MM159 - Earning the Reward | MM Book Study Pt. 17

Losers don’t get ice cream. If you want ice cream, put forward the effort and win. You cannot appreciate what you did not earn. That which is earned by sweat and determination is held dear and is precious.

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♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Hello, welcome back to Morning Mindset. We're going to continue with the Morning Mindset book study, and today the chapter that we are on is the chapter titled learning the reward and I can't remember whether I share this story in the book or not, but I'm going to go ahead and share it with you.

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Now, when I was a young child, about the time that I was writing reports on the state of Missouri. I was also an elementary school and I played Little League Baseball. Yes I did. I wasn't that great at it, but I did it and I got out and got some sunshine and ran around and you know, it worked the energy out of me so that I could sleep well at night, but when I was playing Little League baseball.

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If you won a game, I think we played games like every Saturday, you know, you started in the springtime and you practice you formed a team and you practice and practice and then you had games on I'm pretty sure that the games were on Saturdays or maybe they're on Tuesday, and I don't know I don't remember when the games were but you had one maybe two games per week for a few months and then the season was over.

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Now we had coaches and there were adults and when we won if we won a game. Our coaches would take us to the local ice cream place the dairy barn or whatever it was and we were allowed to buy we're allowed to order or ask for an ice cream cone. Essentially, you know, the cones cost they cause our coaches probably a quarter 30 cents apiece or what have you and you could go up and you can order a vanilla cone a chocolate cone or swirl come, and that's what you're allowed to have.

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Right and we would go there in celebration of a victory if we won. If we didn't win the game we didn't get ice cream. What Child abuse you say, huh? That's terrible. Every child should get ice cream. No, we weren't children. We were well, we were children, but we were a part of a team and the concept that we're we're that we were being taught by our coaches was that we needed to earn the reward losers don't get ice cream.

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If you want ice cream, put forward the effort and win. I know this seems archaic and barbaric in today's light, but the fact the matter is we're not so smart today as we think we are, and we even raise an entire generation of entitled spoiled crybabies because they were never taught that you have to earn the reward whether it is a trophy or whether it is a ribbon or a certificate or ice cream or whatever.

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It used to be, in the sane world, you did not get a trophy unless you achieved. Unless you actually won, unless you did better than someone else. You did not get participation ribbons in the olden times because a participation ribbon is meaningless. A blue ribbon or a first place ribbon means something because it means that you worked harder and did better than everyone else when I was living in, Ohio, and I was in active 4-H shooting sports volunteer.

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I was an instructor as a trained instructor and I was a volunteer one of the things that I got to do. I had the opportunity to do each year for several years was I got you judge at the state fair. I got to judge 4-H projects at the state fair and I would sit, and I would ask questions of these young people these teenagers. They would show me their project that would explain it to me. I would ask them questions, I had a battery of questions and that I would ask them because they needed to have certain types of knowledge if they expected to be graded highly in that subject and then at the end of the day, I had to choose a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place

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Now, I would interview anywhere from 12 to 20 kids towards the end. There was usually 20 or more young people kids. I would interview them, but you know what? They all wouldn't get blue ribbons or white ribbons or red ribbons. They wouldn't all get for now, I think that by then they were still doing the they were in the the six soft-minded stupidity of giving them participation ribbons for showing up at the state fair, but the fact the matter is, participation ribbon or participation trophy or what have you is meaningless, and you can't trick people into believing that it has meaning.

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You cannot trick the human mind into believing that something that doesn't have any meeting that was easily achieved something that everybody else got any way. Well, as an award, as special, as unique. No, you can't and it's pointless to try. For instance, how many of you have children who have walls filled with trophies and ribbons, and be honest, they have walls filled with ribbons and trophies, not because they sacrificed instead of going out screwing around with their friends or plan on their phones or whatever instead of doing that they actually studied they worked on their project.

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They put extra effort into it. No, they just did something and everybody gets a trophy. Everybody gets a ribbon so their walls are filled with I just showed up ribbons, and you might think that you're doing a service to your child by giving them ribbons and awards for doing nothing, but I can tell you that you're not because it's not huge how human beings work. That's not how cute the human psyche works.

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You cannot appreciate anything that you did not learn, and you won't appreciate anything that you did not learn that which is earned by sweat and determination is held dear and is precious. When I was a kid, I didn't have a lot of trophies and I didn't have a lot of ribbons, but I did have a little league baseball trophy, because the team that I was on took first place in our league.

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We took first place in our league, that means we beat all the other teams or most of the other teams and we went to the finals and we beat all those teams and we were number one and we got everyone on the team got a trophy and when every time I looked at that trophy, I remembered that year that the little league baseball team that I was a part of placed first.

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Now I didn't place first every time not even close my sports teams at when I was in school elementary junior high high school. We didn't always Place versus their fact when I was a freshman our varsity football team didn't win a single game all year long, but you know what they didn't do they didn't round up the team and give them all trophies for showing up every day.

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They said “You know what? This is a rebuilding season. This is a learning season. This is a growing season. We're going to take what we learned this year and we're going to do better next year.” You have to earn the reward. Now, you as an adult human being can earn the reward. There's this little thing called the process of delayed gratification.

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You do the work first, then you have the beer. You know you go outside, shovel the snow, rake the lawn, do the work. You go to the gym and you do the exercises, you do the training. You sweat and you ache and then you earn the stake or you earn the the milkshake or whatever, and it tastes so good. If you've gone out and worked all day long in the summer on your yard guys, you know this.

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Why does that cold? Beer tastes so good. It tastes the same as it always is it it's not a special magical beer, but it tastes so good because you actually went out and you spent two hours or three or whatever in the yard sweating doing all that menial crap that you don't really want to do anyway, but you have to do it because it needs to be done then you drink.

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Cold beer and it tastes fantastic because you earned that reward ladies and gentlemen, you cannot live a positive and productive life. You cannot move forward and achieve and grow if your achievements are given to you for free if your rewards are handed out like candy you have to earn the reward teach your children teach yourself wrap your brain around that concept, and you'll be a better person for it. I am your host Paul Markel, and I'm looking forward to talking to you again, real soon.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

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