Kay:

Hello, Questers, and welcome back. It is Monday, December 27th. We hope you had a wonderfully Merry Christmas with your family, whatever holiday you are celebrating this season. We hope that it was wonderfully happy and merry for you. This is episode 496, and before we get into the quote and this week, we have an announcement for all of you here on the Mentorship Quest.

Shi:

That’s right. You’ve probably, hopefully, already participated in the survey that came out a little while ago, asking for your feedback and advice on what the direction our podcast future will look like, and we’re excited to say that we’re busy in the Kay and Shi lab, putting together that new structure and decided that the best bow we could put on the Mentorship Quest is to get it to 500 episodes and finish out the year 2021. And it just so happens that episode 500 will happen on New Year’s Eve, so it was universal alignment and confirmation on that. So while this may be the last week of the Mentorship Quest, as you know it, worry not because we will be back in a new format based on your feedback very soon. But in the meantime, let’s get on to today’s quote.

Kay:

Today’s quote is from Wade Boggs, who was an American professional, third baseman. He spent 18 seasons in major league baseball with the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees in Tampa Bay, Devil Rays. He won a 1996 world series with the Yankees and he’s got a quote that you are going to love. He tells us, “Our lives are not determined by what happens to us, but how we react to what happens, not by what life brings us, but the attitude we bring to life.”

Shi:

I appreciate that he says our lives are not determined by what happens to us because I think lots of us will look back at what has happened to us and say, “But that does make up my collection of experiences, it is what it has made me and what has shaped me,” and they certainly play a major role, but the biggest role of all, and as we know by human example is this piece that Wade is bringing forward here. This response piece is how we’ve responded and reacted to what has been presented to us. And when I say this, you know, examples through human history, the demonstration of this is in the fact that many people from the same circumstances and experiences turn out very differently, which tells us scientifically that it’s not the experience, but rather the reaction to the experience that makes the person.

Kay:

Well, that reaction to the experience is so important, right? Because that happens in between your two ears, right? The outside circumstances happen out in the big world, right? The big scary W O R L D, right? That’s all external stuff. But that reaction is a hundred percent you, right? Everything else, that’s not you, that’s not really stuff that you can necessarily control. Now, can you have influence on situations? Absolutely. Can you outright control other people in situations? You cannot. No matter how hard you try, you cannot do it. But the one thing that you can control is that reaction and that ability to respond to things in your life that happened to you. And that’s an inside job.

Shi:

I was going say, “Kay, are you saying it’s an inside job?” So I’m so glad that you said that, and that’s encompassed in the first half of this quote, but would love to shift our focus to the second half of this quote, “Not by what life brings us, but the attitude we bring to life,” really focusing there on that word, attitude, the way that we approach it, the spirit in which we approach our problems, or our opportunities, or our challenges, or our issues. Even see how we’re phrasing them can help us view them in a different way, in a different light, and help shape our attitude towards them. Language, we’ve found is one of the most powerful, practical tools that you can use to help shift your focus. You hear a lot of advice, like have a positive mental attitude. I think about the Think and Grow Rich author, Napoleon Hill. You read his stuff and you hear his old lectures. He talks about positive mental attitude, a lot Earl Nightingale, Gale Wayne Dyer, John Maxwell, many of the greats tell us about this mental attitude and how important it is, but it’s kind of just a theory. So when we figure out like, “Well, how do I actually shape that attitude?” Language isn’t the only piece, but it might be the most important piece because the words that we say to ourself are the most important words that we say, and they happen continuously inside. So just changing that internal dialogue, those internal words we say, can really help us shape that attitude, which then helps us approach what life brings us in a better way. And that’s what Wade tells us our lives are determined by.

Kay:

So just as a reminder, what Wade Boggs is bringing forward in today’s quote in our final week here of the Mentorship Quest as we know it, “Our lives are not determined by what happens to us, but how we react to what happens, not by what life it brings us, but the attitude we bring to life.”

Shi:

Which brings us to our final Monday-fun-day-run-day-get-it-done-day quest. And today we want you to take a little bit of time to reflect on circumstances and experiences in your life where you’re proud of the attitude that you brought forward, either in the moment or in retrospect, and allow that to feed your attitude and your approach into the coming week ahead and the coming year ahead. Are you ready?

Kay:

Let’s quest.