#447 Snippets of wisdom: Don't quit when you're tired, quit when you're done.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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Bill Keefe 0:00
The poster was of David Goggins, but it was long before David Goggins was a well known common name. It was just a picture of him running in the middle of some huge desert, and it just said, Don't quit when you're tired, quit when you're done.

Agi Keramidas 0:23
Welcome to Personal Development mastery podcast, and this is another snippet of wisdom where I select my favorite most insightful moments from previous episodes. Today, I have selected for you a snippet from my conversation with Bill Keefe, who is Tony Robbins fire captain. The snippet is about resilience, and he talks specifically about the experience of the fire team, which is the volunteer crew at Tony Robbins events. I trust that you will find it insightful.

Bill Keefe 1:00
That's one of the very, very powerful kind of phrases that I picked up on. I actually saw that on a poster. The poster was of David Goggins, but it was long before David Goggins was a well known common name. David Goggins is an incredible individual. He's, he's accomplished some amazing physical feats. He the the poster that I saw it on, he's, he's one of these ultra marathon runners. And it was, it was just a picture of him, you know, running in the middle of some huge desert, and it just said, Don't quit when you're tired. Quit when you're done. And that, the minute I saw it, I said, Man, that sounds a lot like fire team, because where you know, as you know, you had the experience this past year. The on we do a lot of preparation the day before the fire walk. But on fire walk day it it generally begins about seven o'clock in the morning, and, you know, and in this case, that it was a Thursday, so 7am on a Thursday, and we don't finish on a on a good night, we would finish at 3am the following morning on Friday. And I think that was about the time that we wrap things up, when we were, yeah, when we were in Birmingham, yes, yeah, yeah. But this is, if you take the average person, you know that that is in a working day world, you know you've got, you've got an eight hour work day. And because, because of where we are with technology today, probably 65 70% maybe even more, of those people who are doing an eight hour work day are doing it sitting at a desk, or maybe they're working from home remotely, but they are not outside, making a living by doing something physical. There are, there's a lot of people that do but but they don't. So when you combine the fact that we are now asking these these volunteers, to do like two, two and a half full work days, and as you know, the hardest part of that work day was at the end of that day, from about midnight until three in the morning, where, and that's where we needed everybody's energy. And we talked a lot about that. They said we have to clean this place up when we're done. And that's going to be where you got to dig deep. You've you've got to, you know, you've got to find your your level of resilience to get the job done. And it's, it's got to, it's got to be the team that has this mindset, not just an individual, but every individual. If you remember, we also talked about, make sure that that you are there when we finish, whenever that happens to be and we realize that that people have physical limitations, and we're not in we talked a lot about this, that we're not asking that, that people People do ridiculous things beyond their physical capabilities. We're not asking anyone to get hurt. We're not asking anyone to to do anything that would cause them endanger their health. But on the other side of that, the phrase that kind of goes along with with don't quit. When you're tired, quit when you're done, is that concept of 20x we also talked about that most people really never kind of push and test and see how resilient they might be. And here, here's an opportunity to kind of test that you're you're one of, I think we had close to 70 volunteers for the job in Birmingham, and you've got a strong team around you, so you've kind of got a safe environment to, you know, what? Maybe I can, you know, maybe before I sit down and take a rest, and we did encourage everyone to, you know, you're the best judge of what you're capable of and what you're not capable of, but you can take this opportunity to maybe push yourself a little bit farther, see, see what you've got, and just make that decision at the beginning of the day, I'm not gonna quit and go home when I'm tired, or when I'm exhausted, or when you know I'm staying until this job is finished and I'm going to contribute at the highest level and do the best that I possibly can. And most people find that they are capable of a lot more than they had originally believed that they were, and unless the team has that mindset going into this, that the whole thing can collapse, especially in those final three or four hours where, you know, we're cleaning that parking lot up, or whatever venue we use For the fire walk, and, you know, basically makes it look better than it was when we started the whole operation. So that's kind of the long answer on that one. But that don't quit when you're tired, quit when you're done, also goes, we don't we don't quit when it's raining. We quit when it's done. We don't quit when it's snowing. We quit when we're done. There's a lot of slightly different versions of that that we use based on, you know, what we encounter.

Agi Keramidas 7:15
Thank you for listening. You will find the full conversation with Bill Keefe in episode 362, the link is in the episode description. If you enjoy this podcast, you will definitely love being part of the free community that we recently launched, the mastery seekers tribe. Go to masteryseekerstribe.com, or click the link in the episode description and join a growing community of like minded people who appreciate personal development like you, until next time stand out don't fit in.