Do you ever wish you could possess certainty about life? In this episode, Lori and Jimmy share ideas to help you gain greater certainty and create momentum in life that creates a bigger, better and bolder future.
Episode Keys:
- Why it is critical for your growth as a person to build your confidence and resulting certainty in life.
- Taking action is the first step in creating certainty!
- How momentum carries you past your goals into new areas of growth.
- When you should trust your confidence to assist in your accomplishments to build a bigger future.
Podcast Transcript
JW:
One of the things in life that makes me so confused is that there seems to be no certainty and that I’m certain. Hey, what an opening line for the first podcast back with her, fresh from vacation. My co-host here on Live a Life By Design, Lori Few. Lori, welcome back from the Greater Boston area.
LF:
Yes! Oh, fantastic vacation! I will highly recommend it to anyone if you’ve never been. And I will say that I would highly recommend it with 26 other people and half students, half adults made for a very interesting trip. I love history. And so getting to see it from the perspective of myself as an adult and what I thought I knew versus what I really learned, but then getting to see it through the eyes of middle schoolers who you never know, what, you know, what kind of mood they’re in. Was refreshing because they were so excited and so invested in the trip. Amazing vacation. I highly recommend two and a half days in Boston. Two and a half days in New York. I would’ve loved to have done more, but we crammed as much as we could into those five days and roughly 17,000 steps a day and no one complained.
JW:
Wow. You know, my Fitbit would’ve been saying that flash where it comes up and it says, Hey, return to rifle owner. Anyway.
LF:
This is not you. You have been abducted.
JW:
Are you? Someone stole your Fitbit. Well, hey, Lori, glad you had a great week. Great refreshing time with the kids and all that stuff, and the whole group of class that your son was taking. We’re gonna visit today, folks. This is Jimmy Williams. We’re gonna talk about a few things that are, I think, important that we learn as people to make good decisions and to make timely decisions, and to maintain our motivation and positivity. And that is, Lori, we’re gonna bring it out. How do we create more certainty in a world filled with uncertainty? How’s that for a loaded question?
LF:
That’s a loaded question. And I don’t like words that start with un-.
JW:
I’m with you. I’m with you. Hey, so let, let me kind of cage this thing off first, cuz Lori and I haven’t rehearsed any of this stuff, folks, this is just straight off the cuff stuff. Here we go. One thing, Lori, I wanted to ask is a couple of questions. So, have you ever been so certain about something in life and then it came to pass that you generated this just overwhelming amount of confidence?
LF:
Do I publicly admit that or do I don’t know? Oh have I ever had too much confidence as a result of being certain about something?
JW:
Well, or just an ab abundant amount of it, right.
LF:
I try not to be, cuz you, you know, sometimes confidence can be misconstrued as being cocky. So I think there’s a fine line there when you know you’re certain about something, it’s because you’ve studied or you’ve been trained or you have experience or you have knowledge versus just thinking that you know, okay, well I, you know, read an article or I saw a TikTok video, so now I’m a, I’m a, you know, I have all this extra knowledge. I’m super confident. Turns out that you’re wrong. I would say I have gained confidence through some things that I’ve learned to be certain. So, yes, but again, fine line there. Very fine, fine line.
JW:
Well, so lemme give you a point in my situation. So, when I was a young lad evil Knievel, and if you may not remember him, you’re the young, Lori, but –
LF:
Oh, no, no, I do. I do.
JW:
Okay. He took motorcycles, specifically a Harley Davidson of that day, which was the number one brand. Everybody dug the Harley Davidson brand, right? This is before all the, the imported bikes started coming into the Americas. Anyway, he he would jump things, I mean, buses, fountains in Las Vegas. He even tried to jump the snake River canyon on a rocket kind of thing. He was the world’s first, but in my mind was true superhero. I mean, this guy was in indestructible. I mean, yeah, you couldn’t kill him, man. He took some terrible hits and he broke probably every bone in his body. But he’s kept doing it. And he always spoke. Don’t laugh when he is at that ramp with such cty. Now I wanna pick that word out because, you know, there, like you said, a thin line between cockiness and confidence. Now, I’m gonna be honest with everyone listening, I may have crossed that line a few times in my sport days when I was younger and had the, if you will, ability to back up the mouth.
JW:
You know, you gotta talk a little smack once in a while. Yeah. Even Superman gave Batman a little trouble once in a while, right? Yeah. So anyway, my point to that is, is I thought, well, why couldn’t I do some of the stuff evil Knievel does? I’ll never forget, I was about 10 years of age, maybe nine, something like that. And my two best friends got together and we had railroad ties that we put long ways. So think about this, a rampant one in, and the length of those railroad ties with only about six inches of gap between them. So if you didn’t clear the railroad ties, you had to land your tire in the middle or you’d just crash. Okay? Mm-Hmm. Now we set this thing up and I thought, you know how cool it’d be, get my name in the record book, I’ll go first.
JW:
Right? So that’s the cockiness coming in, right? So there it is. I was either nine or 10. I’ll never forget this though. No shirt back in that day. You know, we’re just raised on a farm. We didn’t wear shirts back then. I mean, come on. Oh, it’s summer, summertime. Yeah. It’s just different time. Yeah. So I had these these jeans on and I got on this bicycle, no helmet. Kids, if you’re listening today, don’t do what I did. Wear your helmets. Say definitely wear a helmet. Yes, yes, yes. We didn’t even know such things. Only on motorcycles to give a helmet. So anyway, I come barreling down this hill toward this ramp and I mean, I bet I’m doing a blistering 15, 20 miles an hour. I mean, I am peddling.
LF:
Wind in your hair.
JW:
Yes. Well, not much hair to get a wind in. Mom kept it, you know, kind of a – don’t laugh. I think back then we got that crew cut cause of mama. But anyway, here I come and I knew I had certainty until I hit the ramp.
JW:
And don’t laugh late at that point. It’s too late. You’re committed at that point, Lori. And I knew, I just knew in my heart of hearts, even at nine years of age, you go, this is gonna end bad . I didn’t have enough speed. I should have had more speed. And I was a little too heavy on the bike apparently. And I mean, I launched and I only missed it by about two feet. Wrecked that back and slid my side of my ribs right down that cri hole. Oh, now listen, this is criso coated, this black tar stuff to keep those from rotting so quick is what they do. They, they put that on this wooden railroad tie. And I’ll be honest with you, I was such shock after I did it. I couldn’t tell my ribs were on fire. Back was okay.
JW:
I got up and my friend Steve Rickey are going, that was so cool like that. And yeah, of course. You know, so I didn’t wanna give into the pain. And I looked at her and my rib is, my whole left side is just starting to swell. Mm-Hmm. And I looked and there’s these black dots all in it. And what they were, were stickers from all of this. Chris Hope treated, gosh know wood all in my side. And I said, man, I don’t think that worked very well at all. I don’t feel very good. So I ran to the house and showed my mom what I did, and we got to go on a fun field trip to the emergency room. It was a wonderful time. So I told her, she said, son, what made you think you could do that? And don’t laugh here was my exact words. I’ll never forget it, mom. Evel Knievel did it and I was certain I could do it.
LF:
Certain, certain. It’s a very assertive word if you think about it. Yeah. Certainty. I’m certain when you say that, it’s a very assertive, I’m certain it’s going to rain or Yes, I’m certain that I’m going to drink coffee today. I mean, it’s a-
JW:
Very, now that’s not fair. Cause i’s one that you can make happen in a heartbeat. Yes. Folks don’t let her buy off on that. Well, that’s too easy.
LF:
I can, and I do.
JW:
I’m certain I you’re addicted to coffee is what I’m certain.
LF:
And I’ll tell you, that was one drawback. And so to, to traveling this last week, I, you know, on my bucket list, I wanna go, I am certain that my bucket list has this item on it that I’m gonna go to a coffee, a local coffee shop in every state. It’s gonna take me a little while, but I’m gonna do it. It’s like a goal. And there were so many opportunities to stop and, you know, partake of the local coffee vibe just in itself in Boston and New York. And I did not get a chance to do that. So because we were on the move and I mean, who am I to hold up the whole tour? You know, trying to duck into a coffee shop. But I, I did think about it multiple times and I wrote some things down on on my phone, you know, places to revisit my, the next time I go.
JW:
That was so good of you to show the strength that you could put off your addiction long enough for these young men and women to enjoy their trip. I think that is a selfless, selfless act in my opinion.
LF:
Well, so talk to me a little bit about your trip. What gave you certainty that this trip was going to be a success then let’s use that term.
LF:
Oh, well, you know, it’s interesting that you say that because this is the first trip that I entrusted someone else to plan. You know, I’m a planner, I’m an organizer. I organize people and do, you know, scheduling and do crazy things like that for a living. So that’s my jam, that’s my comfort zone. That’s what I’m used to doing. And I really like had to relinquish control because I basically was told, you know, these are, this is the way to pay your for your trip and we take care of everything. And I was at the mercy of someone else. So I kind of was uncertain that the trip was gonna be a success. And so for people that are like me, that are type A personality, that are organizers, that are, you know, doers and we love to kind of be , this gonna sound terrible, but in control.
LF:
I mean, that’s just what it is. I, I was a little bit skeptical, but from the moment we took off and we had people in place and structure and those that knew where we were going and the timeframe and how to get us there, i, I commend, we had a fantastic tour bus driver. Her name was Carrie. And navigating a giant tour bus in New York City, New York Times Square. Kudos to those people because I don’t wanna drive a car, let alone a bus. But just trusting in that process, I really learned that this is great. I can relinquish control and show up and just be here and be in the moment and know that for certain, I’m going to eat at this time, I’m gonna travel at this time. I’m gonna see this attraction at this time. But even in saying that, even the people that are certain in their profession that do their jobs, that do this day in and day out where they work with large groups of people to keep everyone on track and everyone on schedule.
LF:
We had a fantastic trip. Absolutely no hiccups. Get to the airport, two and a half hours on the tarmac due to weather, rerouted four different times. Finally got up in the air, got home at two o’clock in the morning when we were supposed to land hours before. So I think that even the best prepared certainty can lead to chaos and confusion that’s out of your control. And it’s all about attitude. And you know, we just kind of had to say, well, we’re here so let’s make the best of it. We watched a lot of movies, we told a lot of jokes. There were lots of memes being texted back and forth about being held hostage on a plane with, you know, all these strange people. But they were all in the same predicament that we were. And I had a wonderful conversation with the lady that was sitting next to me.
LF:
She was from Dallas second grade school teacher. And we just kind of got to talking and she said, I, you know, she was there visiting family and she was getting ready to go home. And she said, you’re such a brave soul for traveling with all these middle school kids, . And I said, no, it’s been great. Like they, they have been amazing. And just, you know, even in the most of uncertain times, you know, we talk a lot about mindset and positivity and taking situations and making what you will out of it. But even in the most uncertain times, it’s all about how you perceive it. It’s all about how you internalize it. It’s all about how you project to the people around you. So if you are, you know, staying positive and trying to have, you know your wits about you for all intents and purposes, then you make other people feel that way. And that’s kind of what we’re all about here at Live a Life By Design. We want you to have positivity and we want you to have a great mindset. We want you to be certain about the things that you’re trying to tackle or accomplish. And so I think that’s what’s great about this podcast is that we get on here and talk about life experiences that we’ve personally been through, that we share with everybody. And they’re probably, you know, listening or driving this morning going, shaking their head going, yeah, been there, done that.
JW:
You know things happen to all of us, right? In commonality of life. So I’m gonna share with you one way I create certainty in my day every day. Now you’re gonna laugh, Lori, cuz it is such a mundane and rot idea. Brush your teeth, but close, very close. Okay. Flossing. No, I’m just kidding. Hey, don’t disregard flossing folks. That’s gum, gum disease happens anytime you don’t floss. But no, the real thing that I do is I set and I achieve my goals each day. I really sit now, now I say I achieve all of ’em. I achieve most of ’em some days, some days some big hairy, audacious goal takes all day to get done. But what I’m saying about that is I set goals on my big three every day. I need to get done these tasks that go to a bigger goal or whatever.
JW:
And with that, what am I doing, Lori? I’m creating certainty in my day. I want to have something I’m certain to get done that I know will move the needle forward or upward, whichever way you want to go. So on your trip you said, Hey, I’m normally the type A personality, I like to do everything. You have it all set up in the file. And I gotta tell you, when you let go of things like that, it creates a lot of doubt and uncertainty in your mind because a, you’re not in control of what you are gonna participate in, right?
LF:
Right.
JW:
So imagine this story true story. Again, everything we tell you here on live life by design, my good friends listening is all true. We may embellish some of the facts, but it’s all true. Brutally true.
LF:
Sometimes brutally true.
JW:
My younger daughter was a big fan of when she was like a tween. You know what that is, Lori? When you have daughters, you may not know if you have a son, but a tween, you know, she’s not quite a teenager, but she’s kind of like 12, you know, tween. So anyway she and her little friends thought they wanted to go to Hannah Montana concert. Now you probably don’t know the Hannah Montana. Oh, remember her? Okay, absolutely.
LF:
Hello. Yes.
JW:
Well, well, Hannah Montana has all grown up according to what I see on, on TV and stuff, . And she’s no longer the innocent little girl from school. But my point I’m making that is, is the concert was in Dallas, no, I’m sorry, Fort Worth. Fort Worth, Texas, which was about two and a half hour drive from where we live. And Ms. Williams was just bound and determined that our daughter should experience this with her. Three other friends. And I said, oh great. I said, so what parents are going, what? What other gentlemen are going? Well, there’s no men going but you. Oh no. Now wait a minute, . So as you can see real quick, my confidence was shut, shattered. I thought, oh myself and four moms going on this trip. She said no, no, there’s not four moms. And I said, I’m not going by myself and taking four girls to a concert cause I’d have to go in and listen to this concert the whole time, right?
JW:
Cause I’m not turning 12 year old girls loose in this giant concert hall. And she said, oh, no, no. She said, I’m going, you’re going, you’re gonna drive and the four girls will be in the back of the U and we’re just gonna go down and we’re gonna take ’em to dinner and we’re gonna take ’em inside. And I said, whoa, whoa whoop, you keep using a plural pronoun . I’m not sure who the mouse is in your pocket, honey, but I’m not going into screaming contest of kids for two hours to listen to Hannah Montana seeing scream or whatever you call it. And it was so funny. So I said, I’ll tell you, here’s the deal. I’ll pay for all four tickets. I’ll pay for all the meals, I’ll pay for all the gas and I’ll drive. As long as I don’t have to go inside and have 15,000 tweens screaming at the top of their lungs for two, I could just imagine Lori, me going to my you know, my audiologist the next day going, I’ve got this ringing that won’t quit in my hair. . Yeah. Yeah. So she said, that’d be great. So I had certainty that trip was going to be a success for me now. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I don’t know if it was for the kids, but they came out with big smiles and happy and bouncing off the walls. So I’m assuming it was good for them too.
LF:
It, I’m, I promise you, at that age, for a tween girl, yes, Hannah Montana, any experience was probably a good one.
JW:
Yeah. and I gotta tell you, I had more fun laughing at all the dads that had to go in like, oh, you didn’t plan this Right. Jump. All right. But anyway, . So one of the ways you can do is set goals and achieve them, man, that builds up certainty in your life. How do your mindsets going? Hey, I can do this. I’ve done it before. What’s another way? Do you think you can build some certainty?
LF:
Well, I mean, it kind of goes back to, I, I think of the, the word willingness. I think you have to be willing to work on making certainty. And that kind of goes back to what I said earlier. Like when you learn a skill or you learn a trade or you, you know, become knowledgeable in a subject area that helps you create that certainty that you know what you’re facing. You know what you’re walking into, you know what projects or groups or goals that you’ve set. And you make yourself better to create that certainty because you’ve given yourself the tools and the knowledge and you’ve put everything in your toolbox. So that helps you not only with the certainty when you go into a situation, but it helps you be confident. And confidence is what we talk a lot about. That it’s in your mind.
LF:
We all talk about we wanna be more confident. I wanna be, you know, strong in this area. I wanna be more competent in this content or subject. And so I think they kind of go hand in hand. When you create certainty, you do create that confidence, but it’s because you’ve worked on it yourself. So you know in your head, in your heart, in your mind. Cuz those two things play tricks. You know, your head and your heart, they do dirty things to you sometimes in your mindset. And so if you have all of those things aligned on the same page moving forward, it’s kind of an unstoppable force if you’re willing to put in the work. So it kind of goes back to willingness.
JW:
Yeah, it does. And I like what you’re saying to me, it just means take action. If I’m taking action, I get what momentum. If I get momentum I can go conquer anything. Right. Have you ever run like a race, a 5K or a 10K? Have you ever run one those Lori?
LF:
5K one time, thought I was going to die. I love, I love runners. I love them. They are the most, I mean they’re enthusiastic. They are. I mean they, they don’t know it, it, they say that running is a natural high. So I’ve never gotten there. , the only thing I ever get from running is a sense of soreness and wanting to vomit . But I love runners. They are the best people to, like, they, when you watch marathons, when you watch five K, they’re so positive and they’re rooting and they’re cheering and they’re doing their thing and they’re in the zone. And some of ’em are singing and you know, they wear great costumes and you know, tutu and you know, butterfly wings, I mean some color runs. I mean it’s amazing. I love running people. But yes, I did a 5K once and that was it.
JW:
No more. And that was it. That was it. Running careers over.
LF:
It was over, it was over before it started. But I did it.
JW:
I gotta tell you to me though running is something that if you do it right, which I have a hard time doing, my technique’s not as smooth as it should be.
LF:
I didn’t even know there was such a thing.
JW:
Yeah, I didn’t know. I couldn’t run. Matter of fact, I had took a running class cause they said you’re not running right. It’s a running look, I’ve been running since I was, you’re a runner. I’ve been running for since I was two years of age. Whatcha you talking about? Anyway.
LF:
I did not know that.
JW:
Yeah. So what I did to create some certainty that I could finish this race and do it with some, you know, reasonable time. My first 5k I ran in 30 minutes and some seconds. So I was pretty pleased. 30 minutes was my goal. But I went to a, a specialty store that sells the shoes and measures your foot if you had any pronation inside or out. And then I got the fancy shorts and the sweat whisking shirt, which I believe okay, there was a class action lawsuit on cuz I sweated pretty badly and I don’t think it whisked very well. And maybe Nike owes us some money. Did get the job done. Yeah. So, so what I’m saying though is I got all of this preparation. That’s what you’re saying, take action. Yes. Move forward, get things lined up to give you that chance of certainty. Now I will tell you though when you had the guy with only about 3% body fat standing next to you and there I am in the Clydesdale division. a little heavy on the ho there. Yeah. Excuse me. I gotta tell you, I looked over at him and he of course doesn’t even wear a shirt cuz he just, you know, tough guy writes his number on his chest with a permanent marker, you know? Yeah.
LF:
The confidence, right? Confidence.
JW:
Oh man. I looked at him and I said, Hey, you know, you look like you’ve done this before. And he said, oh, my goal here is get this, my goal was 30 minutes. Right. He said, my goal is to run this thing in 16 minutes and a few seconds.
LF:
Whoa.
JW:
And I just, my mouth just dropped. I’m like, oh my gosh. So what he did with that comment was tell me he’s certain he’s gonna make that happen. And I’m gonna tell you, I don’t remember what it was, but he was close to that. He was like the number one finisher. He looked like he hadn’t even sweated. And of course I was over by there, you know, at the snack bar afterwards, getting the banana and the orange and the fruit. The fruit and chocolate milk, you know, gimme me all the juice facts I need. All but certainty. Yeah, certainty though, takes action. Momentum, just like you said, preparation creates certainty in your day. What’s one final word you could help us understand about certainty in our lives, Lori, that we could give our listeners today? One final-
LF:
One final word. Goodness. I’m never good with one word. I mean obviously one word.
JW:
Well, I’m not gonna say anything about being a woman in one word.
LF:
Capable!
New Speaker:
Oh, there it is. Capable. Okay.
LF:
Capable. Good. Another c word. Capable. You know, and that’s, that’s the thing I I we, we feel sometimes that we’re not capable, but were capable. That’s the word I would leave everybody with.
JW:
I like that. I’ve heard of culpable, I’ve been there many times. But when it comes to being onery as a kid, I was very culpable. I was very culpable, Lori, before I knew what the word meant.
LF:
Now see you were a trendsetter, you just didn’t know it.
JW:
And I thought I had studied civics enough in grade school to understand what the constitution said about self-incrimination. Apparently I didn’t cuz my dad made me confess a lot of stuff that I’d done wrong. As a child he was said I was very capable of being culpable. And so that’s what happened. Hey folks, today the key thing we’re trying to get through is, is during these summer days, these doldrums of summer, the dog days, if you will, Lori. Mm. We want you, Lori, and I want you to have some certainty in life by setting some goals, taking some actions, achieving what you want to, to build your confidence and get that momentum you need. And like Lori said, just show your capability to prove your mind and your heart are in the right alignment. Right? So right. Lori, I gotta tell you, this has been interesting discussion cuz we didn’t know folks what we were really gonna talk about. No, we didn’t. And so it comes across though I love the spontaneity for one, but I love the fact that there’s always seemingly to be something between Lori and I that we have in common. And that is that we want the biggest, best, and most beautiful life for anybody listening out there. And it’s all within your grasp if you simply work for it and have your alignment of heart and head. I love that.
LF:
It’s a good way to start the week.
JW:
Absolutely. Lori, finish us off and let’s have a great week.
LF:
All right. So now you know the challenge. Go out and be capable this week and always remember to live a life by design!
