Hey, what's up, champion?

This is your host, Neal, and I want to welcome you back to another amazing episode today.

Today I'm going to be teaching you a deep character trait that's designed to help you understand pressure.

How pressure comes, but where pressure comes from, but more importantly, how pressure impacts you.

And I'm going to teach you a very simple yet sticky analogy that's going to be easy for you to remember, but also for you to teach to others.

This is something that I believe that helps you work on your inner character, but can show up in your everyday life and everything you do.

Guys, I'm pumped up for today and I pray you are also.

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What's up, champion?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to the Executive Perspective.

For years, I struggled to answer the question, what do you do for a living?

Why?

Because most people who ask only expect to hear one thing.

I am an executive with a deep level of understanding of business, operations, leadership, and technology.

I'm also the president and founder of a worldwide ministry and CEO of an executive coaching and consulting firm.

My number one passion is people, and I receive significant gratitude in life from sowing into others and encouraging them as they grow to achieve their fullest potential.

If you're a high performance individual like me or you're simply ready to take your business leadership or inner potential to the next level, then strap in because I'm locked in and all in.

This is the executive perspective.

Hey, what's up, champions?

This is your host, Neal, and I want to welcome you back to another episode of the Executive Perspective with Neal Reyes.

Man, I am fired up about today.

Today I'm going to be teaching you something that I believe is a deep character trait that every leader needs to know.

But As a reminder, and I say this in just about every episode we have, but this podcast focuses on three main areas.

It focuses on leadership, business strategy, and personal development.

And character, especially your personal character is at the heart and core of all of those.

Man.

Today I'm going to share something with you that I learned.

I'm thinking back.

I think it's been over a decade now, maybe a little longer, but let's just call it a decade.

But long enough that it stuck with inside of me.

And it's something that I believe is a very simplistic concept.

I believe you will, too, but it sticks.

In other words, it's teachable and it's easy to understand.

The topic I want to speak with you about today, that people are like grapes.

Now, it's not just a catchy metaphor, but I'm going to break down to you.

Why, specifically, why are people like grapes?

Well, if I were holding a grape between my two fingers right now, if I were to squeeze it, what would happen?

Well, whatever is on the inside is going to come out on the outside.

And the harder I squeeze it, the deeper to the core I'll get and the more stuff comes out.

Well, that being said, people are like grapes.

This is a significant thing to understand.

The difference is, is that if you're going to squeeze a grape while I would squeeze a grape with my fingers, how do people get squeezed?

Well, that's a good question.

But the answer is people get squeezed by pressure.

Specifically, they get squeezed by the pressures of life.

Sometimes, especially as leaders, you get squeezed by the pressures of leadership or squeezed by the demands within business, squeezed by work staff, squeezed by supervisors, squeezed by market demand.

So many different things in the personal development area, you know, it could be squeezed by your family or squeezed by expenses or unexpected expenses that come up.

There could be so many different things that squeeze a person, but all of those show up in the form of pressure.

Now, I want to share something with you before we move forward.

And while we talk about how people are like grapes, I want you to understand that pressure doesn't change us, but pressure does reveal who we are.

Who.

That's a deep concept right there.

Pressure doesn't change us, but pressure does reveal who we are.

Now, there might be some of you out there like, no, Neil, I'm a diamond.

I got changed by pressure into a diamond.

Okay, diamond.

But that being said, what I'm going to tell you is that we can use pressure to help us grow our character.

And we can use pressure to help form us or to help shape our reactions to certain circumstances so that in future instances of pressure, we react or respond differently.

You know, that's something that you see especially all the time with professional athletes, especially athletes who are looked upon as the captains of the teams, or if they're like, for example, if it's a football team and they're the quarterback, or if they're, you know, something of that nature, or let's say they're an Olympic athlete, you know.

But it can be all different kinds of teams, not just those, obviously, but what they do is they have sometimes pressure that's on them, and they have to learn how to read and understand pressure and how to adapt to the pressure so that the next time that pressure or a different one shows up, they know how to respond accordingly.

While in life, we also need to know and understand how to respond accordingly to when the pressures show up.

Because, like I said, pressure doesn't change us, but pressure does reveal us at our core.

Now, the first thing I want to take you into today is why pressure is a revealer but not a creator.

I'm going to say that again.

I want to go over with you today of why pressure is a revealer but not a creator.

And so here's some points that I have to go over with you.

The first one is that pressure, and this is important because I teach this to my people all the time.

Pressure is always from the enemy.

It's never from God.

Now, I'm going to put that out there, and whether you're a believer or not, but if you are a believer, you should wrap around what I'm saying right now and hold on to it.

Pressure is always from the enemy, and it's never from God.

The second one is that pressure doesn't form you.

It just reveals what's already there under the surface.

Remember I talked about in the beginning that people are like grapes, and if you squeeze a grape on the outside, whatever's on the inside squirts out.

But if you mash that grape really hard and squeeze it really hard, whatever is at the core of the center of that grape, it's going to come out.

Well, people are the same exact way.

You know, picture someone who's holding a nail, and maybe they have it up to a fence or something like that, and they're nailing some fence posts on, and they got the hammer, and they're gingerly hammering away on the nail.

But if they miss that nail and they thump themselves on the thumb, you're gonna hear something from the inside come out.

Maybe for the person, they thump themselves pretty good, but not super hard.

They're like, you know, but they hold it in pretty good.

But that same person, man, if they're whacking away at that hammer, at that nail and they swing it hard, I mean, they're trying to go like Karate Kid style, right, where they're trying to drive it in the wood all at once.

Maybe you haven't seen that, but if you have, you know what I'm talking about, and they go and they miss the head of the nail and they smash their thumb.

You may hear something a little more colorful come out.

Why is that?

Because more pressure got to the core of who they are.

And if that wasn't right under the surface, but the colorful language was close to the core, then it's going to come flying out.

In an instance like that, some of you are probably thinking like, oh, man, they would have come out right on the first one.

For me, maybe it would have.

But, you know, when we're talking about character, understand pressure reveals character.

Pressure reveals what's under the surface.

And so when you have pressure on your life, it's going to reveal who you are and what you have at the core.

What I will tell you is good news, though, is that if you don't like what's coming out or if you don't like what's at the core, you can change that.

People can change.

I've seen it over and over and over again in my life and in my personal life, within my personal character, I've seen it.

Sometimes changing character takes time, but with the right consistency and the right dedication, character can change.

But you also need the right influences coming in to help you change in the right ways.

Another thing that you have to understand is that unless mishandled, pressure can actually be a diagnostic.

What do I mean by that?

Well, it kind of goes in line with what I just said, that we can use pressure to reveal what's under the surface, or you can use pressure to see how you're going to react to a situation.

Or sometimes pressure reveals how your staff reacts or how the business reacts.

You know, pressure can be used unless it's mishandled.

Pressure can be used as a diagnostic.

Now, pressure doesn't always feel good, so let's just get that out of the way.

Pressure does not always feel good.

And there are some people who are used to being under constant pressure, that it's just always stress, stress, stress, stress, stress.

And maybe you've learned how to cope with that or manage that, or maybe you don't even know how to manage it.

You're just existing under that.

But what I will tell you is that if you flip the script on that, you don't mishandle it, but you start using pressure as a diagnostic to help you read how you're reacting to things.

Helping you understand and read your character and how to change it can shift you in a positive way.

But remember, you're at the driver's seat.

Pressure is not at the driver's seat.

And you're in the back seat.

You are at the driver's seat.

You're the one who's controlling where that vehicle goes.

Now, here's something I want to share with you, and this will be what I consider a leadership truth bomb for today.

But stress doesn't make you something new.

It shows what's been quietly growing inside of you all along.

I'm going to say that again, because that's pretty profound right there.

Stress doesn't make you something new.

It shows you what's been quietly growing inside of you along.

Whoo.

That's a big one right there.

The next one I have is when I talk about how people are like grapes.

Well, if you squeeze a grape, what kind of juice are you going to get?

Orange juice.

No, not orange juice.

You're going to get grape juice.

That's right, because the fruit always produces after its own kind.

Oh, you see what I did there?

I kind of brought it funny, and then I hit you deep right there.

Fruit will always produce.

And I say fruit.

I said that actually backwards, but I meant seed, the seed of fruit.

Seed will always produce after its own kind.

But seeds produce fruit, and fruit will always produce after its own kind.

What do I mean by that?

If you squeeze a lemon, you're going to get lemon juice.

Squeeze an orange, you're going to get orange juice.

You squeeze a grape, you're going to get grape juice.

So what kind of juices are the type of juices that come out of people when you squeeze them with pressure?

Well, I'm going to give you some negative examples, but then I'm going to give you some positive examples.

And this is not an exhaustive list.

It's just a list to give you some examples.

Let's start with the negative ones first.

These are the type of juices that flow out of people when they're squeezed with pressure.

The first one is anger.

Ooh, anger juice.

Anger juice.

That just even sounds bad.

Anger juice.

How about this one?

Bitterness.

Oh.

And bitterness and anger are oftentimes closely related to each other.

What about fear.

Oh, man.

Fear juice or the grape juice of fear.

Oh, man, sometimes people are so scared.

And you know, fear is sometimes referred to as an acronym about false evidence appearing real.

But the reason why fear is so destructive is because it can emotionally paralyze a person.

It can physically paralyze them too if it hits them too strong, but it can emotionally paralyze them.

And when I say physically paralyze them, I don't necessarily mean paralyze them where they can't walk and things anymore, but from the standpoint of they won't move if you're in too much fear, sometimes people enter states where they're in such fear they just lock up and they stand still.

But emotionally, which is a lot more common, man, fear paralyzes people emotionally and it prevents them from stepping out, it prevents them from doing new things, it prevents them from showing up and being their best.

Another kind of negative juice that can come out of people is self doubt.

Oh, man, that's a big one.

You know, I only named four of these, but each of these are big.

But self doubt, that's a big one right there.

You know, when I'm working with clients one on one on coaching, sometimes, even though we may want to have 12 weeks of high performance coaching and we want to knock a lot of things out, sometimes what we'll spend several weeks on alone is just dealing with self doubt and hitting it from different angles.

Why?

Because seed always produces after its own kind.

And if people have had self doubt seed sown into their life for years and years and years, sometimes it takes some time to break through and develop a new mindset where you pull the weeds of self doubt out and you plant some good seed in there.

A powerful mindset that helps them with confidence in different things.

Now let's give some positive examples though of juice that comes out of people.

Some positive juice is strength, man.

We see that a lot of times, don't we?

We'll see people.

And even in yourself, sometimes you'll even surprise yourself with how strong you can be around certain situations.

Another one is integrity.

You know, that's such an important word to me.

Integrity to me in leadership means everything.

And if you were to talk to my staff and ask them what's the most important thing to me, I believe they would tell you it's integrity.

Integrity means everything to me.

And sometimes being integrous means doing the right thing, even when it's not easy and when it's not the popular thing to do.

But knowing that you have integrity in you, that's a grapefruit juice to come out of you.

That's something that's important that can shift and change your life.

Another one is patience.

Oh, that's a big one right there.

Because a lot of times people are not very patient by self nature.

The Bible tells us that patience can also be considered like long suffering, as one of the fruits of the spirit.

But when you're patient, things kind of slow down and shift just a little bit where you're able to think a little more clearly, you're able to see things a little easier, and the answers come to you with greater clarity.

Patience is a big one because you don't feel rushed, you don't feel pressured to have to hurry up and do something or to move on something.

And then the fourth one I have for you, and it's kind of four and five, I guess these kind of go together, but they are separate.

One is peace, the other is faith, man.

Those are big ones right there.

Who wants some more peace within their life?

Yeah, I'm sure.

I'm sure you just about all do.

Peace is so important within your life.

In fact, if I were giving you a teaching on peace today, I would tell you that if anything ever contends for your peace, then it's too expensive and you should put it down.

I'm going to say that again.

If anything ever contends for your peace within life, that thing is too expensive and you need to put it down.

The next thing I want to talk to you about is these are some core concepts of the people are like grapes teaching I'm giving today, but I think these are important things for me to share with you that I believe will resonate and stand out to you.

But they're also some good recap on some of the stuff we've already learned.

When people are under pressure, what's inside of them comes out just like squeezing the grape.

Don't forget what I already taught you about that.

Pressure doesn't create flaws, though.

Let's talk about that for a second.

Pressure doesn't create flaws.

It doesn't create bitterness.

It also doesn't create sweetness, but it does reveal what's already inside.

In other words, pressure is not a creator.

Pressure is a revealer.

And if you've got flaws on the inside, or bitterness or anger or some of those things I told you a minute ago, the negative juices.

But let's say you have good juices in you too.

You know, it's just going to simply doesn't create pressure, doesn't create Those things, but it does reveal them because it's revealing what's on the inside of you.

Now, whatever fills your inner reservoir is what pressure will draw out.

So consider that like as if you had a gas tank or a reservoir on side of you.

Whatever you put in there, let's say it's a character gas tank on the inside of you.

Whatever you feel that character gas tank with when you're underneath pressure, that's what's going to come out of your inner gas tank.

Your inner character gas tank.

That's what's going to come out, is when you're under pressure.

What's going to come out is what's ever inside of your character gas tank that lives inside of you.

Now, why is this especially important to leaders?

Well, let's go over a couple points because you're already understanding why this is important, but I'm going to help you understand it even better.

As leaders, we're in charge of creating environments where pressure is inevitable.

What kind of pressure?

Well, sometimes it shows up in the form of deadlines.

Sometimes we have growth goals that we set for people, either personally or for the organization.

And also there's decision making.

So as leaders, we create environments where pressure is inevitable.

It doesn't mean we try to create pressure.

And if you're a great manager, you'll learn how to be able to create initiatives without creating pressure.

But also understand that your people, you can never control exactly how they're going to react or act to a thing.

You know, you can have someone that you constantly reinforce and tell them they're doing a great job.

You can tell them how much they mean to you and how much you value them, but they might leave work every day wondering if their job's in jeopardy because it's something in their inner character.

Remember that character gas tank I talked about again?

Well, maybe they're filling their character gas tank with some wrong things, and maybe they got some old gas.

I don't know if you've ever had an old gas tank, but when you open it, if it's got old gas in there, I'm talking real old gas or the gas that was in there and evaporated.

That gas can doesn't just stink like gas, it stinks.

It has a ugly smell to it.

Well, the same thing can happen with your character gas tank if you're filling it with some wrong things.

And if you're letting it stay there for longer than it should, it should never be there at all.

But if you let it stay there for a long Time, that inner gas tank is going to stink.

Another thing I want you to understand is how pressure impacts people, can help you.

I'm going to say that again.

Understanding how pressure impacts people, that can help you.

In other words, when you're a great leader, understanding how pressure impacts your people or others, that can actually help you.

And I'm not talking about using their misfortune to your advantage, but when you understand how pressure impacts people, you can work to eliminate the effects of pressure ahead of time by being proactive in your management to be able to help the people around you.

You can also do this on your personal life and you can do it with your friends and your family, your people closest to you at the family.

How do you do that?

Well, one, you can coach more effectively.

If you understand how people are being impacted by pressures, you can help them with that.

You know, I have four children.

My wife and I have been blessed with four beautiful children.

I have one daughter and I have three boys.

My daughter is the oldest.

And I will tell you that where they're similar in character and they're similar in personality, they're each very unique.

And sometimes the way one might be dealing with pressure is completely different than the way another might be.

So by me recognizing that or my wife recognizing that, we're able to coach the child over here a little different than the child over here because we're able to coach them on their own character and their own personalities because we recognize how pressure can impact each of them individually.

Another thing is it can help us to avoid judgmental leadership.

And this is important here because this doesn't just deal with leadership at the office, but also leadership in yourself and your family.

You know, if you understand how pressure is impacting people, it helps you to not have wrong judgments against them.

It helps you to understand maybe where you're part of the problem.

You know, if I give, if I'm the kind of manager, and I'm not, but if I were the kind of manager that everything I did was last minute, where I'm flying by the seat of my pants because I don't know how to picture a head, plan ahead and strategize and be strategic.

And I'm always giving people last minute things to do.

Last minute things to do, Last minute things to do, man, I might really stress those people out.

And if my judgment on that is that they don't do good work or they don't know how to, how to pivot and knockout work quickly, well, maybe that's accurate.

But did I create those situations because maybe the improvement that's needed is there is actually I need to be better in my leadership and start being more strategic so they have more advanced notice on what's coming down the pipe.

Now, I understand and I don't disagree with you if this is what your thought is, we have to be nimble so that when changing or last minute priorities pop up, we adapt to them.

Absolutely.

But those should always be, in my opinion, and I will tell you, I've learned this through good leadership.

Those should be the exceptions and not the norms.

It shouldn't be the norm that everything is always last minute and flying by the seat of our pants.

Another reason why it's important to understand how pressure impacts people and how that can help you is because you can support emotional growth in both yourself and others.

What do I mean by that?

Well, if you know how, like I said earlier, pressure can be a diagnostic tool for you.

If you understand how pressure impacts you, well, you can use that to help you grow in your emotional growth and how you respond to that and how you react to that so you can be better for yourself and for others.

At the same time, if you understand how it impacts other people.

Mamie, man, you turn around and you go by their desk and you drop last minute things on them and you leave and you come back 15 minutes later and they're pounding candy bars and Cokes.

What happened to that situation?

Well, unless they're just hungry for that, most likely they're stress eating.

And you were the inducer of that because you dropped a lot of unexpected stuff off on them.

And if you have too many candy bar and Coke moments, well, then after a while you might be impacting that person's health.

Oh, man, that was a deep one right there.

But we're gonna go get it.

How do we move forward in this podcast?

I say this routinely.

How do we move?

What's the direction we move?

On this podcast, we move forward and upward.

That means we go at it, we see something, we're gonna go get it, we're gonna go forward and upward because we're gonna not gonna have limitations.

We're gonna grow.

Now, that being said, I have some items here and we're getting ready to close in a second, but I want to have some rapid fire items with you.

And these are just some what I refer to as practical leadership insights.

Watch reactions under pressure.

They can be windows into character.

Whoo.

That was good right there.

Watch reactions under pressure because they can be windows into character.

And remember, when we grow, we always Grow from the inside out, which means that growth always has to start with us and then move on to the outward people, whether it be our families or our employees.

But it always starts on the inside out.

Never judge people only by their best days.

And that's big right there.

You could also say don't judge people only by their worst days, but you don't want to just judge people by their best days.

Why?

Because on their best days, that's when the things are excellent.

But you have to know how people respond when a bad day is going on, when a lot of pressure shows up.

Why?

Well, one, so you have more grace, but two, so you can coach them and help them to be a little bit better.

Because the more you can help someone understand and how to deal with pressure, the happier they're going to be in life.

And the better they are in life, the more loyal and employed they are to you.

But at the same time, the better work they'll produce.

So I'm not saying do it to get, but I'm saying do it to give.

Genuinely care about your people.

Also help your teams understand how pressure operates.

When you can teach your people that people are like grapes and understand how pressure operates, you'll open their eyes.

And as a group, they now have more.

They can contribute both to you and to the group.

They might even help you with some fresh insight.

Teach your teams how to build emotional reservoirs filled with positivity and resilience.

I like to call it the character gas tank on the inside.

Teach your teams how to fill their character gas tanks on the inside with things like positivity and resilience.

Why?

So that way, when they're squeezed on the outside, you know what's coming out.

And then the other thing I have for you is in yourself.

So this starts with you.

Do the internal work before the pressure comes.

Man, that's a big one right there.

Do the internal work before the pressure comes.

In other words, learn to be proactive rather than reactive.

Because the more you work on your character and the more you proactively fill your.

Your gas tank on the inside of you.

Your character gas tank on the inside of proactively.

Well, you're putting your work in ahead of time.

So now you're proactive rather than the reactive and you'll respond in the right ways when the pressure comes.

And my closing thoughts for today is this.

Right now, if you were to do an honest assessment, what would you say is coming out of you right now when you're under pressure?

Another way of saying it Is that who you want to be?

And that's a big one right there.

But remember, this is how we sometimes work on that internal character gas tank or reservoir, hitting it with the hard questions.

What comes out of you right now when you're under pressure, and does that represent the person you desire to be?

If it's not, then the ball's in your court, champion.

And then what I want to tell you, and as I close today, remember that one.

I believe in you.

So don't feel knocked down, don't feel beat down.

But use this as an opportunity to grow your character and those around you.

And understand that greatness is already inside of you.

You just have to cultivate it.

Greatness already exists.

You just have to cultivate it.

Guys, I want to remind you to swing by our website@neil Reyes.com where you can find all of our teaching resources.

And until next time, remember that I believe in you.

I believe you have greatness in you.

Go out and smash it.

Thank you and have a blessed day.