Step into a space where imperfection is not just accepted, but celebrated. I'm Travis Maus, and today's Unleashing Leadership is about understanding that the journey to excellence is a constant evolution. Maya Angelou's timeless wisdom, "Do the best you can until you know better, and then, when you know better, do better," lights the way as we explore the profound impact her life as a writer, poet, and civil rights activist has had on our understanding of growth and leadership.
Step into a space where imperfection is not just accepted, but celebrated. I'm Travis Maus, and today's Unleashing Leadership is about understanding that the journey to excellence is a constant evolution. Maya Angelou's timeless wisdom, "Do the best you can until you know better, and then, when you know better, do better," lights the way as we explore the profound impact her life as a writer, poet, and civil rights activist has had on our understanding of growth and leadership.
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Speaker 1:
You. This is Unleashing leadership and I'm your host, travis Moss, and welcome to Quote Day. We just defined finite thinking. We defined infinite thinking. Well, kind of. I think it's a longer journey than that. We've got a whole season here ahead of us. We're starting to get into the meat of it.
Speaker 1:
But we're going to stop for Quote Day and we're going to look for an inspiration from another person that many of us, if you're listening probably haven't heard of. I know I haven't heard of this person and before we get into that quote, it brings me to a little bit of housekeeping. If you've got an inspiration or a quote that you think would be good for others to hear, feel free to go to our website. Remember, it's just Suits. Yeah, this is the other podcast I'm on, but remember, unleashing leadership has the same production company as this is called Not Quite Right Media and the website is nqrmediacom. You can go there. You can find Unleashing Leadership's page off that website and in there is a contact me button so you can send me whatever message that you want about something that's inspiring you, and if I can incorporate it into the show, I might just do that. So this quote is by Maya Angelou and I hope that I get her name correctly. If I haven't, I've done my best to represent her in spirit as best as possible, but her quote is do the best you can until you know better, and then, when you know better, do better.
Speaker 1:
And I was thinking well, who is this Maya? Maya was a writer, a poet and a civil rights activist. She received more than 50 honorary degrees. She worked for Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. She recited poetry at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton and at the inauguration of John F Kennedy. So she is a doer. She is somebody who did a lot, and here's my takeaway from her you are not supposed to know everything.
Speaker 1:
You are not supposed to be perfect. You are not supposed to do everything right. You are supposed to fail. You are supposed to find out that you don't know shit. You are supposed to feel small and you might say no, no, no, no. We need to be perfect. We need to try harder at first time. We need to. We don't have to have those feelings.
Speaker 1:
If that was the way that the world was designed, if that was the way that you were designed, that was the way that it was just supposed to be, why do you got such a big brain and use such a small amount of it, and every single person is in the same boat here, right, we already know from science, right, that we don't use all of our brain. We don't use a very small fraction of it. That's why we got such a big brain and we don't use it all. I think that we need to fail and we need to feel small sometimes. I think that we need people to knock us on our asses to remind us that we have an ass. I think we need to challenge ourselves to get back up, and I think that we need to stop crying about how hard life is. Life has always been hard. I think you could argue that life has only been getting easier.
Speaker 1:
I'm sitting here and recording and looking around the room. I got a bottle of water that I bought from someplace else that's filtered, so there's no bacteria in it. It wasn't too long ago that that wasn't a thing we need to stop complaining about how mean our boss is or why we didn't get something that we wanted, that we think we deserve, and we need to be honest, and you got to be honest with yourself. It doesn't matter, you can be honest with me. You can be honest with your significant other. You can be honest with a colleague or friend. You can be honest with you know, somebody at church or something like that Doesn't matter if you're honest with them. It matters if you're honest to yourself, because where change comes from, that comes from self. Is this the best that you can do? Is this really the best that you can do? And if it is, I challenge you to keep your eyes open, because better is just ahead of you. Because that's the thing with best, and that's part of Simon's point too. Best is just the measurements, the snapshot in time. If it's not the best you can do, let's get moving.
Speaker 1:
Once you know there is better out there, there's absolutely no excuse for you to feel bad about yourself if you don't have better. That's where will and that's where hope comes in. We talked about will and hope in our last episode. I'll remind you what they are. Will is about doing. It's about the future. It's about choosing. Hope is about trust, belief and to look for, and the only thing that can limit your will or hope that there is a better way to do things is you, by allowing yourself to think from a finite perspective. Never be ashamed of learning and changing directions or admitting that you were wrong, or having to pay a debt for ignorance. That's the cost of growth. That's what actually sets you free. You get better by being better. If you want to get better, stop whining open your eyes and start doing.