This week on The Workshop, Chance and I sat down without an agenda and let the conversation go wherever the friction took us. We explored the danger of being the “easy button” for others, the psychology behind the Canadian door hold, and why the myth of the hero often ignores the messy, flawed reality of human nature. It was an unfiltered look at the reps required to build character.
This Week’s Conversation:
– Shaun & Chance: No guests, no agenda. Just an unscripted exploration of human nature, patterns, and the reps of reality.
Key Insights from Our “Unscripted” Discussion:
1. The “Easy Button” Trap
We discussed the temptation to just solve people’s problems for them. When someone comes to you for help, it might take two minutes to give them the answer, or fifteen minutes of difficult, direct friction to make them figure it out themselves. But if you constantly play the “easy button,” those two-minute fixes stack up forever, creating dependency. True leadership is using the fifteen minutes of friction to build their competence.
2. The “Canadian Door Hold” as a Rep
We brought up the classic scenario of holding a door for someone who is slightly too far away, forcing that awkward social interaction. I don’t do it just to be nice; I also do it because it’s a training rep. It’s an iteration of human connection. Whether you are met with gratitude or a faint whiff of disdain, taking that rep thousands of times ensures you are comfortable navigating social friction and connecting with anyone, instantly.
3. Integrity is Trusting Yourself
Chance shared a story about checking his son’s backpack for the homework they had discussed. The core lesson wasn’t about the parent trusting the child; it was about the child learning to trust himself. Integrity isn’t a performance for others. Every time you say you did something without actually doing it, you erode your own internal trust. The reps of integrity build the capability to rely on your own word.
4. Building and Losing Patterns
We discussed how life is built on unconscious patterns, like seeing the same stranger at the train station every day. But our modern society has insulated us so heavily from patterns that we don’t know what to do when a pattern is abruptly broken. We have to consciously recognize the patterns we rely on so that we don’t shatter when those patterns inevitably disappear.
5. Proximity to Danger is Everywhere
Chance noted the mental boundary veterans create between “peacetime” and “overseas.” Sometimes, to manage feelings of safety. We also noted that danger isn’t limited to a combat zone. Whether you’re working close protection in a hyper-violent city, or working heavy-machinery logging, or working on a deep-sea winter fishing boat, proximity to danger can be a constant in certain professions and phases of life. Your skill sets don’t remove the danger; they simply give you more options to survive within it.
6. The Purity of the Moment vs. The Flawed Person
We talked about military commendations and the hero myth. Society wants to believe that a hero is a pure, flawless avatar of perfection. The reality is that the guy who charged the machine gun nest might have been hungover and dragged out of his cot by his bunkmate that very morning. The action in that moment is pure, even if the person is deeply flawed. Acknowledging those flaws doesn’t degrade the heroism; it makes it humanly relatable.
7. You Don’t “Rise” to the Occasion
We often hear the phrase, “He rose to the occasion.” I prefer to see it as… You don’t rise to the occasion; the moment expands around you. It’s what you do as it envelops you. In a high-stakes crisis, all of your superficial thoughts and societal layers are stripped away, and you are forced to fall back onto your deeply embedded programming. You are exactly what you are in that expanding moment.
8. Sharpening Yourself
Chance posed the age-old phrase, “Iron sharpens iron,” and asked: What do you do when you don’t have any other iron around to sharpen yourself against? My answer: You sharpen yourself. You look for other hard things to bounce off. You don’t always need another person to hone your edge; you can use the friction of your own life and your own internal standards to keep your blade sharp.
Final Thought: Your baseline is built in the shadows but exposed in the light.
You cannot wait for the crisis to decide who you are. The small, seemingly insignificant reps you do daily—holding the door, maintaining your integrity, doing the quiet work when no one is watching—are what program your baseline operating system. When the moment eventually expands around you, you won’t have time to think. You will simply execute whatever software you’ve been installing all along. Choose your software wisely.
Are you installing the right software, or just hoping for the best?
Listen to the full “Unscripted” discussion here: The Collective Workshop
Keep getting your reps,
Shaun & The Collective Crew
