The Most Dangerous Person

Hey team. All right, so here we are. Summer’s marching by and I just wanted to reach out and say hello and give you guys another quote for the day, for the week. For half the week, I guess, because I’m usually giving you quotes on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Bruce Lee said the most dangerous person is the one who listens, thinks, and observes. Sometimes it’s the quietest guy in the room that might be the most dangerous. They’re the one that’s paying attention to everything, they’re soaking in, processing, and listening as people are talking. They’re slow to speak, but there’s a wealth of wisdom and knowledge sometimes built within them.

I’ve got to be honest, sometimes I don’t think I’m that most dangerous person because I talk a lot. I’ve learned and gotten better at, I think, over these years. In all honesty, to learn to think more and to listen more and to process information and observe the behaviors and things around me. Now, I’m good at doing most of those things, but I also like to talk. Okay, I know some of you are sitting there rolling your eyes, going, “No, no, Chad, you like to talk.” Really? No, no, that’s not possible. You’re such a quiet guy. No, I do like to talk.

I have a lot of things that soak up within me and I want to give them out to others. And these kind of quotes, this Mondays, Wednesdays, that’s what this is. My time to share with you the things I think about, the things I observe, the things I hear, the things I feel deep within my soul, the things that I spend time dreaming about. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we need to be better observers. We need to be better at listening to each other and communicating and truly hearing what the other person is saying. Not just hearing what’s being said or how we feel through our own perception, through our own lens, but to see it, feel it from their perspective.

And that’s hard sometimes. That’s really hard. I’ve been married now coming up on 31 years and it is tough sometimes to be going through a regular day with all of the competing, attention-grabbing things that are out there in our lives and then to sit down at the end of the day and listen to my wife. But I’ve got to do better at it.

I’ve got to work on those things and the same is true for each and every one of us. We have to listen to our supervisors, we have to listen to our community. And we have to listen to our clients. We have to listen and truly understand, we have to listen to the houseless person that’s living on the street. We have to truly listen so that we can help. It’s a lot easier to help once we understand and the only way we understand is by listening.

So, if you want to become the most dangerous person, the person that’s really valuable, the person that’s really capable, listen more, observe more, and all of a sudden you’ll see yourself growing into that wise, dedicated person that everybody goes to for advice. You’ll start to see that more and more.

All right, you guys have a wonderful week. God bless you. I’ll see you next week.