Luck Didn’t Do The Dishes, Perseverance Did. Quiet Choices Turn Almost into Done w/ Andy Campbell

We explore finishing as a practice built on quiet courage, a steady mindset, and the wisdom to shift tactics without quitting. Andy shares hard-won lessons from cancer, grief, and coaching that turn cliches into actionable habits.

• the iceberg of success and hidden work
• why being good beats being lucky
• hearing the small voice over loud fear
• reflection, quiet time, and gratitude routines
• perseverance as repeated courage from honorable intent
• community that evolves as you heal and grow
• kids, sports, and the real why behind resistance
• finishing by diagnosing why we don’t finish
• the difference between quitting and smart shifting

If this episode lit a fire in you, please share it, leave a review, and finish the things that matter most

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Today’s Focus: Finishing
• 2:30 Andy’s Story: Trauma, Empathy, Resolve
• 4:37 Luck Vs Being Good: The Iceberg Reality
• 9:25 WD-40, Near-Quits, And Hidden Iterations
• 17:24 The Small Voice Vs The Loud Voice
• 23:37 Reflection, Quiet, And Gratitude Habits
• 30:22 Kids, Sports, And When Not To Push
• 37:13 What Perseverance Really Is
• 42:32 Community, Mindset, And Core Beliefs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:17

Welcome back to Mind Force, the podcast that's all about unlocking resilience, leadership, and inner strength in a world that doesn't slow down. I'm your host, Nate Shear, and today we'll be talking about something that doesn't get enough credit in a fast-paced, quit when it's hard culture. Finishing. Actually finishing. Our guest today, Andy Campbell, is no stranger to stranger to long roads and hard battles. He's a veteran speaker and leadership coach who teaches others how to push through resistance, own their own narrative, and never settle for almost. Whether you're battling something that matters or just trying to finish what you started, this episode is for you. Andy, I'd love to start with your story. Who are you beyond the resume and what moments really shape the way you show up in the world today? Yeah, thank you, Nate.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09

I think I am I am in a lot of ways just like everyone else and the people that your listeners. Uh I have had uh traumatic circumstances that have happened to me. I've had very uh what I've considered devastating setbacks, events that have occurred. I have been encouraged along the way by others. I have developed over time some core beliefs that I believe I've observed that have helped sustain me through difficulties. And I think in that sense, again, I'm like everyone else, there are times when you're when your stamina fails you and uh you've gone as far as you think you can go. And from time to time you need someone to say, no, you actually can continue on, you can persevere. So whether that's, you know, things that happened to me in my childhood, I there's a there's a lot of stuff that I have dealt with, a lot of circumstances that I've dealt with. Uh so I have, I think, some comprehension when people tell me about the difficulties that they're going through. I have some comprehension of of what they might be feeling, and I also have a confidence that they too can not quit, that that they can work to overcome those circumstances.

SPEAKER_00: 3:19

Makes sense. Sounds like uh a lot of baggage, but that empathy and the ability to connect with others is is super powerful. Out of curiosity, Andy, where are you joining us from?

SPEAKER_01: 3:29

I'm joining uh my accent may tell you one of the five boroughs in New York, but that's not accurate. I am joining you from Charleston, South Carolina. Oh, nice. How is that out there? Uh hot right now, hot and humid, but uh but it's a you know it's a beautiful place. I don't know that we need anybody else to move here, honestly. Like I think everyone from the Midwest. I don't know how many I don't know how there's anyone left in the Northeast, but uh uh no, it's a great place. Uh it's great people. Um it's uh it's a very nice place to live. Once you get past a couple of really hot months, you know, once you get past that.

SPEAKER_00: 4:06

But it's a hidden gem out there. Well, let's start with the warm-up, Andy. What's something most people assume about your journey, but isn't actually true?

SPEAKER_01: 4:15

Aaron Powell That um somehow I got through these things without ever coming to a point of desperation or the thoughts of quitting, uh, or that somehow I'm a I'm a very strong person that they they might not be. Uh I would assure them that I'm none of those things. It has almost broken me too many times to count. I can't tell you how many times I've thought, is this life even worth it? Uh you know, did did I did I survive cancer, stage four pancreatic cancer just to find the body of my son after he took his own life? Is that the only purpose in my life? Uh so I would say that uh some people, I've had people tell me, they read the story and they go, wow, you're just such a strong person. I would say, actually, I am far from that. I happen to be someone who hasn't quit yet, and it's my goal to not to not quit, to continue to persevere, to finish this race until I take my last natural breath, until this body fails this soul, and I can't stay here any longer. But no, I don't consider myself uh tremendously strong. I consider myself tremendously determined, which is different than being strong because I still break down, I still have times where I shed tears over things that have happened. But I think, you know, determination, perseverance the perseverance is is a necessity if you want to finish. And so I think that's something that people misunderstand when they when they either hear me speak or they read about some of the things I've been through. But I don't think I don't think that's the case. I think it's just more a matter of determination.

SPEAKER_00: 5:47

Yeah, it really reminds me of that image. It's always been a powerful one for me is the image of the iceberg. And the top of the iceberg is uh success and the good things that happen. And uh no one ever gets to see the stuff that happens under the water, the late nights, the grinding, the you know, the difficult things. And people, like one of my biggest pet peeves, and I don't know why it drives me nuts. But when you get something good at work, you get the assignment you want, you get a promotion, and then somebody will say the comment, lucky. Yeah. And for some reason it drives me nuts. Like I have done the things I need to, I come in early, stay late, make sure I turn in good products, and I do stuff, and there probably is some level of luck in everything that happens, I think. But you put yourself in the right positions, the right places, you knew the right people, and then maybe luck came in at the end. But I think it's another one of those like hidden things where, like you said, like you are where you are now, and people are like, oh, that's awesome. Like you're so strong, you know, must have been pretty easy for you. And it's like, whoa, whoa, like look at the bottom of that iceberg and all the stuff that's under the water. Is that kind of the same thing?

SPEAKER_01: 6:55

100%. I would say there's two phrases that come to mind. One that I that I despise and one that I hang on to. One is I'd rather be lucky than good. I hate that phrase because I actually do not want to be more lucky than good. That means it just kind of happened. I had no, you know, I had I had no responsibility and it just luck just occurred. Now, some people say, well, I mean by if you do all these things, then you get lucky. I still don't believe in uh luck per se. Do some things happen that I that are to my benefit that I might not explain, be able to explain? Yes. But I'd rather be good. Okay. I'd rather be good because of exactly what you said. If I'm good, if I stay on task, if I put my shoulder to the grindstone, if I do all that stuff, then the thing, then the phrase that I do like has a chance to operate, which is slowly at first, then all of a sudden. And so people forget it's like, you know, it's like, oh, that rock band, you know, that that band, that singer, they're an overnight success. No, they've been playing little clubs and smoky bars for the last 15 years, okay? And then all of a sudden, they came on the scene. And so, yeah, I think it is exactly that. So, no, I want to be I want to be good more than lucky. And I believe that a lot of times part of the perseverance is slowly at first. You've got to get through the slowly at first to get to the all of a sudden. And that requires determination, perseverance, and you know, a host of other attributes. But you gotta get through the slowly at first part. First can last, you know, it doesn't say like first for a short period of time and then all of a sudden. It says slowly at first, as in all of a sudden comes second. The time frame of first might be a long time frame. And that's what I think you're talking about. People don't see that. They're like, you know, um, you know, it's just like, well, like you said, you got this promotion, and I didn't even know. Well, you don't know what I've been doing for the last 20 years, put myself in a position, or to give the universe a chance to work in my favor, right? Like you don't know what all I did. And so, yeah, I don't like that phrase, but I I do believe slow, I do believe in slowly at first, then all of a sudden.

SPEAKER_00: 9:03

Yeah, it reminds me. I've mentioned it on the show a couple of times before, and maybe I've mentioned it too many times, but I I go back to the WD40 reference. I always loved that one. W D40 household name, like you can buy it anywhere in the world. Like I reside in the UK right now, I can go buy it right now uh here in Europe and probably buy it anywhere. But they had 39 failed recipes that were not good and they didn't make it anywhere, but they pushed on and pushed a WD40, that 40th recipe, and now it's everywhere, and you know, they've made millions or whatever the dollar figure is. But they could have just stopped at 38, 39 and never made it anywhere. Now you have that blue and yellow bottle everywhere.

SPEAKER_01: 9:41

Yeah, and and I'm pretty sure that every true success has been that way. And it's the same way whether you're dealing with a business venture, a new product introduction, uh, a new concept, or whether you're dealing with getting yourself a surviving grease, a grief or loss, or some other thing uh that's happened in your life that's now impacting the way you see and the decisions you make. You know, you are going to have setbacks. They had 39 setbacks, but they persisted, right? They persisted. And I think that that is uh a good, both a great practical example and a metaphorical one for almost any situation in our lives. That's why it's so important not to quit, uh, because you might be on you don't know where you're at in those 40 iterations. You really don't know. All you know is you've tried a bunch. Now, you may know how many you've tried before. You don't know where you're at in the path to success, right? You may have tried, you know, in their case, 20, and you don't realize that you're halfway there. You may think, you know, this will never end. Like, we'll never get there. Well, actually, you're already halfway to success. You just don't know it yet. And you won't know it until you get to the, you know, to the successful outcome. And then you'll be like, oh wow, when I thought about quitting, I was already halfway here. Good thing I didn't quit. So yeah, I think it's I think it's a great example.

SPEAKER_00: 11:01

Yeah, there's another one too. There's an image of a guy he's swinging an axe and he's swinging through the dirt, and he's got this little tiny sliver left, and then he walks away, and the other side shows like gold or diamonds or whatever it is, and it's just like one more swing, but he's like, I'm over it. I've swung a hundred times, I'm over it, I'm out of here. And it was 101 that he needed. So yeah, I think it's another thing to just I mean, it's easy to say take the you know, one more step, take the next step, but it's I mean, kind of true. I think a lot of things I say from time to time feel cliche, but they're actually true. So you have to just keep saying them. If it's true, even if it's cliche, you just say it anyway. So we'll keep kind of beating the dead horse on some of these things. But before we get into the major grit, I'd like to flip the mic. What's one question you'd like to ask me, Andy?

SPEAKER_01: 11:52

So um you have you've interviewed uh a number of people, you have heard a lot of different stories, uh, probably taken away some nugget of wisdom or advice that you might not have thought about in that way before you heard it. So, what would you say are three things that you have learned through your interviews that you have then adopted into your daily practices?

SPEAKER_00: 12:28

Okay, yeah, good stuff. So, top three things, and they're probably the most recurring themes as well, and maybe that's why I adopted them, maybe because they're awesome, or maybe because I heard them the most. But I think the first one is reflection. So, you know, stopping and looking at yourself. I think as Americans, I've lived in different countries. Like a year ago, we lived in Japan, and you can see the culture there, how they think of others and how that interaction is. It's completely different. And so that's one thing I like to try to work on and reflect on like how I'm impacting other people and things like that. So I think reflection is one, and it really ties into the second one, which is slowing down. I think we live in a society right now, everything's fast, we have fast food. You can Google an answer in an instant, you can drive through, you get Amazon, what, like same day now. We're so used to the now and the here and the faster. There's just so much goodness that comes from the quiet. So for the last uh six months or so throughout these themes, I've been getting up uh about 30 or 45 minutes early, going through a devotional, having some quiet time. Uh, hopefully, my wife will get up. I see how she's doing, work through the schedule of what we got with the kids. And even though it's 30 minutes, like that 30 minutes is so recharging and such a great way to start the day before the kids get going, before breakfast is flying every which direction, we're getting the kids to school, I'm going to work out. So reflection and quiet time have really kind of gone together. So that's the first two. And the last one, what would it be? I think the last one is just finding, I guess they all kind of play into each other. Um, but the last one I would say is gratitude. And gratitude to slow down, smell the flower. Um, I really try to pause more and like there's big fluffy clouds out here. My wife loves them, and they just kind of hang in the sky. There's just something so powerful about all the things of nature and things like that. So I think they all kind of wrap together quiet, reflection, slowing down, and just being happy for the things that we have. Everyone's happy. We all woke up, the family's good, and really just cherishing what's going on. So I think those would be my three. It probably is like more four or five, but they kind of all feed off of each other. What do you think about those three? I think they're great.

SPEAKER_01: 14:52

And I think they I think they're I think they're true. I think they are true. And probably why you've heard them so many times from different sources or one from one person and one from another, and the themes keep recurring because I don't, you know, we talked about some cliches, right? And I I don't think some cliches exist because they're, as one person told me, cliches exist because they're statistically accurate. And so I think, you know, cliche likes to stop and smell the roses. Now you may need some instruction on how to do that. How do I stop and smell the roses? But I think I think that's great advice. I think those three things, if if uh we all implemented those three things more often more consistently, we and those around us would probably be in a better place.

SPEAKER_00: 15:36

Absolutely. Well, Andy, we'll start with your first pillar, which is never quitting. Was there a moment when you walked away from something important or you wanted to, sorry, wanted to walk away from something super big, but didn't? And what played out?

SPEAKER_01: 15:51

Um so I think there's two things. One is, yeah, there's been plenty of things that uh that I wanted to walk away from, big things that I wanted to walk away from a year after I got married, I wanted to walk away from being married. I was like, man, this married thing. My wife still laughs about it. You know, something happened, I don't remember what it was, but she was she said that I said, I think I remember saying this, she goes, you know, I just don't think this marriage thing is for me. Um, so I mean it can be as big as now this year we sell, you know, we'll celebrate 37 years together. So obviously it must have been somewhat for me, but in the moment, uh, you know, that's one reason why you shouldn't quit things because your perspective in the moment may not be completely accurate for the entirety of the picture. Yeah, because you can't see the picture. I think, you know, how many deals in business I was in the middle of and I just, you know, I had every reason to quit and I didn't. You know, getting a stage four pancreatic cancer diagnosis, there were there were, you know, there were good reasons to quit uh and I didn't. You know, so I think it's I think they're probably too numerable to count. That's one of the things I think, you know, maybe for your listeners is yeah, you're gonna have a lot of times you want to quit. That's not really the point. Now I think there's also I would say I what I have learned, Nathan, is there's like two voices that play in my head. There's like this still soft voice that tells me things, and there's a really loud voice that tells me things. And usually the loud voice is more focused on risk management, all the things that can go wrong, you know, all the consequences. One of my core beliefs is there are no hard decisions, there's only hard consequences. And I came to that actually uh through a couple of different experiences, but but one that I think is kind of you know easy to relate to is I was I had I had done 15 rounds of what became a 16-round chemotherapy uh protocol. Now, this protocol is three chemotherapies at once. Okay, they give you three, because when you got pancreatic cancer, they just kind of throw at least seven years ago, they just throw the kitchen sink in it, right? And uh and so I'd done 15 of these. Most people never get past four. A smaller number get past uh, say six, maybe eight. Uh there's very, very few people who will do 16 at anywhere from 100 to even 80%, which is the lowest dose that I ever went to was 80% uh of the normal dose or the dose amount for my size and weight. There came a time after 15 of them when I was having extremely bad reactions. Okay. Like, and I and I knew, I knew I just could tell on the inside I was coming apart. Okay. I was I was gonna bleed out. That's what I figured. Like every like a baseball, like the seams were coming off the baseball, and so the cover was gonna come off. And I had this little quiet voice that was telling me it's time, it's time to quit the chemo, it's time to stop the chemo. And then I had this really loud voice, whenever that voice would show up, I had this loud voice that was like, brother, you just don't understand the consequences of this decision. Okay. You're gonna leave your wife, you're gonna leave your children, you're gonna leave, you love the green grass and the blue sky and the air. You know, like I just think oxygen is such a cool thing. Like we do it, we we use it all the time, nobody really thinks about it. Nobody thinks about oxygen, but it's just an amazing, an amazing thing. And so it's all this, it's really being loud, telling me all these terrible consequences are gonna have. But in that moment, I actually made the choice to listen to the small voice. I had to get quiet to hear it, but when I got quiet, I heard it, and it was like uh it's time to stop. Now, what I could not comprehend at that time was where I was gonna be 90 days later, which was what it was saying to me was it's time to stop that and start this. I just didn't know about the this part of what I was stopping. I just knew that I was stopping. And it took, I think on my part, it took more courage than I realized that the time to stop, because there's this loud voice telling you all these potential consequences. Except the way it presents it to us is they're guaranteed consequences. It doesn't say, well, these are potential consequences that probably won't happen. But the other thing your mind can't comprehend is anything good that's going to come out of this bad, you know, this tough, what we would call a hard decision, right? So what I realized was six months later, when I got into a trial that I didn't know about, my oldest daughter found the trial for me. Uh my physician had done several had me do several things like a 10-day fast and a five-day water-only fast and all this stuff. And then, and then when my daughter found the trial that I went to that eventually I believe contributed greatly to my still being alive, I think I had like a six-month prognosis when I was diagnosed in a couple of months out crossed seven years since diagnosis. My wife actually got me into that trial, worked with the hospital, the cancer center to get me into the trial because I was out of gas. I didn't care anymore. I was like, I'm done. But what I learned was that there was no way my mind could comprehend the good stuff that was going to happen. It had not happened before. I had not had that experience. So, how would I comprehend that that was going to occur? So, what I would do is my mind could deal with what it knew. It knew all the bad stuff that could happen. And in that moment, I Realized that I was taking all the hard consequences, potential consequences, and I was picking them up and putting them on the decision. So my advice to people is get quiet. You said reflection, get quiet, listen to that still small voice. It may be telling you to not quit. If it's telling you to not quit, do not quit. If it's telling you to do something different, do something different, right? Because that may not be quitting. It wasn't telling me to quit pursuing life. It was saying stop pursuing chemo so I can give you something else that will sustain your life. And so I think we just have to listen to that still small voice so we know the better decision to make. I think the loud voice will tell us all these consequences are going to happen. And then we pick those consequences, those potential consequences, we put them on top of the decision, and then we say, it's a hard decision. It's a really hard decision. So when you say, well, like, what was something that, you know, you thought about quitting but you didn't? A lot of things, right? Because that hard because I thought it was a hard decision. But once I separated it out, it actually wasn't a hard decision to keep going. You know, my decision in that moment was not, do I quit chemotherapy? The underlying real decision was, do you keep living? And I had misunderstood the question. I thought the question was, should I keep doing chemo? Am I quitting doing chemo? And really the question was, do you want to live? And if you want to live, then take this other action. So I think we just have to keep all these things. The answer to the question can be nuanced. And I think your point, that's why your point about reflection and staying in a state of gratitude and being thankful for these small things, I think is so important because I think it's in that place mentally where we come to hear the still small voice that directs us better than the loud voice.

SPEAKER_00: 22:45

Absolutely. So one question, it's probably like pretty trivial compared to cancer and things like that, but it's something I struggle with. So I'd love to hear your advice on it. I have three kids and they're in sports, and this is one thing, you know, in this pillar of never quitting. I'm curious, like in life, I think most things are within balance. You don't want an extreme of one way or another. So I don't know if you should, you know, be pushing your kids to be gymnasts at three. And I mean, I guess you want to go to the Olympics or something. But I'm curious your thoughts on never quitting. Like when they're getting ready for practice, you're like, I don't want to go. And then they get there and they have fun. But like at some point, how do you know? Like, I truly don't like that. I need to move to a different one, like kind of like what you're talking about. Do you have advice for kids and parents of kids? Like, do you force them to do a bunch of stuff to narrow it down? Because they're not going to want to go. But at some point they need to choose, like you said, the monotony and the boring stuff of batting practice after batting practice, but maybe they like hate that altogether. So curious your thoughts on never quitting kids' sports.

SPEAKER_01: 23:48

Well, I think one thing I learned, we have four children, the three are still alive. And uh, I think one thing that I learned because I I did kind of both ends of that spectrum, uh, the pushing hard and the not pushing at all. I think when you what they what children don't have are perspective. Adults who care about you and want what's best for you can offer some perspective. One of the things that my wife and I worked to do was to understand why did you not want to do something. Now, you know, sometimes they would just get obstinate like a mule. And, you know, the decision was, do I force you through it? Or maybe the right thing to do is to not force you through it so you can see what you missed by not following through, right? You you missed being with your friends, you missed the excitement of winning, you missed the excitement of of even the the the the positive feeling of having gone through two-a-day practices and surviving, you know. I mean, so I think one of the things I learned was to listen and then to ask questions. So, like my my oldest son was really good at soccer. Uh he's really good at, I guess, football, but he was he was really good at it. Uh, but I saw him get very upset a couple times during the game, like really like highly intense. And he's not like a highly intense person. He really I know he played the game because he really enjoyed it. Like he enjoyed it. And so a traveling team came along and said, you know, we'd like you to join the traveling team. Would you would you like to join and play for us? We're going to all these tournaments and doing all these things, and you're good enough to play. You're good enough to play on our team. And he said no. And I was shocked because he loved to play so much. And I said, Why, why? He said, What do you think I should do? I said, What do you want to do? And he said, I want to do it. I said, But why do you not want to do it? And he thought for a while. And the first thing is was, I don't know. I just I just don't want to do it. I said, Well, that's that's not really a good reason, you know. Like, uh it's a it's it's what you said you wanted was to play you wanted to play more soccer slash football. You want that that it's a passion, that you love doing it. Like, why when the opportunity does shows up, do you not want to follow through? And uh, I don't know whether it was an hour or a couple of days, whatever the time frame was, he came back to me and he said, Um, I enjoy it so much, I don't want the competition to take away the enjoyment. And I thought that's actually a pretty deep answer. You know, like that's and I you know, so I talked to him a little more and he said, I just don't I enjoy playing. And if it's competitive, I've noticed that when I'm in competitive situations, I get very stressed by that because I want to win. And so, you know, and he would get on to other players and he would get in confrontations and he would and he said, I that just takes away. I don't enjoy those games. And I'm pretty sure if I join this competitively, if I join this traveling team, the expectation is to win. I want to win, and it won't be long before I just don't enjoy it. And I want to, I want to keep playing and enjoying it. And so we found, you know, he ended up uh stopping playing for a while and found some other things in our in our area, surfing and skateboarding and things like that, but um because the opportunity to play for just enjoyment, there was a lot less of that than it was to play competitively. But I think he made the absolute right choice. So had I pushed it, what I don't want to do is I don't want to push them to the point of doing something that I think is best and then ruin the reason why they did it to begin with. So I think that's a balance is, you know, because I used to push him to go to practice, he didn't want to go to practice, he'd go, then he'd just like to say, you start playing, he'd enjoy it, then the game would come along and he'd make a good play and he'd be enjoying that. But then there came a point where he could explain to me his reasoning for not, you know, like even I think he was like 12 at the time, but he, you know, his reasoning behind it was, well, how am I gonna argue with that? Because what I what I want for him is to enjoy the sport and learn and get out of it. And the only way he'll do that is if he continues to do the sport. And if I'm just gonna ruin it for him for the rest of his life, then I probably don't want to push him past that. So I don't, I don't know that there is an answer, but there's kind of a, I guess, a framework for a decision. And part of that is getting past, you know, why don't you want to do this? Well, I just hate the heat and I don't like practicing. Well, do you like playing? Oh, I love playing. Well, we got to kind of do the tough stuff to get to the enjoyable part, okay? Like that's just so, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna push you to go continue to do it because this is, you know, what you want is you you want the enjoyment without any of the work. Okay, that's not how life is. That now we're gonna have to learn a life lesson. That's the reason we're in sports, you know, you're gonna learn a life lesson through this process. But if it came down to like with my oldest son, and the answer was, uh, I can do it, I would like to do it, but I think it'll ruin it for me. And that was a time that I pulled back and I said, I fully support you not doing it because I don't want you to hate it. I don't want you to get to a point where you hate it.

SPEAKER_00: 29:06

That's good. Yeah, I think the root of that is getting to the root cause or the actual why of it. So I think, you know, that's a really good answer for that, trying to dig a little bit deeper and get into it. Because yeah, I mean, practice isn't going to be fun and things like that. And so you got to keep pushing on. I think that is a pretty good life lesson where, you know, things don't come all that easy. So that's good stuff. Your next pillar is persevere, persevering through. So you talked a lot about mental toughness, and I feel like there's a lot of different buzzwords that are kind of thrown around. Like if you had three minutes or an elevator spiel or whatnot, what does like persevering through mean to you?

SPEAKER_01: 29:47

So the the 15th of my of my core beliefs is finishing. Right? We should finish. And in the in the bigger life scope, it's finishing the race of life. Okay. Like to don't don't quit the race before your time comes to finish. So it's finishing the race. How does one finish? If you back up one step, one has to persevere. And so whether it's a deal at work and you've got to finish to close, you know, you're working to close the deal, if you want to, if that's the finish line for you, getting the sales order process and getting the deal booked, if that's the finish line, then you have to persist through the ups and downs. Your manager quizzing you on, you know, where the deal's at, uh, you having to deal with uh your internal people, your external partners, the customer, all the problems that you've got to persevere through that. If it's uh if it's a tragedy, you've got to persevere through that. If you want to, if the finish through that is to survive it, then you've got to persevere through it. And so then what's perseverance? Perseverance to me is uh the repeated signs of determination, right? You've been determined over and over again, and that's I think what people see and they say, well, that person has persisted. That person is just they just persevere. And if you go, well, what's determination? and you back up from that a step, think the determination is shown over and over again. So if you if you see somebody who over and over again kind of shows the courage to do what they need to do, in spite of they go to practice even they don't want to, they, you know, they do their uh they do their the the forms or the processes that work that they don't want to do. Uh they um they hold their tongue when they don't want to. They sometimes after a tragedy, you just get out of bed when you don't want to get out of bed. You'd rather the world just go away and it won't. Those are little signs of courage. And if you show courage, little bitty pieces of courage over and over again, then people will say you're determined. And so then how do you show courage? And I think that begins with start with an honorable intent. Start with an honorable intent. It is honorable to stay alive. It is honorable to provide for your family legally. It is honorable to, you know, to pursue what's best for your family. It's honorable to live a good life, right? To be kind to others. And if you do that, when a circumstance shows up that stands in your way, you'll have a little bit of courage. And if you show courage over and over again, that's determination. If you show determination over and over again, that's what people call persistence. So I don't want people to think it's like just persist, be persistent. That's the necessity of perseverance, is it's the only way to finish. You must be you must persevere. But then perseverance to me is broken down into these sort of step-by-step things. You know, begin with an honorable intent, show courage when an obstacle presents itself. If you show that over and over again, that's determination. If you show determination over and over again by not quitting, that's what we call perseverance. Uh so it's it's kind of like you do these little things that build up into being a person who perseveres, and persevering is how we finish.

SPEAKER_00: 32:57

Yeah, that makes sense. I think on the show, a lot of times I've heard of meditation and journaling and all these things that we should take on. I'm curious, what role does community structure, mindset play into the, you know, when you're at your darkest moments?

SPEAKER_01: 33:15

I think uh community is tremendously important. I think the community, one has to be open to which community that they are uh participating in and listening to. You know, there there are people who we use cliches, and those cliches do not apply. When you've had a severe loss, someone will say, well, time heals all wounds, and that's not true. So people who just throw cliches at you, no matter how well intended, I would not listen to them. There came a time, uh, say, after the loss of our son, where we joined a grief group, and then we joined a group that was for parents who had lost children to suicide. And we were there for a period of time, and then uh told my wife, I'm like, it's time to move on because otherwise you just stay in that community. So I would say community can be transitory, right? It's not always the same community. Um, your best friends from high school may not be the best people to have community with when you're, you know, when you uh hit an obstacle. Uh maybe it's it's an obstacle at business. Maybe your best friends can give you some perspective that folks at work can't give you. But a lot of times what you need is a community of people who've been through something, right? They've been through it and have overcome it, not just been through it and stayed in the loss, but have been through it and overcome it. That's kind of the community you want. And I think those things are tremendously important. I should have written it down, but you asked about another mindset. I think mindset for me, that the my the mindset that I have, I've encapsulated in those 15 core beliefs, right? Like that's that's a mindset for me. And I think whether someone looks at mine or you come up with your own, I think having a mindset kind of documented for yourself, because you're going to run into situations, you're gonna have things occur where they happen so fast you only have time to react, right? You just you just have time, like you're trying to give yourself space to respond. But even in that response, it might have to be a response that happens a little quickly, and it might have to be the response that's inside your own head. It might not be a physical outward response, it might be a response that's happening inside your own head. I think you need to write down those things that are that you have found to be true in life so that you can refer back to them, right? So you can refer back to them, you know, whether that's, you know, number one on my list is no one outruns the universe. You know, it's it's a it's a core belief because I believe that it is true and it reminds me to remain humble and approach life with humility and accept what the universe provides. I believe there's a creator that created the universe. I think the universe works a certain way, I think it's designed on certain principles, and you're not going to outrun it. So if you start out with dishonorable intent, uh, you're probably gonna, it's, it's, it's going to help correct you. It's going to give you opportunities for correction. Some of those are minor and some of them are severe. So I think having a mindset that you can rely on when you run into difficult situations is tremendously important because it's kind of like so when I was riding a motorcycle, I wore a helmet. And in our state, helmets are not required, but always wear a helmet. And when I crashed one time, my own fault, but when I crashed, uh it was the helmet that saved my life. Now, what I realized in that moment was uh when you need a helmet, there is no time to put it on. Right? Is it like you don't have time. And so you should probably put your helmet on earlier than you needed it. And I think have the mindset, you should you should adopt a mindset before you need it. Because when you need it, too late. You won't have the mindset, you're you'll be off track. So for me, those 15 core these 15 core beliefs are my mindset. They're the reminders to me, so that when something happens, I already have them tuned inside my brain of how I'm going to respond to something. You know, I come up with for instance, I come up upon a decision. And if the first thought to myself is, man, that's going to be a hard decision, the core belief that there are no hard decisions, there's only hard consequences comes to mind to remind me, separate the consequences from the decision. Now, which now what should you do? Right. It's a mindset for how to make a decision. But that's just, you know, that's what I wrote down and that's what I adopted. I would suggest to people, put your mindset on before you need it.

SPEAKER_00: 37:29

Yeah, I think it's a really good reminder. It reminds me, um, I held a position as an emergency manager, and I would go and you know, talk to other clinics and things like that. And we'd always exchange business cards and we always joked a little bit, but in every joke, there's a little bit of truth. Like, I need to know you before I need you. Yeah. Because if the pipe burst or if there's an earthquake or something terrible happens, and us need to get together and figure out where the patients are going, or you know, long list of different things that could happen. I don't want to have to figure out who you are at that point. That's the wrong time to be figuring out who you are or who's down the road or what capabilities you have. Like I want to have your name and business card and call you right up because we're flooded and I got to send people over to you or whatever it is. But I always remember Yeah, it's a practical way to live.

SPEAKER_01: 38:14

And I think that applies to it applies on a deeper level. Like we just don't, we don't often think about that applying on a deeper level, right? Like it becomes secondary. It's like, yeah, whenever I go into this situation, I always want to meet these key people. You know, but when I was selling direct to customers, I always wanted to know certain things about each decision maker or how the org chart worked. Like I wanted to know all those things. I wanted to be prepared in a sense for how decisions were made. I even wanted to know, for example, I want to know what kind of car the decision makers drove. And people say, why do you care about the car? And I'm like, man, in America, a car represents a lifestyle. A car represents decision making. They made a decision to buy that vehicle for a purpose. That tells me a lot about how they make decisions. If they bought a minivan, it tells me they probably have a family and they're probably thinking about convenience, reliability. If they're driving a particular, you know, like an Audi and it's a high-end Audi, they're probably not thinking about those things with a high-end Audi. They're thinking about a different level of comfort and performance. And uh so it would give me like an indicator of how people think. Now, I think that actually applies on a deeper level, like how aware of your surroundings. You know, are you thinking about what motivates the people that you're dealing with every day? Are you sure that you have assumed that their motivation, you made the correct assumption about their motivation? Do you know? Because that fits in with my core belief. Thinking versus knowing. You know, do you just do I just think Nathan is saying that because he wants to piss me off? Do I know that? Maybe he's got a whole different intention, right? Well, that's not a whole lot different than the way I would have applied it to a customer and their org chart and who I was going to deal with in business. It's just that I don't think about those principles. So I think it's I think mindset is critical. And I think your example is a tangible example of how you work every day in that situation, but it also that same framework carries over to how you would want to kind of run your day or your life, have that as a mindset to prepare for other things that happen in life.

SPEAKER_00: 40:26

Yeah. Be ready before you need it. Well, Andy, your final pillar is finishing. I'm curious. Finishing seems like it's a little underrated. People like to start a bunch of things. What does it really take to see something through to the end?

SPEAKER_01: 40:41

I think it takes let's take it from uh the opposite point of view. Why is it that we're not finishing? I think that is an important question to ask ourselves. Why are we not finishing? Whether that's, you know, you're on a football team that always seems to be up a goal and and now you you always lose in the last, you know, 20 minutes, or you're an American football team and you're always up by three scores and somehow they win with a field goal. You know, you're a baseball team and you're and your closer can't close everything, or you're just in business and you start these things but you keep losing deals consistently, or you've started a project and you moved on to 10 projects and you haven't finished any of them. I think the question instead of like, why uh, you know, what can I do to finish is what's keeping me from finishing? And I think if we ask that question uh honestly and transparent of ourselves, and we sit and really think about it, it might be um I heard Scott Adams say a while back that uh he thought the difference that that laziness was not an unwillingness to do, it was a focus on risk instead of a focus on reward. And so what people perceived as laziness, not doing a task, was really the person saying, There's too many risks for me to do that, and I don't see any reward for that. And so they don't do it. And I thought, well, that might that might be true, at least in some circumstances, that might be true. So am I not finishing because there's other things that are just more enjoyable? I know I need to do this, but there's other things that are more enjoyable. Am I not finishing because I don't want to be by by attempting to finish, people will know that I'm I'm not skilled enough to finish? Am I am I not finishing because I'm I'm afraid of success? It's crazy. You know, some people might say, well, that's not so, but some people are kind of afraid of success, you know. Uh I know for a while, uh like in my career, I've never pursued promotion, really, uh, because I did not want to take away time from my family that I knew a promotion work would require me to put in a whole different level of effort. So, in a sense, I I did not uh you know, I kind of self-sabotage some, you know, some progression, right? And people say, well, why don't you you know, one could look at it and say, Why didn't you finish that, you know, that job so you know you could be promoted and start the next thing? You didn't finish the task. But I personally didn't want to get the next promotion. I I knew what that would what that would bring on, and it would take away from the time that I felt like I needed to spend with my children and my wife. So I think the most important question to ask when one is not finishing is why am I not finishing? And be honest and transparent. Because once you identify that, you may be able to identify actually that's not going to be the case. You know, uh I actually do, you know. So what if I don't have the skill and I don't finish? Maybe to finish what I need to do is go find people that can help me finish, you know? And so then finishing becomes a goal instead of a failure that people are going to see that you're a failure. I if I find the right people to help me, then I could actually finish. So I think understanding why you're not finishing is the super important question.

SPEAKER_00: 44:08

Yeah, I think that's another vote for drilling down and really trying to get to the root. I mean, it's come up a couple of times, seems like the theme for the episode. Yeah, keep asking why and try to get to the actual root cause. I think, like you said, we like to assume. We do a lot of assuming, but we need to figure out what it actually is. Well, Andy, let's try to bring it all together. What final word would you give to someone who's ready to quit something that really matters?

SPEAKER_01: 44:34

I would say take your advice on reflection, the things that you've learned, the quiet time. I would say, listen without prejudice to what that voice is saying to you, right? Don't discount it. Do your best. The reflection part, I think, is one of the objectives of reflection is to tune out the loud voice, the fear, the anxiety, the worry, and look transparently and honestly at the decision with the courage that whatever the consequences are, if if this is the right decision, I will face the consequences, follow the right decision. So I would say that, you know, to me, what I would leave with people is one, do not quit. And if you're wondering how to determine if you should shift, change from your current pursuit to the next pursuit, which is not the same thing as quitting, you know, I should shift from having suicidal ideation to pursuing a path to get rid of the pain so I'm not suicidal. That's not quitting, that's shifting. I didn't I didn't quit pursuing life. I quit chemo to end up doing some other things. Changing jobs is not quitting your career, it's shifting to something that may be more appropriate or more fulfilling for you. So I would say take your advice, Nathan, and and find quiet and listen to that voice. Uh and do not take what you perceive to be the consequences and put them on top of the decision. Have the courage to do what you believe you're supposed to do.

SPEAKER_00: 46:05

And I think that is not quitting. Perfect. Well, thank you, Andy, so much for showing up with realness and strength. Your story reminds us that grit isn't about being fearless or perfect. It's just about being faithful and taking the next step. Before we go, where can people connect with you, your work, and your message?

SPEAKER_01: 46:23

Askandycampbell.com, which uh kind of came around because people, when I didn't die immediately from pancreatic cancer, people would ask other people, how is he still alive? And they would say, well, just ask Andy. So I so I took that on as the as the uh URL is uh askandycampbell.com. You can find the book there, you can find my cancer journey there, you can find you know other information there as well.

SPEAKER_00: 46:48

Um well, thank you much to everyone listening. If this episode lit a fire in you, please share it, leave a review, and finish the things that matter most. This is Mind Force. See you next time. I love you all. See ya.