In today’s episode we’re gonna be talking about the six Ps, one of the mantras that I live by and how it has helped me to take responsibility for the direction of my life. I want this to be something that you embody, if you find it helpful.
When I was in college the 6ps are one of the things that I learned that helped me take responsibility for my choices and responsibility for my actions. Think about a kid coming up with not much direction little to no parental guidance. On top of that I had two younger brothers I was responsible for. I made the best choices I could given the circumstances, but that’s not saying much. Some things I got right, some things I screwed up.
We each have to resist the urge to blame other people or external circumstances for the things that happen in our life. If we think through the different scenarios it can eliminate surprises, set backs, and failing to perform due to a lack of preparedness. For ex:
Prepare for the uncontrolled variables that you will deal with.
Pack an extra pen.
Assume there will be an accident that backs up traffic.
Pack an extra pair of clothes just in case.
My goal has always been to overcome the internal and external limitations.
Learning these 6ps helped me take responsibility for my life and I hope they will help you or someone you know.
1. Proper
2. Prior
3. Preparation
4. Prevents
5. Poor
6. Performance
You can also download The Art of Hope Show podcast here
00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to The Art of Hope podcast with your host, Chadwick Sapenter.
00:08 Chadwick Sapenter: If you're willing to dream bigger than whatever your environment is, then anything is possible.
00:13 S1: It's time to create the path to your success by overcoming your past, embracing your present and outlining your future.
00:21 S3: The day that goal becomes a reality.
00:24 S1: Every journey begins with the first step. So let's begin. The Art Of Hope podcast.
00:31 CS: Welcome to The Art of Hope show. My name is Chadwick Sapenter. This is episode six. In today's episode we're gonna be talking about the six Ps, the mantra that I... Or I'll say one of the mantras that I live by and it has helped me to take ownership of the direction of my life. I'm gonna be sharing with you. So grab a pen, write it down, we're gonna get to it. I want this to be something that you embody, if you find it helpful.
01:00 CS: The question is, what are the six Ps? Way back when I was in college and I say way back, too long ago, one of the things that I learned or that helped me... Think about a kid coming up, not much direction, pretty much raised myself for the most part, was always just had to figure it out and I had two younger brothers that, hey I'll make the best choices that I can for us and they follow behind me. Some things I got right, some things I screwed up but it wasn't much direction, especially not from older people. It just wasn't there.
01:37 CS: But one of these lessons I learned, it completely changed me and it was the six Ps. And here are the six Ps? Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance. Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance. The six, proper prior preparation prevents poor performance. Yeah, so that's the six Ps and we'll get into each of those areas on how I apply them and then the rest of the mantra will go like this, Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance, those who fail to plan, should plan to fail. Those who fail to plan, should plan to fail and basically what it is, is that look, it's not mother nature's fault if I am not where I'm supposed to be at the time I'm supposed to be there.
02:37 CS: So for example, six Ps, if you have to be at work at 8 o'clock in the morning, you get up at 6 o'clock, decide to leave the house at 7:30, it usually takes you 15 minutes to get to work so you figure you get there 15 minutes early or give you five minutes to stop at Starbucks, get a coffee or something like that but you get on the highway and you run into traffic and now you're at a standstill. So instead of getting there 15 minutes early, you end up getting to work 15 minutes late and you come in and you're like, "Oh, I'm sorry, it was traffic. I was sitting there, I left same time I usually do but traffic happened and I couldn't get there." No. Six Ps. Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance.
03:28 CS: You should be anticipating that there could be traffic. You should be anticipating that something's going to happen that could throw you off. For example, you showed up 15 minutes late, what if instead of leaving at 7:30, you left at 7 o'clock? Now, even if you end up with traffic, you still get to work 15 minutes early or 30 minutes earlier but you're not late. So whose fault was it? Was it the traffic's fault? Was it the person who got in the accident or the dog that crossed the highway, was that... No, it was your fault. It was your fault for leaving late. Six Ps, own that.
04:08 CS: Now, some of my staff, that exact scenario would happen and I would just shoot them a text like, six Ps. They'd be like, "Hey, I'm gonna be a little bit late. I'm running into traffic" and I would text them, "Six Ps." And they get pissed. Sometimes they would get pissed but then finally, they're just like, "What is the six Ps?" So I explained it to them and the main thing is, it's just taking ownership.
04:24 CS: Another example; maybe you have a test or some type of certification or you need to get some type of license and you have an exam coming up that you need to take and life starts happening. Your kid gets sick, wife goes in the hospital, everything, Murphy's law just busts you in the face. Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong and you got a new baby so you are unable to sleep and so what you decide to do is, I'm just gonna go take the test. Hopefully it goes well and then you fail the test. Six Ps, man. Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance. Those who fail to plan, should plan to fail. Simple as that because even in that scenario listen, the main thing is this. It's just understanding that life is not slowing down because of the emergencies that happen for you. Life's gonna keep going. Life don't care nothing about your dog dying, life don't care that your parents got sick, life don't care that you've had an emergency with a sick kid, it doesn't. Life don't care.
05:40 CS: Now, it doesn't mean you don't care, right? Obviously, these are your circumstances so they do have a real impact on you but the thing is, life is gonna keep moving and so sometimes those opportunities that are waiting for you are happening in the middle of chaos happening in your personal life. What the six Ps teaches us is that even in the middle of the chaos, we continue to move forward. We don't let the distractions of life give us a way out. We don't use them as an excuse for not accomplishing the goal that we set before us and how do you do that because there are things that are gonna happen in life that you aren't prepared for that you didn't expect to happen, right? But some of it is just simple like okay, well why should you have six to 12 months of your expenses saved up? Well, because something may happen to where whatever revenue stream you have gets cut off, then what do you do over the time period while you're waiting for that to be restored?
06:42 CS: Well, if you have savings you... Six Ps, you were properly prepared, right? And it prevented you from performing... From performing, man this is hard to say. Pa pa pa... That's how I'm sounding right now. Anyway the six Ps, Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance and I think it's like anything. It's just about saying, "Hey let me do the work on the front end." Who are enjoying their spring and their summer, but then winter comes and one of them is prepared and the other one isn't.
07:12 CS: The grasshopper, it spends the winter begging for food and it's hungry when winter comes, right? But all through the spring and the summer when it's time to be preparing, they're having a good time, they're playing music, rubbing their little wings together so they can make whatever noise or I don't know, maybe that's a cricket but you get my point, same thing but they're loving it. They're just loving, just chilling, you know what I mean? And then all of a sudden, an emergency happens, winter comes and here's the thing, it's not even an emergency. They know winter is coming. They absolutely know that winter is coming, nobody is surprised when winter comes.
07:51 CS: This dang grasshopper knew the whole time that winter was gonna be coming. It's happened like their whole life, right? They are wired to know these things but when it's time to actually be preparing, they're having a good time, loving life, enjoying having just a blast and so, when winter comes the ant, on the other hand, all throughout the good weather time right? In the spring, in the summer, when it's time to get to work, they're working, they're grinding. They are just grinding. They are grinding and everybody's looking at them crazy when it's time to have fun, everybody's looking at them like that they're a kill joy because they're saying "Eh, what I wanna do is be prepared because winter is gonna come."
08:42 CS: So who are you? Are you the ant or the grasshopper? That's really what you gotta figure out. You're either the ant or the grasshopper. You're either not preparing because you're so caught up in having fun in the moment, that when the disaster strikes, you're gonna be looking sad, right? And having to beg somebody else, if you're man, some other man, some other woman to take care of your family, to take care of your... The responsibilities that you were supposed to take care of. Or you'll be the ant, prepared, ready when it happens because it's going to happen. So this is the six Ps. Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. So we know this story, right?
09:26 CS: You know the nerdy ass kid in school that nobody liked, everybody thought was ugly, wasn't cool, wasn't a part of the sports team, was never able to do any of those things but all he knew, he made straight As, he made good grades and everybody thought he was pretty lame because all he focused on was school and those things and then the cool kid that you know, well it turns out his ass flunked out of college because he never really learned how to read or he just never really know how to take responsibility for that part or he went to school and he ended up not going pro but he was banking on that. Now all of a sudden that dude, that was the cool cat, his ass is begging the nerd for a job because the nerd focused and handled his business and went on and did whatever it is that they were gonna do, we know this story, it's an ant and a grasshopper. Six Ps.
10:08 CS: We know life is gonna come, we know life is going to transition, you know there are going to be things in life that you can't control. You know you are going to have to be prepared to take the next steps in your life. All of us are going to. We need to be preparing now. Some of it is as simple as this. Like you see it all the time, somebody dies and then you see a GoFundMe to help bury them. This is crazy because we know we're gonna die, we don't know when we're going to die but we know it's coming. Life insurance, term life insurance and full disclosure, I'm an insurance agent, I have an insurance business but that doesn't... I'm not asking you to buy anything from me, I'm telling you, if you're listening to this, you should have life insurance. I don't care if you have kids or not, you should have life insurance, you should at least have enough to bury you.
10:57 CS: If you got a family, you should at least have enough to where you leaving, your income leaving is not leaving them in a desperate situation. Situation. Six Ps man. Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. Those who fail to plan, should plan to fail. It's just that simple. We see it all the time, "We're having a barbecue and a fish fry to bury little June June" because all of a sudden nobody decided to go get life insurance. What are we doing? What are we doing? That's insane. That's insane. You can get term life insurance for like a dollar or something today it's cheap. $100,000 policy, $200,000 policy. That you should have some permanent life insurance somewhere in there. You should be getting some but at the least, you can have some term insurance. Definitely.
11:49 CS: Maybe in another podcast, someday down the road, we'll get into specific things. I'm starting to sound like... A little bit. Six Ps, Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. Those who fail to plan, should plan to fail. You have an opportunity and a responsibility to take control over where your life goes, as much as you can control. There's some things you can't control, some things are gonna happen that you're not prepared for and you didn't know it was gonna happen, right? But the things that you are aware of and should be thinking about, you need to be prepared for them. It's just as simple as that. It's one of the greatest lessons we can learn because if you get to that point or that outcome, where the thing happens, right? You run into traffic or a kid gets sick or somebody die and you are not prepared, you have to take responsibility for that. It's your fault. It's absolutely on you and the moment that you decide to say, "Hey, it start... It begins and ends with me and the choices that I make" the better off you're gonna be.
12:54 CS: Personal responsibility. Nobody wants to say that nowadays. Everybody likes to say it's somebody else's fault or give you an excuse for not knowing and listen, I'm not sitting here as somebody who has always had it figured out. I had my oldest son when I was 20 years old. I had no money, I had no parents, I had nobody to go to and a lot of the time growing up, me and his mother struggled, she had more money, more resources than me so she was able to do more. Right? In hindsight I think that was pretty whack of me. Right? But you grind and you work and you work and when you know better, you do better. It's just as simple as that. When you know better, you do better but you have to take responsibility for the direction of your life and the people that you have been put in charge of caring for. Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. Those who fail to plan, should plan to fail. These are the six Ps.
[music]
13:49 CS: Thank you guys for tuning in. This has been episode six. Please like, comment, subscribe. What are those things? What's the situation? Who's somebody that you know in your life that just wasn't prepared for the outcome? How did that happen? What was the outcome there? You know what it is. Tell me all about it, I'd love to hear from you. Again this is The Art of Hope show. Thank you for tuning in to my experiment and being a part of this. Have a great day.