Awaken Your True Self And Produce On Purpose With Randy Adkins
Feeling lost and unfulfilled? In this episode, Randy Adkins joins Sean Olson to explore the transformative power of purpose-driven leadership and personal growth. Randy, the author of Produce on Purpose, shares insights from his diverse roles as a teacher, speaker, preacher, and transformative leader. From aligning with our core values to building a supportive circle, he equips us with practical tools to overcome challenges. Through practical advice and spiritual wisdom, Randy encourages us to connect deeply with our inner selves, affirming that true fulfillment comes from aligning with one’s unique, God-given purpose.
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Awaken Your True Self And Produce On Purpose With Randy Adkins
Introduction
This is the show where you hear the real stories of normal people just like you who have become extraordinary leaders. You'll learn some valuable lessons from their lives, lessons you can apply to become the best leader that you were created to be. When you become an intentional leader, lives are changed.
Thank you so much for joining us. I want to remind you as we get leading off here, to hit that subscribe button for whatever player you are using or on YouTube. We'd love to have you subscribe to the show and get notified every time a new episode drops. I'm excited to introduce our guest. His name is Randy Adkins. Randy is in the Charleston, South Carolina area. He is an author, a teacher, a speaker, a preacher, and what I like, a transformational leader in many different ways. Randy, it is great to have you on the show. Welcome.
It is fantastic to be on here and I'm ready to share some great intentional items that we can be as leaders. I’m excited to have this conversation.
Randy and I have not known each other all that long, but we had a great meeting together the first time and a common spirit in a lot of different ways, not just around leadership but around purpose and driving our lives. For you and I both, we center that around Christ. We always have something that centers us. I'm excited about our conversation.
He is a focal point and one of the areas that are dear to my heart.
Tell me quickly, Charleston, South Carolina area, have you been there your entire life?
I was born and raised here in Charleston, South Carolina. I grew up and enjoy this great humid weather that we're having while we're recording. We have great beaches, historic value, and great food. If you have the opportunity, come here for the great food. It is exciting. I also met my lovely wife here as we were in college. We've been married for 26 years with that, and we have three children. This has been awesome.
That's a blessing. How old are the kiddos?
I have a 23, 20, and a 17-year-old. We are what we call now bird launchers, not empty nesters. We are getting close to one more year, and our last one is a senior this year in high school. We're excited about this new transformation and new time in our lives.
I love it. I've not been down to Charleston. My wife and daughter were down there last year. My wife wants to take me. When we get down there, we can hook up. You can take me to one of those great food establishments and we'll enjoy that meal together.
There are so many options. We can do that.
Leadership Journey
We lead off every show with the same question. Tell us about your professional career from where it started to where it is today. The important part of that is what are the leadership lessons you've learned along the way?
I will start my leadership professional working vocation at a shoe store in the mall. I used to sell Nikes, Jordans, and all of those shoes at an athletic foot store for many years while I was in college. During that time, I learned a few items there where I started off working. I was not one that would speak to many people or talk to them, but what I found was that they said, “Everyone that comes into the store, we need to greet.” This was new for me. I was like, “I can do that,” and I have a reason to do that. I started doing that and it was something that I was like, “This is natural. This is not something to be afraid of.”
From then on, anyone I meet all the time, it would be some type of greeting. Even in that position, while I was there as one of the associates, I ended up being what they call a shift manager. I ended up being in leadership there, being able to close out and do all these other items. That was one of the first areas and first times in my life where even though I was just an associate selling shoes, I ended up being one of the leaders in the store at the time.
As time went on, I was still in college, and the shoe store changed its policies on the shift managers and it was time for me to find a new job. That's when I started working in a vocation that was close to what I was doing in school which was programming. I found a job there and started doing programming. As time went on, I continued to work on that skill and craft. I ended up traveling the nation and the world by doing some innovative things in technology. I got to go to Hawaii throughout our nation and share how to do and how to change. What we were doing was automating the way that people would work in these businesses.
One thing I've found is that a lot of businesses and people are doing things because they're comfortable with the way that things are, instead of trying to challenge to take a step into something unknown. We would have to go in and have to talk to people and say, “What are you doing now? What if we start making these tweaks to your process and start making it better?” Not only is it helpful for the people who are working it, but it's also helpful for businesses when it comes to money because we automate things that people are doing manually and spending time on. Now they're able to do other productive things in their work.
From there, I was more on my vacation side of doing a lot of the software stuff and ended up in leadership in hospital systems helping to automate and do some of those kinds of things. A lot of my work was to help others be able to find ways to live in the business world and lives, and trying to improve their productivity. Many times I have teams that I'm with. Project management is one of the areas that I do as well and making sure we have successful implementations of those projects.
Now, I'm a senior consultant in software and do that on a consistent basis with work for both the government and commercial. Through that, leadership is huge and culture is huge, being able to share that information with others. I then bring in other multifaceted pieces of my life like I’m an author being able to share that, pull the team together, and do that. Additionally, I was able to work in the church. I was in church for a long time as an assistant pastor and at this moment, in a transition to, “We'll see what God does with that ministry side of it,” but it's also leadership.
I found that being on different boards as well throughout the community, being able to bring that together and as a leader looking to serve and serving in many capacities. Whether I'm a software consultant, ordained minister on a board, or sharing information in the community, I found that the same leadership skills work when I am in a volunteer organization or even when I have more authority over someone's paycheck and I have to say, “You're going to do this or you don't have a job.” It's very different in how you sometimes approach those things.
I like all that. I love the story there. I want to jump backward to a couple of different pieces of your story and dive in. That first shoe store. You made the comment very vulnerably and jokingly that they're like, “You need to greet all the guests.” You're like, “I hadn't thought about that.” In some ways, it sounds like they were trying to have you break out of your shell. Over half the world are introverts, and there's this fear factor of being open, greeting people, and things like that. What are your insights as to overcoming those fears to break out of our shells and become what we need to become to be effective in the workplace?
The easiest thing is to take it in small chunks. You don't have to be the person who is the eye that's always out there and telling people this. You can start off by telling somebody hi with a smile or, “How are you doing today?” My initial phrases were, “Hello. How are you? Welcome to the store,” or something like that. A small phrase and you want to greet people. If I began to do that, then I found myself greeting people when we got on the elevator or greeting people when I was out and about versus where in other cases, I would not have been doing that.
My encouragement to anyone is to start small and take something like that. In greeting people, you will be amazed at when you put and give something out like a smile or a hi, how people are going to give that back to you and be with a hi or a smile. You're like, “I didn't know that.” In many cases, we're afraid because we think there may not be a response or something else. Sometimes we're able to set the stage by doing that one little thing.
Great insights. It's amazing how whether you're out in public at a mall or where you are, even having your head up and making eye contact with people, it's amazing. If you have a smile on your face, people reciprocate because it almost catches them off guard like, “This person is looking at me. They're smiling instead of having their heads down or heads on their phones and things like that. I love that idea of the small steps there.
When you transitioned to the programming side, you made a comment about going to these organizations. What I was hearing you say was helping them understand where they are and how they're stuck. I love the words you used there. They were in their comfort zone. We lose sight sometimes of the fact that our comfort puts us where we're stuck because we have to get unstuck and get uncomfortable to begin to move forward. You said you guys would go in there. You would explain the benefits of your software and things like that, but let's pull it off of software-specific and go about leadership. What were you doing to help them see their current state, a preferred future state, and get them to start taking those steps?
You start having and asking questions and being curious. As leaders, we should be curious about what's going on in our organizations and what's happening around us so we would go into the organization and ask a person, “What do you do on a daily basis so that I can get your current state or your as is of what you're doing?” We would write down and say, “What do you do next?”
As leaders, we should be curious about what’s going on in our organizations and what's happening around us.
Many times, people are doing things and they don't even know all of the steps that they are doing because they are in a habitual way of doing something and automatically doing that. Sometimes that's how we get in our lives. We get that same way even in leadership. In our leadership styles or what we're doing with our teams, sometimes we can get in that comfort zone of doing it the same way every time instead of taking a step back and saying, “Let's look at where we are.”
What you do is you take where you are and analyze it and you say, “What's going on here? Is there any way for me to take and be more productive?” As for leaders, one of the areas I would say is, is there something I can delegate? Is there something that maybe I'm not good at that I'm taking two hours to do when I could have outsourced this? When we begin to have that conversation and you write it down, then you're able to take a step back and see sometimes, “I could be spending way more time on strategic things versus some of the tactical or operational things that sometimes will bog us down when we could outsource that or delegate that to someone on our team.”
I like that. We are talking about change management. We haven't given it that word, but it's changed management and the fact that there are emotions behind that and trying to change, moving from comfort to discomfort for a while, but then that new thing becomes comfortable too. I'm a firm believer we need disruption in life. In personal or professional life, we need disruption. Disruption has a negative connotation to it for most people. It's not necessarily a negative. It's disrupting things and creating an environment where we have to try something new and different.
I've found that disruption is where we find our creativity. Sometimes we find the greatest innovations when we have been disrupted or in a place that's uncertain. I get it. I like certainty as well. I like plans, but when the plan is not going quite right, we have to be ready for the change and be uncomfortable for a little bit to allow that change to occur. Maybe we get more creative and we get more innovative.
You think about the best teams, companies, and organizations that are out there. They're able to move at a quicker pace when it comes to change. They're not going to sit there and just sit in the same place all the time. They've got to innovate and emerge from where they are at any moment in time. My encouragement is in our lives, on our teams, in our businesses, look in those areas to do what you talked about. Let's look for those changes that we can and be okay with being uncomfortable. Sometimes we have to talk about that because when it becomes that uncomfortable space or uncertain space, it doesn't feel good.
You were talking there towards the end of your story about your time in ministry and drawing that parallel between positional leadership versus influential leadership. The positional one is, “I'm your boss, you have to do what I say,” versus influential leadership, which is intentional leadership of they don't have to do it. It could be a volunteer workforce at church. It could be a project team at work where people are placed there, but you're still not their boss, but you have to lead this project team. I always say leadership is influence. It influences behavior. Are you behaving like a leader? What in your eyes are some of those key behaviors to influence people when you don't have a position over them?
I'll go back to a place when I was pretty young and I ended up being the director of application development at a hospital. I was only 29 or 30 years old. I was in a position over some people who were much older than me, and other departments in the hospital, which I did not have direct authority over. What occurred then is what you have to have is some semblance of a vision or a plan that can be shared and communicated to everyone, and then allow for people to hold themselves accountable in all areas of what they're doing.
This is something that I learned during that time in an organization where many times, I did not have direct authority over it. However, if the plans were there and someone committed, then we all agreed that the accountability was going to be there as a team. That was the way that we all were going to be successful. The same thing is you can take that same way and approach to volunteer work, whether it's an organization, civic organization, a nonprofit church, and it's the same type of thing. You have to have that vision. You have to be able to communicate that and make sure that everyone is on board with the steps, and plans, and number one, that they have some type of ownership into what's going on.
You need that vision. You need to communicate it and make sure everyone on the team is on board with the steps and the plans. They need to feel ownership of what's going on.
When you have a team like that, then that influence is pushed through the agreements that we've all made. I can't tell you to do something because you don't have to in a volunteer organization. We all are in this organization for a reason. We should be able to start to work on a common goal. It's through that communication, through that vision planning, and making that clear that I believe that I've had much success when it comes to influence versus having someone tell you, “You have to do this or you don't get a paycheck.”
Produce On Purpose
What you described is why we call this the Intentional Leader Podcast. It's intentional. You have to intentionally do things, step out, and be purposeful with how it takes place, and then great results come from that. Good stuff. I'm looking at your screen. It says, “Produce On Purpose.” This is your book. Give us a quick background on the why of the book and then what it's about.
Producer On Purpose comes from an area that is dear to me because I had many conversations, whether being ordained minister or even in my role as a leader of having people come to me and saying, “I'm not happy, waking up every day or every morning.” I was like, “There's got to be a way. I know God has a way for us to wake up every morning with joy.” I wanted to share ways that have foundational purposes within scripture, as well as with common practical applications that we can have and utilize on a daily basis to produce what we were born to do.
Produce On Purpose: Experience Life Being The Real You
When I say, “Born to do,” we were all uniquely designed to be able to come out with a purpose and a meaning in this life. Being able to produce what you produce and produce something joyful, fulfilling, and loving in your life would come from us understanding what are those steps so that this external world and the temporary things of this world are not the things that drive us. What's driving us is this internal design I have on the inside that begins to drive me and what I do and who I am and what I produce every day.
No person is a mistake. God had a plan. God has an intent and a purpose for them. The journey of life is finding a fulfilling one. I love that you have captured that. It's amazing. You look at the world today and there's a lot of strife in the world. Geopolitical, whatever you want to call it, even in the US. We're in an election year, so the noise is everywhere. The noises oftentimes are things that don't give us purpose. They distract us, but it's not those purposeful things. Finding out, “Why am I here?” I love your phrase about, “When I get up in the morning, I'm ready to go because I know why I'm getting up today. I'm excited to get up today.”
When you find those things, incredible blessings come from it. I always tell people that I'm probably busier now than I have been in my professional career, but I'm not working anymore. I love what I do. I found my sweet spot. It's a joy to impact thousands of people through leadership development like we're doing. Give a couple of the practical tips you have in Produce On Purpose because I know you take them on a journey through that.
There's a good bit of practical advice to be able to take in. I start off the book by sharing how many times we are all walking through this world as actors or actresses. When I say that, if you look at the book, it has a mask on the front. Many times we show up in situations as an actor or an actress. In Greek times, to be an actor and actress, they would put on these masks to show that, “I'm acting right now.” What I would want to call our mask or invisible mask when we show up at a party, a situation, or maybe, “I am different at church than I'm at home than I'm at work,” I put on a different mask, depending on where I'm at and who I'm talking to.
It's most of the time to please somebody else and please what we think they want us to be while we are there. You speak differently. You may act differently. You may even laugh differently. Sometimes even your emotions are different. You put on an emotional mask and say, “I'm not going to show that emotion in this space. I'm going to only show it here. I may never show that emotion. I want to hide it from everyone because I'm afraid of that emotion.”
These masks can sometimes be difficult in our lives and we can be actors and actresses in all the things that we do. My encouragement in the book is I start off by saying, “Are you ready to be a producer?” We all look at movies. We watch movies. If you've seen one before, you know that the actors and actresses are on the big billboards. We get to see them and typically they have good looks, bodies, and all of that stuff.
It's like, “The actor and actress.” What I've found is that the actors and actresses all work on somebody else's script, very similar to what I explained about how we often act in our lives. You say, “Maybe I'll be the director of this movie that I call my life.” Your life can be a movie. Your life can be a movie that is happening all the time. The director has some more creative freedom. They can say, “We're going to take this shot, this perspective, this way of doing things.” Even the director works for someone. The producer is usually the person who has taken the script from the writers or they could have been the writer who has taken and put all the resources together. They hire actors, actresses, and directors. They have a vision for the project, and they want that vision to be distributed to the world in the end.
As a producer of your own life, when you begin to understand what your vision is, who you are, and what you were born to do, then you are able to start to move down a path that says, “I'm going to be intentional about what I do. I'm going to know my purpose. I'm going to have an intentional aim with my purpose and what I'm going to do with my life. I'm not going to just allow the outside noise or distractions of this world to change who I am, to change my emotions, or to cause me to juggle mask every day. What I'm going to do is I'm going to focus on myself first.” Initially, I start off with a very practical idea of us connecting with our source, our God, and creator.
Our creator is the one that allows us to then align. Paul describes it as being a tri-part being. We are body, soul, and spirit. When we begin to align our body, what's happening on the external, which is our five senses, and then our soul, which is our mind, will, and emotions happen where we can make decisions and choices. When we begin to align that with our spirit, which is the portion of us that we know is there. One thing I can tell you is if for some reason, I don't have my arm, I'm still here.
The body is not who I am. I know that if I begin to align with all of these things in my life, then I can begin to produce something more fulfilling, more joyful, and more loving. One of the areas I initially say is connecting with God. I talk about also how we should have these seeds of vision that come from the source, creator, and God. If you have a vision that God has put in you for your life, then you're able to start to move in a direction where you say, “This is where I need to be.” Often what we have happen when we have visions like this is you have obstacles.
Guess who are the two main obstacles I am talking about? You and other people. Sometimes you are the biggest obstacle because you're like, “Am I supposed to do that? I don't have the skillset. I don't have the knowledge. I don't have the ability,” or you have other people telling you, “Why would you do that? I don't understand why that's something you can do.” There are visions that are for you and that have been designed for you. They are uniquely there for you that you are supposed to execute on. That's a start, but it's a full journey of us being able to produce on purpose.
You broke that down simply. I like that. The phrase I use all the time is that everything in leadership sounds simple, but it's not easy. It sounds simple with that. I love the idea of the source and your last bit about there about that vision for your life. Many people, whether they're on a walk, lying in bed, or in the shower, have that thought of “What if?” It's amazing that the first enemy is ourselves. How many of us are like, “No,” without even considering it? It's like, “Who am I to do that? Why would I have that thought?” I'm like, “You had the thought for some reason. God produced something in your mind to make you think about this. Why couldn't it be you and step out on that?”
Building A Supportive Network
I love your idea that other people speak to us too. There are people who are that positive force in our life who are saying, “You can. You should. I'm here for you as you do that.” There are many more unfortunately who say, “Why would you? Why you?” I’d be curious to see your perspective on this. You've probably heard those phrases before, “We become like our five closest friends,” in demeanor, how we speak, and how we act.
That's your mask. We go with people that have the same type of mask we have on or if you want to view it that way. I'm almost in the belief about this with this purpose bit. I'd be curious to get your feedback. I want to put people around me who when I share what I'm thinking or that vision that I have aren't going to say no. They're going to say, “How? Challenge me,” to stretch me to go after it, who aren't putting up roadblocks, but are saying, “How are you going to get there? What's the road going to look like? How can I help you?” What's your thought on that?
I believe you bring up a great important part of our lives that we need as we have these visions in our lives. Who do you have around you? Who do you have in that circle that you continuously talk to and that you continuously put your information into? It's important because when you're sharing something that is not fully baked, you don't need people putting in different ingredients that are going to make it not good.
You have to learn to find those people who are going to support you, and here's what they look like. They do not judge you. They listen to you. They are curious about helping and supporting what you are talking about. They may not quite understand it, but they're going to ask enough questions so that they can get an understanding of it to where you may not have the full answers yet, but they're willing to listen. They're willing to listen without putting any other judgments, thoughts, or anything from the past.
A lot of times people are trying to project onto you and this is interesting because people like to project who they are onto you. We have to be able to have boundaries in our lives to be able to reject that, but say, “This conversation is about something dear to my heart. I feel that I'm being led to do this at this moment. I don't know where to go yet, but I want to share this with you.” When it comes to your purpose and it comes to your vision for your life and God is talking to you, it is a sacred space.
Life Purpose: People like to project who they are onto you. We need strong boundaries to reject that.
It is a space where you need to only invite those who are going to be there to truly support you. I believe this is important for many because sometimes that circle we have, and sometimes we say somebody is our best friend because they've been around a long time. Maybe they don't have the ability to listen without saying, “Do you remember when you did this?”
That's not what we're talking about at this moment. We are talking about where we are going. As you do that, then you can know, “Maybe I need different support sometimes and different areas and different places, and begin to look at that,” so that you can begin to move forward in that vision. I believe that's a very important part. That's the only way we can get places. The African Proverbs says, “Do you want to go fast? Go by yourself. If you want to go far, you're going to go with others. Others are going to help you move along that way.”
I like how you described that person who can come alongside through a specific aspect of that. You were talking about the questions and the curiosity to understand. What you didn't say was they trying to tell you how or to fix it. That's what happens a lot of times. What I want our audience to understand is when people share that vision with you because you've got people that want to share things and they will share things with you, don't try to tell them how to do it. Don't try to fix it. Even more than that, it's a mindset and realizing that if someone shares a vision for their life, that is a gift to you. They trusted you enough to share an inner thought, an inner feeling. That is a gift. Treat it as a gift that needs to be delicately unwrapped and treasured, and walked with them.
Don't trample on it because we never know what may happen. I've seen it with my own eyes where there are things that we would never think would occur with someone or using someone if they have the right support around them. You don't have to have a million people behind you to do it, you only need 1 or 2, even Jesus. Jesus only had three in his inner circle that he always had around him, but he modeled the same thing that we're talking about here. It is having that inner circle that you can throw things off of, talk to, pray with you, and walk you down that support of that vision and your purpose and who you are.
They also will be able to give you an external view of who you are. Sometimes they're able to feed into you and let you know, “You have a gift to do this.” You were like, “I never saw that.” They were like, “Yes, you can do this.” You know who these people are. If you've ever met them, you love being in their presence and you enjoy having conversations with them because they not only make you feel good but they also let you know and reaffirm who you are.
General Vs. Specific Purpose
That's a good segue here. I was going to ask you one more thing about the book. I know that you talk about general purpose and specific purpose in the book. You were going into that a little bit. Tell us about those two types of purpose, general and specific.
In the book, I talk about a general purpose. That general purpose is for us to please our creator as we've already expressed. My creator, I call him God as in the Bible. When we hear it talk about the description, one of the descriptions of God is “God is love.” That means if I'm going to please my creator and God is love and he is the one that I have, I'm going to express love in everything that I do for that general purpose.
That general purpose is for all of us. We all should be pleasing our creator, our maker, or if you want to call it our manufacturer to make sure that we are living that life that is the best version of who we are. The second area is that specific purpose and that specific purpose is unique to you. This is where we get to shine. This is where that light that is within you is different than everyone else's. It's your gift. Each one of us has at least one, but most of us have multiple gifts that we are here to share with this world.
Each of us has at least one gift, but most of us have multiple gifts that we are here to share with this world.
It's the creativity that you have that's different than anyone else. Sometimes I say that many of us are looking at particular kinds of gifts and we're like, “I can't sing. I can't speak. I'm unable to do these other things,” but you sure do know how to see a need when somebody needs it, or you're able to smile when someone is in a particular situation and they smile back. You are in a space where you are different than everyone else. You get to show off your unique specific purpose when you align your life with and begin to discover those. The funny thing is it's not like you're finding something new. You're uncovering something that may have been buried for a while, but it's always been there.
My guess on this, I don't know if you talk about this in the book or not, but I like how you're describing the giftedness side of it for your specific purpose. I'm a firm believer that God puts different calls on our lives at different times. To our audience, I want you to understand your giftedness does not change, but where that giftedness is executed might. For instance, I was called to locate ministry for the first seventeen years of my professional career.
I feel called by God today to what I'm doing now with leadership development, impacting thousands. It was a huge shift. It was a shift of context, but it's a different call, but it's the same purpose and gifts that are allowing me to do both. A lot of times people try to find not that gift they have, but that thing they're supposed to do when oftentimes, it's not about a thing.
We are human beings, not human doings. Sometimes we're so focused on what we are doing that we miss that there are different seasons in our lives. I do talk about this in the book that there are seasons in our lives where we change. Ecclesiastes talks about us having a time and a season for everything. There's a season in our lives. You made the distinction that our purpose in our gifting doesn't change, but where we are and where we use them will change.
When I think about my family, we were in a space at one point where we had babies. When I have babies in the house, there are things that I cannot do because that baby needs me all the time. Many of us sometimes look at others and what others are doing and think we're supposed to be doing that too. This is not your season for that. You might have the gift. You might have the ability to do it, but it's not your season for it. You may need to be able to change as the seasons change.
When we had the young kids, we were home and doing different things with them, or we traveled with the family. We did national travel. We made sure the travel was different with them and we made sure that that was the case. We exposed them. It was educational, but now we're a little different. My wife and I went on a nice vacation for six days. We're like, “We didn't have to worry about who's going to keep the kids.” We are going to do this. We can do more things in this area now in our lives.
It's the same thing with us. Depending on where you are, your gift can be used wherever you may end up going. A great distinction for everybody to understand and remember is that we all will have seasons. I also call this our mini-movies of life. Now we go on Netflix and there are all of these series. Nothing is a full movie anymore. It's always a series. You have a different series. You have different seasons. In those seasons, who you are doesn't change. You've grown. You've become more, but you are able to still use that gift that was always there for you.
Life Purpose: Even though you have different seasons, who you are doesn't change.
Practical Tip For Leadership
I love that. That's where we find fulfillment and knowing those seasons are changing and morphing with it. My wife and I hit the same one that you're at, or you're going to be out here fully soon where our one and only child is now out of high school and she's engaged now. We're finding those empty nest moments and enjoying life in a different way. You have to be intentional with it because it changes how you go. Awesome stuff. I feel like we could talk all day, but we can't do that on a show. You have to clip it off sometimes. Maybe we'll do another episode down the road. We finish every episode with the same question. It's a practical tip quick. What is something our audience can do intentionally today to be a better leader?
The one intentional thing I want you to think about, and I'm going to use an analogy here, is that thermometers always tell us what the temperature is outside. They're very good at telling us how warm it is outside. Many times we are thermometers. We are saying all of the problems that we have, all of the issues that we have, the money that we don't have. We're good at being a thermometer and telling us all of the issues that are around.
My encouragement is that not only are you a thermometer but you will become a thermostat. Here's why. The difference between a thermometer and a thermostat is that the thermostat changes the temperature and changes what goes on. I encourage you to be that thermostat because now when you walk into the room, instead of gauging what's around you and being the thermometer and saying, “The room has a particular way.”
When you walk in, you change the temperature. You be that smile and you intentionally do that every single day that you go out. Make sure that everyone knows that you have joy on the inside, that you have the love that's coming from you, and allow your light to shine and illuminate everything that you do. I will say there are some practices and disciplines that you can do, pray, meditate, and journal. I encourage you to do those things. You will see a phenomenal change in your life as a leader. Thank you, Sean, for having me on.
Closing
What a great challenge for our audience. Give it a shot. Take us up on it. Let us know how it works out for you. Thank you for being with us, Randy. Hit that subscribe button and tell other people about our show. We'd love to have you back again. Randy, thank you so much. Keep making a blessed impact in Charleston. We will talk soon.
Will do. Thank you.
