Episode #11:

Sustainability Part Three: Diligence

We’re back this week with the Sustainability series and we’re focusing on diligence. Diligence isn’t flashy or glamorous, it is about consistently showing up and taking action to create results. It is closely related to resilience and tenacity as it involves persevering even when quitting seems more appealing.

If you’ve seen Finding Nemo, you’ll recognize Dory’s iconic song “Just Keep Swimming.” This serves as an example of diligence, reminding us that when we face challenges or lack motivation, the answer is often to keep moving forward.

In this episode, I discuss the power of diligence, its importance in major religions, and how to work on yours during this pandemic. I want you to choose one thing you want to be more diligent about and use the insights from this episode to help you improve. Then, each day, just keep swimming.

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

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The role diligence plays in creating your future results.

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My own struggles with diligence and how even though I have experienced success, it did not come easily or naturally.

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What diligence is and how it shapes your outcomes and results.

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Some examples of diligence.

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The importance of consistently working towards your goals.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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Check out more episodes of the podcast here!

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast, with Dr. Susan Crockett. You are listening to episode number 11: Sustainability Part 3: Diligence. This episode is dedicated to Doris.

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, where women learn to love their lives. Do you find yourself frustrated by society’s expectations? Looking for practical advice on how to discover your talents and level up your life? You’ve found the right place. Here’s your host, US News top doctor, robotic surgeon and certified life coach, Dr. Susan Crockett.

Hello, my virtuosas and my virtuosas in training, my VITs. How fun it is to get to talk with you today. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Crockett. You can call me Sue. I'm so grateful to be here with you, and be alive, and to be able to enjoy this day. We are homebound, day 10 in San Antonio. Kids are at home, the dogs are inside. We have an additional dog.

Normally, we have two. My little dog Ollie, who always sits behind me when I podcast. He's my cute, little, white fluffy dog. Then Gracie who's a Border Collie. Now, we have Brady's dog home with us too. He is a one-year-old, beautiful, yellow lab. He is huge, and he is very energetic. So, you all need to be praying for me.

It is unusually chilly here in Texas for this time of year. It is April, and normally, we would be swimming, tubing down the rivers, out in boats enjoying the warm summer sun, which comes early in Texas, but not this year.

In keeping with the dreariness of the Corona outbreak and our stay at home orders, it is raining, interestingly, here, and cold, and we might get hail this afternoon. Yeah, hail in Texas, South Texas in April. Well, that's what Texas is, isn't it? I hope you're all staying safe. If not from the Coronavirus, at least from the hail.

Today’s show, we were talking about diligence, which is the second in the series that we're doing on sustainability through difficult times, and like always, I'll do a little lesson, and then we'll have an exercise. I can't say this is my favorite thing to talk about. I really don't know what I was thinking when I put this in as part of the series on sustainability. But as I’ve started looking into it and getting into it, I realized I do know a lot about this even though it's not my favorite thing.

I love being the creative, inventive, visionary type, and I, like a lot of you, struggle with diligence. It doesn't mean that I haven't performed in my job and in my work, and learned how to be diligent. I certainly have had a lot of success in my life greatly due to that, but it has not come easy or naturally to me. So, for those of you struggling with this topic, here we go. Hope you learn something. I hope you enjoy it.

Let's start with the definition of diligence. Diligence is careful and persistent work or effort. It requires practice and persistence. Earlier in the series, we talked about resilience, which is getting up when you get knocked down. Then last week, we talked about tenacity, which is the ability to hang on. The ability to hang on, especially when letting go appears more attractive. That's tenacity.

Diligence is really closely related. Diligence is keeping going when it would be easier to quit, and diligence is just not fancy. It's not the wow out there. Diligence is the daily, every day, how do you show up? What do you do? It is the sum of those actions of the things that we do and don't do every day that creates our results.

So, I was thinking about the music for this show are examples of diligence, and I came up with my favorite one, which I'm not sure if I'm going to get in trouble with that or not. I have a clip from this, my favorite movie from when I was a stay-at-home mom for a year with my very small children. The year was 2003. Do you all remember this?

“Hey, Mr. Grumpy Gills. When I get you down, you know what you got to do?” “I don’t want to know what you got to do.” “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim.” “Dory, no singing.” “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ho. I love to swim. When you want to swim you want to swim.” “See, I’m going to get stuck now with that song. Now, it’s in my head.” “Sorry.”

Oh, that is just my favorite. I love Dory from Finding Nemo. I must have watched that movie with my kids like 100 times. When I started thinking about examples in our culture and our art about diligence, there's so many amazing examples of people and movements throughout history, but that one is just the easiest one for getting stuck in your head.

When you are sitting there going, “What can I do when I don't feel like going?” The answer often is just keep swimming. Put one foot in front of the other and just keep going. There's that joke about how does one eat an elephant. One bite at a time just like anything else. Diligence.

So, a couple interesting things about this. There is a quote by Benjamin Franklin that I found. He said, “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” and I thought about this for a little bit. I thought, “Really?” I thought, “Well yeah, it's kind of like the preparedness meeting good fortune or luck.”

So, diligence is the preparedness so that when the opportunity comes along, then it looks like luck. It's like the artist who is all of the sudden discovered. Then you find out, when you look at what it took to get to be that overnight success, that it was actually 10 or 15 years of diligent practice of hanging out in clubs and playing to two or three people and long practices all by themselves. Yet they look like an overnight success.

Well, why is that? It's because the diligence that they had in the practice, in getting their 10,000 hours in, as Malcolm Gladwell would say. That diligence was the preparedness, and so when opportunity came into their life or came along, well, it looked like overnight success or easier luck.

I think so often in life, it's easy for us to look at people who have lives that we want to have, or emulate, or be, and we think how lucky they or, “I want to be like that.” One of the things that we grossly, grossly underestimate is the diligence that it takes to get to these places, and we're all on that same treadmill.

We're all on this pathway called life where our growth, our personal growth, and becoming our virtuosa selves is marked by how we show up on a daily basis. It's marked by our diligence, and our movement along that path and building our capacity to be able to handle more or better is marked by how diligently we are at practicing the skills that we need to do to be prepared for handling those opportunities when they come.

For example, if I had been given the current patient load in the operating room that I have now 10 years ago, there is no way I could have done the level of surgery that I'm doing now. I was a good doctor, I was a diligent doctor, but I hadn't practiced on the robot. I hadn't done almost 1,500 cases on the robot. I hadn't expanded my capacity or my ability like I have now just from the diligence of sitting there and doing almost 1,500 cases.

Every single one of us, every single one of you, have similar opportunities in your life. Just think about it. If you're a mom, you have the diligence of the most important job in the world, which is consistently being there, and raising your kids, and taking care of them. That's diligence.

If you are a performer, then the diligence of your practice is your diligence. If you are somebody who is building a business or launching a career, then your diligence of taking that next step, even when it seems hard or you don't know where to go, that's your preparedness.

In this time of crisis in our lives as we're going through this pandemic, the ability for us as a people to sustain and to move through this, like I know we will to the other side, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Our ability is marked by our diligence and our preparedness for being able to get through hard things.

We can do hard things, you all. We can get through this, and we can be better for it and stronger on the other side. So, diligence are the little things together that have gotten you to where you are today. It's a whole bunch of summary of the things you did and didn't do.

If you can run a mile, then that is a summary of all of the times that you went out and ran and all the times that you didn't. That's the diligence that got you to where your physical preparedness is right now. We all have choices about what we're going to choose to do to be diligent about our futures.

When we're thinking in terms of life coaching and managing our minds so that we can have healthier, happier lives and choose our future, this is a really important topic because our thoughts are optional. We can take whatever circumstances we're in, we can choose how to think about them, and those thoughts are what create our actions, and then those actions and the consistency of them is diligence. That goes a large way, a long way, towards producing your future results.

So, when we look into diligence in our own lives and the definition of it in academics or in students, there's a diligence in studying. It's defined as the effort that the student puts forward towards developing their skills in their academic performance.

We talk about due diligence, particularly when we're looking at real estate or acquisitions. Due diligence means we are going through the amount of investigation to not be negligent about what we're purchasing or moving forward with. In almost all major faith and religion, diligence is a cornerstone. Isn't that interesting?

I've been binge watching one of my favorite National Geographic series called The Story of God with Morgan Freeman. If you haven't seen this, it's been around for a while. I think it started like in 2016. It is newly released on the National Geographic channel, which is part of Disney Plus. I think you can get at other places too, but that's where I went to find it.

I love this documentary series because when I think about the saying that I have for my life and what I say all the time, which is love draws a bigger circle. What he's doing with this show is exposing us to seeing other cultures, other ways of being, and appreciating our similarities and our differences in how we view religion, and faith, and spirituality.

I was thinking about that series because I've learned so much from it. It's really enriched my life, but I was thinking about that as I was working on this talk about diligence, and I found that in the four major faiths that we have, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, would include Judaism, diligence crosses all our major faith.

One interesting fact I found was that the actual last words of the Buddha in Buddhism were strive on with diligence. That's an encouragement. Diligence is an integral part of all the Buddhist teachings. It is the practice that will bring an increase in all of the other qualities which lead to enlightenment or holiness.

In Islam, there's a saying from the Quran that says, “That man can have nothing but what he strives for, that (the fruit of) his striving will soon come in sight, and then will he be rewarded with a reward complete.” That's one saying in the Quran.

The other one that I found says, “Act! Allah will behold your actions,” Allah, God, “and (so will) his messengers and the believers, and ye will be brought back to the Knower of the invisible and the visible, and He will tell you what you used to do.” Those two sayings in Islam are talking about diligence and actions, and the importance of them within faith, and meaning, and purpose in our lives.

In Hinduism, there's a saying from the Gita, “That who so performeth diligent, content the work allotted him, whatever it may be, lays hold a perfectness.” There's this underlying thread, this thread running through all of our spiritual disciplines, about work and diligence, but diligence in Christianity is not all that it takes. Faith is a major part of that religion.

So, one doesn't know how despite one's effort, it'll all work out, but in diligence, when combined with faith, that is what assures spiritual success. It's also one of the seven virtues described associated with thoroughness, completeness, persistence, particularly in matters of faith and not giving up through times of trouble.

Hebrews, it says, “We want each of you to show the same diligence to the very end in order to make your hope sure. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.” Similar thread through all the major faiths.

The basic underlying premise through all of this is that through diligence, we are the sum of our choices. Our diligence, and our actions, and our practices on a daily basis are chosen by our thoughts that create our feelings, that create our behaviors, and ultimately, our results.

So, for this week's exercise, I always give you an exercise. For this one, I want to challenge you to choose one thing that you want to be more diligent about this week, and I want you to practice it. It doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't need to be perfection. That's not the point of this. The point is to be diligent.

I started this podcast earlier this year. This is episode 11, so I started in January. I have been diligent every week to deliver it, and that's not always been the easiest thing. It's been amazing, and it has certainly changed me, and being able to talk with you all this way and to deliver this content.

I have this deep rooted certainty in my soul that my diligence in delivering this is important even if it's just for you to hear, even if it's just for one person. Even if you're the only one person that needs to hear what I'm saying, I have a certainty about the importance of my diligence and showing up every week.

The other thing I started was a video broadcast live every day on Facebook to my patients and family friends on Facebook, and that has been a whole lot more challenging. I do a live broadcast every day at 1:00. A lot of it has similar content to what we're doing in the podcast, but not quite nearly as deep, and there's more discussion about the Coronavirus.

That has been something that I've committed to doing and showing up for every day, and that has been very difficult. I'm doing it every day through the Stay At Home-Work Safe orders through the Coronavirus. So, those are two examples of diligence that I've chosen recently in my own life.

You may have choices for other areas of diligence that you want to do, such as chores around your house or your eating habits. Maybe you've got a piece of work that you want to choose to be diligent and work at regularly. Maybe you want to be more diligent about your exercise, or taking care of your health, or creating content, or maybe it's just as simple as being diligent about loving each other. Maybe that's it.

Maybe just even taking a big breath and being more intentional and deliberate about the diligence of loving ourselves and others around us who are all in the same boat with this Coronavirus. Maybe that's the diligence that you choose to practice this week.

So, what I've shown you today. Today, I've taught you about the third tool in our sustainability group, and that is diligence. Hopefully, this is something that will help you over and over in your life, giving you tools that you can use not just one time. I hope, if you're listening to this in the future, well, after we're done with this Coronavirus, that it helps you, and you remember what we went through, and that you had the diligence to go through it.

Now is my favorite part of the show. What I'm listening to, and reading, and watching. Every week, I have so much fun picking out what I'm going to put here. Quick fact, Bill Withers passed away this morning, and so I thought it only appropriate that we use “Lean On Me” from Bill Withers as our song for this podcast.

I'll have to even mention how much he'll be missed and the soulfulness of his music, which has touched all of us. Not to mention that the song is a great song for us to listen to as we are all leaning on each other to get through these difficult times with sustainability.

The book, I'm choosing this week is The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. This is an interesting book because it talks about epidemics and the tipping point at which something that's seeded flips into an epidemic. He wasn't thinking about Coronavirus, I'm sure, when he wrote the book, but he was talking about social seeding and diligence leading to success. It’s a really interesting book to read regarding diligence. He's one of my favorite authors, and we talk about him a lot. So, if you get a chance, check out The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Then when I'm watching this week, I'm going to recommend The Story of God by Morgan Freeman, which we talked about a little bit. It's on the National Geographic channel, which is part of Disney Plus. You could probably find it on other places. I think this is just so ironic because he played God, of course, in Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty, which are two hilarious, amazing movies. So, if you're looking for something to watch, consider Morgan Freeman.

Next week, we're going to do our fourth and last part on the sustainability series. We're going to talk about legacy, creating our legacy. All right, my virtuosas, love does draw a bigger circle. I want you to work on drawing yours bigger this week. Love others, love yourself. Have a wonderful week. Love always, Sue. I will see you next week in episode 12.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. If you want to find out more, come check out virtuosacoaching.com. That’s virtuosa - with an A - coaching.com. See you next week.

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