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Welcome to Episode 220 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama, and I want to apologize in advance for the sound quality in this episode. You will find out more about why in this episode. But I'm not using my typical mic. I'm not in my typical space. I'm actually doing this intro in between services preaching on a Sunday morning, Sunday, March 25th. Anyway, you'll find out all about it in the episode. So without further ado, here is Episode 220, Taking Responsibility for Self Increases Resilience.

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I'm driving north on Interstate 95, North of Baltimore, Maryland. It's Sunday, March 25th. I normally record podcasts on Sunday, but today... Well, the story really begins back in the fall because last fall, a colleague asked me to preach in Northeastern Maryland at a United Methodist Church, and I agreed to do that. I'm committed to preaching this morning two services and no big deal. It's normally about 50 minutes from my house, which is a decent drive, but not too bad for a Sunday morning. But then in December, just before Christmas for my daughter in law's birthday, my son gave her a trip to New York City to see a Broadway show. They weren't exactly sure when they were going to do that, but we agreed that we would watch their two children, our grandchildren. Our grandson is almost three. Our granddaughter is about five months now. He gave her that present. Early in the year, they started planning when they might be able to do it. It turned out this weekend was the best weekend for them to go up to New York City. They asked us if we would watch their kids this weekend. When my wife came to me and asked me that, I said, Well, I do have this preaching engagement on my calendar.

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I don't mind driving back and forth. It's about an hour and 45 minutes from my son's house in Northern Virginia to this church in Northeastern Maryland. I said, I don't mind doing it if my wife doesn't mind watching the two kids by herself, as well as being with my mom, who is 99 years old. My mom lives with us. She's also with us this weekend at my son's.

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She.

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Said no problem. My wife said no problem, and we agreed to do that. I am on my way up to preach two services this morning. Well, the rest of the story is when we arrived on Thursday to my son's house, I realized that I had forgotten my good mic. I use my good mic to record my podcast episodes. I normally do those on Sundays. If I had been thinking, I would have brought it down to my son's house to be able to record this episode, Episode 220. However, when I realized I hadn't done it, a saying came to my mind, which I say a lot, which is can't be helped. I learned that from my mother growing up. She used to say it all the time. She used to actually use the Japanese version of the saying, which is Shikata Kanai. Shikata Kanai means can't be helped. It's a very common saying among the Japanese. It's not really fatalistic. I like to think of it more like Nick Saban, who is the coach of the University of Alabama football team, who says when a player makes a mistake, so what? Now what? So what? So what happened?

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That happened. So what? What are you going to do about it? You can't do anything about it. What did you learn? Now what? Now what are you going to do about it? I think Shikata Ghanai, at least I always interpreted it in the same way. It's like, can't be helped, so what are we going to do now? For me, that is the essence of taking responsibility for self. That's the essence of being able to respond to situations and not dwell on the fact that it's already happened. When it's already happened, you can't change it. Whether you have made the mistake yourself or whether they are external circumstances that have been imposed upon you can't be helped. What are we going to do about it? I think, as I said last week in Episode 219, the most important thing about dealing with a challenge is being able to handle the response, being able to know that we have agency, that we are able to respond in whatever way we can try, even if it's not the best way that we want to, or even if it's not ideal, our response is one of the biggest variables in whether we are going to be able to handle a challenge.

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And of course, nobody gets the problem they can handle, right? If they could handle it, it wouldn't be a problem. So saying it can't be helped, saying Shikata Ghanai, saying so what, now what, enables us to actually have a more resilient response and enables us to be more adaptive to challenging situations, whether we've created them ourselves or whether it's something that has just happened and we have to deal with it. Turns out, as I started thinking about it, I wasn't going to be able to record this podcast episode at my son's anyway because I was going to spend almost two hours driving to the church. Then I would be preaching at two services, spending almost two hours driving back to the DC area. I'd get back there around two, and then we would have to turn around and drive a few hours to get back to our house. By that point in time, I wasn't going to want to record an episode. I was going to want to spend the rest of the afternoon and the evening with family time and sabbath time. And so that's when I decided, Okay, I'm going to record this episode while I'm driving up the road.

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And a little sidebar here. Yesterday, my wife and I were saying, It might have made more sense to bring two cars because then instead of having to drive back down, I'd drive the 50 minutes home, I could record my podcast, and she would drive back up with my mom when my son and his wife got home. And that made sense. I said, Yeah, that would make sense. Then I realized this morning, well, Shikata Ghanai can't be helped because we only have one car right now. We normally have two cars, but one of our cars dropped a clutch in December, and the cost of repair was more than the car was worth. And we were going to replace it, but we've been traveling so much. We knew we were going to be traveling the first four or five months of the year. We're traveling about three weeks out of every month, and it just didn't make sense to try to buy a second car. First of all, we wouldn't have time to look for one. And secondly, we wouldn't really need one since we both work remotely. So we decided we would go through the spring into the summer and then start to look for a car.

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I think we are going to replace it, but right now, one car, Shikate Kanai, can't be helped. We couldn't bring two cars down to my son's, so this is the situation that we are dealing with. And again, the reason that I wanted to record this episode in my car was I wanted to get it done. I wanted to make sure that I put something out, even if the sound quality was not as good as high as I would like to be, not as good as I'd like it to be. But I think it's more important to get the episode out than to not do it at all. And that's the choice I'm making. I'm taking responsibility for it. I'm sorry if the sound quality is not as good as you would like and you're going to find another Family systems podcast to listen to, that's okay with me. That's your choice. Anyway, taking responsibility for self, this reminds me of something I was talking about in a leadership cohort that I'm in this past week. We were talking about perfectionism. And what happens when we spend so much time sweating the details that we often don't get something out, we don't ship it, or we wait till the very last minute to get it out.

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And waiting till the very last minute, no, it's not a bad thing. But when we don't get it out at all because we're using perfectionism as an excuse to not get it done, then we are not doing our best work because no work is not any work at all. You can't do your best work if you're not putting out any work. And it reminds me of the saying that I like to use, which is perfect is the enemy of done. Taking responsibility for self means that we will get things done, even if they're not exactly the way we want them to because we are trying to make a difference in the world. That's what non anxious leaders do.

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That's it for Episode 2 20. Again, I apologize for the sound quality, but I did want to get this episode out. I think it does make a point about what it means to be resilient and taking responsibility for self. Next week, I'll be back with an all new episode in which I should have better sound quality, but who knows what's going to happen this week and how I might have to respond to a challenge. Don't forget, you can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com. You can get the transcript at thenonanxiousleader.com/220, and you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.