EDC Thoughts, Beliefs and Values

Welcome to the Heroik Hour, the podcast where we discuss and bring together Technology Leadership and Culture to help get you fired up and mission ready for the great life. I’m your host, Nicholas McGill, Chief Experience Officer for Heroik Media. Thank you so much for joining us on episode 17.

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In the past two episodes, I talked about the concept of everyday carry and all the geeky hardware and software my team and I use, and the principles we apply to guide us to choose gear and tools that get us mission ready for life. In this episode, we’re going to talk about something else that we carry with us every day, that is far more important – our everyday habitual thoughts, attitudes, and principles. Getting these right are essential to living a Heroik LifeStyle. So we’re going to go over 4 Core Concepts of Heroik Mastery to help you keep your head on straight and make every single day more effective.

Let’s get started.

All 4 of the concepts we’re going to talk about today can be stated in a single sentence you can memorize – and here it is

Heroes aren’t born, they’re MADE; by raising the BAAR, remembering to bring a MAP, and being mindful of where they pour their TEA.

That sentence sounds simple, but it’s really a pneumonic device to help you remember these concepts and Heroik values that can serve you every day. Packed in that sentence are 4 acronyms that can help you improve your daily life. They are the words; MADE, BAAR, MAP, and TEA. And we’re going to unpack all 4 into some basic Heroik Principles that can empower your life.

Sound good? Let’s do it.

The first concept is MADE – We like to say Heroes are MADE not born, and they’re made by practicing Mastery, Abundance, Discernment, and Exploration. When you’re pursuing mastery, you are pursuing excellence and dedicating yourself to your craft. This starts with the sufferfest of failure that happens when we begin anything new, or start over. The longer you persist through failures, the more you learn, the more you refine and the better you get. There is no substitute for the hard work of dedicating yourself to improvement and mastery.

How do you keep yourself motivated? A high faith and strong belief in the abundance of opportunities and your ever improving ability to recognize and leverage them. It is this belief in the infinite abundance of opportunities beyond what the eyes can see or the mind can imagine, that can empower and embolden you to persevere and endure until you achieve the results you want.

And speaking of sharpening vision – this is the essence of discernment, your ability to recognize and choose the good from the bad and the great from the good. Discernment allows you make better trade-offs, saying no to the many good opportunities to allow yourself to choose a great opportunity that will take you further. Mountains are climbed with discernment, the ability to notice not only the beauty but the weaknesses and thus a path and approach to the summit.

And in order to increase the number of opportunities in your life, you need to venture beyond the comfort of what you know, and where you frequent. You need to explore, to try new things, to figure out who you are, what resonates with you, to find your place in the world, find your tribe, and along the way a few people, places and things you leave behind that will help you appreciate where you really belong.

The concept of MADE – Mastery, Abundance, Discernment, and Exploration all overlap, interconnect and reinforce one another. In our own Heroik culture, these principles bring with them, implications and instructions as to how we address opportunities, face failures, and practice our craft.

The second big concept to unpack is to Raise your BAAR – This one you may have heard before. Your Beliefs and Attitudes produce your Actions and Results.  That’s what BAAR stands for. You need to take ownership of your results and re-engineer your beliefs and attitudes to reinforce the actions you want to take if you want results that you’ll enjoy. So, RAISE YOUR BAAR, take ownership.

In terms of raising your BAAR, stepping up your leadership, it’s not all about adventure or becoming CEO or something. Real and more meaningful ways to step up your game can be incredibly subtle and as seemingly simple as developing the habit after any fight or conflict, reflecting on things that you did wrong, your contributions and mistakes, what you can take ownership of; and then looking around to take more ownership for the results in your life. This tiny habit is a great growth hack for fostering healthy relationships and community.  So remember to look for ways raise your BAAR.

You should always carry a MAP – meaning you should be Mindful, Authentic, and Present in the moment. In moments that bore or test you, refer to your MAP, be mindful, authentic and present. Remember that you have a choice, in every moment. You can look to recognize the opportunity in the moment, and choose something better, or choose whatever is going on might not be for you.

Finally, there’s the concept of TEA. Where are you pouring your TEA? Time, Energy, and Attention. When you begin to pay close attention to where you are pouring your time, energy, and attention, it becomes easier to recognize what’s paying off, what’s working and what’s not. This is also a good way to help you to manage yourself and others in 3 dimensions. It’s not just your time you need to manage, it’s your attention, your focus, as well as your physical, emotional and spiritual energy. These are all components of high-performance rocket fuel.

As we wrap up, the core idea I want you to remember is this, if you’re just starting out on your own Heroik journey, remember your everyday carry – kit, doesn’t just consist of your gear, hardware or your software. The most important part of your daily carry, are your but your beliefs, habits, the operational attitude you use and run on every single day.  

For those of you pursuing mastery, and taking your Heroik Journey to the next level remember this statement:

Heroes aren’t born, they’re MADE; by raising the BAAR, remembering to bring a MAP, and being mindful of where they pour their TEA. Hopefully, you can remember some of the concepts around this as well, and carry some or all of them with you each and every day.

That concludes this episode of the Heroik Hour Podcast. If you want to get a hold of me, you can find this great live chat button built right into our website at www.getheroik.com GETHEROIK.com, or you can email me at nicholas@getheroik.com NICHOLAS @gtheroik.com – until then – rock out, get heroik, live large and I’ll catch you on the next episode.