Have You Ever Been Caught in The Act?
I just read that headline out loud and I think it could easily be misconstrued. Trust me – this post is completely appropriate.
So caught in the act of what?
We all talk a lot. We preach and teach and explain how things should be done and the question is if you were caught in the act – would you be practicing what you preach? If I walked into your life unexpected at any given time – would I find you walking your talk?
The reason I bring this up is because I was caught in the act twice last week and one was incriminating and the other was vindicating.
We went on a road trip this last week to Las Vegas. (about a 5 hour drive) so my wife Sarah and I had a chance to talk quite a bit. Somewhere along the way I wasn’t listening the way I should have been and I did what you should never do and just agreed as if I was paying attention. It was obvious that I had no idea what she was saying. The problem is I talk about that exact thing from stage when I teach leaders to focus on being interested, not interesting.
Sarah called me on it and said, “Ty, what do you teach people about listening?”
Needless to say – I felt like a hypocrite.
The second experience happened a few days later with a stranger. We have some neighbors that just had their first baby and I ran into the husband on the street. We talked for a minute and I offered to bring them dinner that night. (side note – I don’t cook, so I really volunteered my wife, but she was happy to do it)
That evening I took dinner over and the husband’s parents were there visiting their new granddaughter. I started to introduce myself and the grandmother recognized me and said, “I know you. You are Ty Bennett. You spoke to our company a couple of months ago.”
She works for a hotel chain that I had spoken to and she said, “You talked to us about investing in people, serving in unexpected ways, and look at you – you are practicing what you preach.”
So what did I take from these two polar opposite experiences last week? A question that I think we should all be asking ourselves regularly – Do I practice what I preach?
And if the answer is no (which it obviously is for me quite often) then let’s step up our game.