they would surround themselves with people that would constantly tell them how wonderful they were I want to surround myself with people that tell me like nope You can't do it that way right and so an interesting thing about this is I don't think I've ever said this on the show and I'm actually even a little bit nervous even even broaching this this topic is that Barbell logic is known As a people company. We are a service company. We treat people extremely well, right I am a low agreeableness low compassion person personally Now that doesn't mean that I I don't care about my staff or care about my clients. I do Most of those personality tests that the one that I think is the thing that exposes The most sort of uncomfortable things is to understand myself.com. I have no relation with that like it's 10 bucks Go take it it's a blast understand myself.com, but I've never met anybody that took that and was happy with the results Right and what I found out about me is a extremely high conscientiousness Extremely high industriousness Right fairly high on the intelligence. Like I can get it again. I can focus and get shit done. No problem, right? Compassion agreeable. I am a goal driven person. I am working towards the goal So what does that mean? What that means is is that I hire my best paid people my VPs of my business are all people persons They are deeply compassionate deeply empathetic right and that bleeds into me And I've learned how to be self-aware enough to say like my I my personality is such That I don't want to have to think about that stuff But I'm running a service business like how important is compassion and empathy like extremely And so if I surrounded myself with other people who were just like me, we would not be a service company We would not be a people company right and so I think it's just and you know Like your your skill set not you specifically but the listener skill set is obviously going to be different than mine or different than yours But to recognize where your strengths are is important And to recognize where your weaknesses are and surround yourself with people who build that up is It's paramount One thing that softens the blow. I think to a lot of that is to recognize and a lot of people Don't they they haven't noticed this yet, but Usually your weaknesses are the reverse side of your strength. Of course you cannot be that's exactly right. You can't my wife is incredibly empathetic compassionate and agreeable Very low industriousness Now I wouldn't have it any other way Because we balance each other out extremely well, but I am able to get an enormous amount of stuff done Because I am a I am a bulldozer I'm afraid train moving forward And if I'm not careful, I'll run over people right and so I put people in my business that help Cultivate that pull people off the tracks. So when I'm going 200 miles an hour on the train track I don't start running over people right But if I were more compassionate, I was more empathetic I wouldn't be able to go 200 miles an hour on the tracks So the the thing is is that when you get into times of crisis like now In the middle of the coronavirus when I had COVID I'm in the hospital And I'm watching people cancel their memberships because their gyms are getting closed We have to move and move now to make Corrections and help these people in a hurry And if my worry was or you know to reach those sales targets or to or to grow the business or do the thing Like those things are only I'm able to do those things because I'm strong in these areas But I'm weak in the other and you never find that person that's strong in all of them That that person doesn't exist because like you said those those things are antithesis of each other I think there's a core thing that happens there where you know to have a really healthy relationship with You know again just being able to be completely Brutally honest with yourself if you're going to be honest at all right And I think honesty is a good thing to strive for being honest with yourself is probably number one Later, you know figure out exactly how honest you want to be with everybody else. That's fine But but be on it never lie to yourself Right just know what what it is and I think a big portion of that is having a healthy amount Of of doubt So too much doubt is a problem I mean you see people with just an enormous amount of self-doubt sure and that that can be Eeyore Yeah, and I think For for a very healthy relationship To You know being honest with yourself is is is a matter of making sure that you have the right amount of doubt about You know what you know How you who you are, you know how you behave There was a period of time And maybe a lot of you that are listening to this have Felt this before I really felt like I was fairly athletic as a kid I'm sure I felt like I could do certain things that other people couldn't do And as I got older, I sort of realized that my athleticism was mediocre at best Yeah, you know, I had to have like this moment of realization like okay, like I'm reasonably strong. You were athletic That's right. You were athletic because you played sports with me and my friends who were three years older than you Right. So then when you went and played with your friends You could dominate because you were playing with guys that were three years older than you But then when you actually got to be 17 18 years old with guys who would actually go to college and play sports You're like, oh That's what that looks like. Yeah, it's just another example of a place where you're confronted with some evidence that Maybe you don't like too much, but not liking it Shouldn't really matter. It doesn't make it not true. That's true And so you need to just fold it right into the way that you sure see yourself and and you deal without appropriately Now I know, you know, I'm 38 years old and guess what I'm not going to be a world champion golf Player, you know, I am not a world jamming golfer. I'm not And and and so if I go out and play golf now I have new information I can go Okay, I'm going to play golf today and I'm going to play purely for fun That's right because if I don't do that well, doesn't matter. That's right I'm not going to be a professional golfer and there are things in life that are this way I also think that when we think about Our own growth intellectually specifically There are just so many things that we We we can't even know all the things that we think that we believe that we know From from credible sources versus non credible sources. Sure And those are some of the most uncomfortable because those are about worldview There are worldview things that should shift as data shifts as you learn new things you learn new facts And that is super hard for for humans to do But discounting the information out of hand because it's disagreeable or it doesn't match your worldview or it doesn't you don't like it You don't like what it says about you or or something Is is not the best way to approach that information It's there's no way to grow the way you grow as a person is by understanding that information and and Moving it into your sphere of the way you see the world and the way that you operate with people around you Yep, absolutely Man, that's awesome. Uh anything else for wrap it up any practical information the more that we need to take away I think the biggest thing for most people is just to try to recognize it I think You've got to find that spot where if you want to start with a really easy one Think about the groups you belong to and we've we've had other podcasts where we're talking about this Think about the groups you belong to and then think about the opposing group Think about a group that is on the other side whatever it is Yeah, like if you were say like if you were like joe exotic And you were like hey think about the friends that hung out with me So, you know, you y'all you're all gay you love meth Uh, you you have mullets It's a tattoos and a bunch of illegal tigers and then you're like, hey, what's the other side look like right? And you're like listen other side. Let me tell you what the other side looks like carol baskin also a shitty person So the other side so maybe that's not the best example, but It is interesting to see People love to hang out with other people that are just like them That again give them that confirmation bias, right? Like yep We all love trump or we all love this or we all love this religion or we all love this thing, right? Or you know, uh, we're all blue collar. We're union guy like grandpa, right? Like our grandpa growing up He's a union guy, right? He's sheet metal union. So he literally didn't matter You know, he was kind of a Truman democrat. That's what that's what grandpa was It literally would not have mattered If we had if we had rounded up groups of people if democrats had rounded up groups of people And put them in ovens grandpa's gonna vote democrat because they're the pro union people, right? Because that was his group And that was the thing that he identified as like this is who I am And that's who he was and so I think it's very important to look around It's why I think it's so imperative To have people that you that you are friends with Who have different world views than you we had a guy that lived with us for He lived with us for about six months. It was getting a divorce and and lived with us for six months Guy could not have been more opposite than me especially politically economically and we go on great because I wasn't trying to turn him into me and he wasn't trying to turn me into him And we had great we talked about we had great conversations about it We had some like decent debates, but they were never like heated or angry Because we understood that both people still genuinely wanted what was best for humanity Like no, you know, you think about like what you're maybe you're you know without without talking about ours We're getting like your political affiliation or the way you think about economics or like their government's role in and those sort of things like Nobody who however you land on that aisle The the group that's on the other side doesn't land on that other side because they're evil and they want what's terrible for humanity They also think that what they Believe is best for humanity and so when you recognize like well We're all trying to figure out what's best and while we disagree about the way to do those things Like it allows us to confront our own sort of lack of expertise right and weakness And figure out like where are the things that I have to be better at or surround myself with people that make me better That's right. The approach is an approach of curiosity. That's all it is If you approach something with curiosity You can say, you know, I I have some facts and some I have some basic understanding of this topic But I may not be totally right about this. Let's figure this out together Sure with somebody who thinks differently than you what's fascinating You'll find you almost never do you massively disagree Sure a little bit disagree and on some core values you may disagree But you're not going to change anybody's perspective on core values anyway But you'll learn a lot about what they think and what what what happen, you know, why they're rooted in a particular position I think that's really important, especially again as you read as you approach the world Reading is the one place where I feel like you will get so much information from someone else's head And it's useful to evaluate that information now. I will say you want to evaluate it critically Critical thinking is very important in this. Don't usually just accept everything that you read Of course, just like you don't accept everything that you that you see on the news or that you see in social media You need to approach it with a critical eye But that doesn't mean that you deny everything that doesn't fit into your worldview. Sure important important thing for personal growth to To see that and to and to you know add it in to your to what you think We have lost the ability today in general for for Socratic debate that socratic method the goal of that socratic method was to to come to Define the answer together and you might even land on different answers But the goal was not to vilify the other person Or to win the debate and I think that's so often now what we see especially in the social media world where everyone has a platform Everybody has the the box on the corner the soapbox that they can stand on and it's never about or it's rarely about Coming to an answer together or or rather than You know vilifying the other side or winning the debate like everybody's so so focused on winning This is a thing that for those of you guys that have been been married guys and ladies who have been married for a very long time Like I remember Rachel and I Rachel I've always been super close friends You remember even from like the Thomas and junior high when she was one of my best friends But early in the days of our marriage in our first six seven eight years of marriage We struggled with conflict conflict was bad and we didn't like throw shit and break windows and hit each other and stuff But it was just like you could tell that both of us were in the debate to win the debate Not to resolve the issue not to reconcile And when you learn that that One it was it's been extremely helpful for me in my The rest of my life and my business life and the people I interact with once I learned how to conflict with my wife It was like listen it doesn't matter who wins what matters is like coming to Reconciliation and a conclusion that like an answer that like we're trying to figure this out together Then you're able to take that into the rest the rest of your your world And so it's been extremely helpful for us for sure So there's lots there That's incredibly solid one of the interesting things is for people who actually really desperately want to win, right? I'm going to give you a little tidbit of information One way to guarantee that you lose is to try too hard to win. That's right, right? You actually can can convince people to sort of Move their perspective on something if you approach it in a collaborative way, right? We're working on the solution together and What's interesting is if you approach it that way you'll find probably that you move a little too Sure, and that they move a little as well, right? And so I think this is just an overall approach to the world that is I don't see enough of it in the world To be honest, there's a lot going on. I mean, there's there's an enormous number of people that are doing this They're just not on social media or they're not frequently posting on social media But in places like social media and in the news and all these places Everybody has the perfect answer and everybody else is the devil and I it's just a terrible way to approach the world and so Uh, my suggestion to you is to incorporate a worldview that is that that can move that is flexible into the you know Adding additional information new data Love it. So here's what I think you guys should do and here's what I think you should do Chris And I'll I have one I need to retake again because it's been a while. I think this week We should all take The Myers-Briggs test, which is free and only takes probably 10 minutes The enneagram e n n e a g r a m I think which is free and you should do understand myself.com which costs 10 bucks And then we'll come back on a future show and we'll compare And we'll see we'll see what we're like and we'll we'll just be So, you know, we can get on this show and we can we can sort of we can sort of shout from from our from our soapbox About how you should be self-honest. Let's actually put it out there and let's actually read Where we are where we land and you'll see where our weaknesses are and where our strengths are It'll be interesting to see and compare. So don't share anything you get with me beforehand and all you know about me is that I talked a little bit about to understand myself stuff and so Mine will mostly be fresh as well and for our listeners do the same thing And then you'll know what to what what you're walking through as we walk through it and know where you land as well We'll go from there. So it's a great way to start being honest with yourself So hey, thank you for listening to another barba logic principles episode If you love what we're doing, please give us five stars on the on itunes We aren't dude. I don't know if you've seen our itunes average is 5.0. It's pretty good And we're approaching a thousand reviews So it's pretty solid our numbers. In fact, I think Partly because of the the principles series that we're doing right now along with the med series We had done in the past our numbers in march were the highest numbers We've ever had now it could also be that everybody's at home with nothing to do and they'll listen to podcast But we were about 20,000 More podcast downloads last month than we've ever been In any given month. So our numbers are fantastic It sucks because podcast advertising ain't great right now because nobody's buying anything So, you know, there's that we actually have all these advertised. I don't know if I told you this tushy I haven't said this on the podcast yet. So tushy by the way, do not Do not go to tushy.com That is not a site you want to go to It's hello tushy.com Slash logic I got on tushy.com in a first class seat on an airplane a few weeks ago Not good not good at all It's not what you want to go It's an entirely different site. Oh my god. It was a different principle entirely Hello, tushy.com. So tushy sponsored the pie. I've been working on tushy for a while. You guys know Chris knows I have never used toilet paper. I've always been a baby wipes guy You guys all know this you've heard and then a few years ago I I converted from baby wipes to bidet, which is like a giant step up I've always used tushy bidets. I freaking love them tushy. I work on them. They sponsored the podcast coronavirus hits All the toilet paper sells out. Guess what the next thing is it sells out all the bidets tushy did About nine million dollars in revenue in all of 2019 They did one million dollars in the first friday of march Holy crap in one day. So it's awesome. So if you go and this is not the official ad or anything But if you go to hello tushy.com slash logic, you get a pretty good discount off of the uh off the tushy bidets And I think they're back in stock now by the time this thing runs the way back in stock They're awesome. You don't need toilet paper people like that's archaic Stick your finger up your rear end with a toilet paper. That's no good Let's give a little shower. It's what you need a little shower. That's all that's all you need Anyway, we'll do the official ad of someone. I've been holding off on the ad because you know There's either nothing to buy or the stuff that's good to buy. It's all sold out like the tissue bidets So thanks for listening. Go get that understand myself.com Enneagram and the Myers Briggs and we'll talk about our personalities here in a couple weeks. We'll see you guys