Day 118: Steve Eanes

January 26, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“The doctor … said “One of the things I remember about you, being your cancer specialist, is that when I told you three out of 10 survive, you looked at me and said ‘I’m going to be one of those three.’”  I feel like my experiences can be a blessing to others, and I can use my testimony to help others believe in themselves and also believe that they can overcome anything in their own life.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Steve, for joining us today, and before we begin, can you introduce yourself?

Steve Eanes: Hi Toni.  My name is Steve Eanes, and I’m blessed to be the owner of Changing Matters, which is a training and development company focused on change management.

Toni: Okay, well thank you.  Steve, when you think about inspiration and particularly, I would imagine, the field that you’re in, when you think about inspiring others, who do you inspire and how do you do that?

Steve: Well, I guess when first hearing that question, you have a tendency to think that it could easily become an ego question.  But after thinking about it for a few minutes, I think I’ve come up with an answer.  The people that I feel like I inspire the most — and it’s based on a lot of my own experiences — are people that feel like they have insurmountable obstacles.

One of the things that I’ve experienced in my life — and I’m not saying this to bring anything to me credit wise, I’m just blessed — but in 2000 I was diagnosed with Stage III malignant melanoma, so I was given a five-year survival rate of 30%.  My wife’s a stay at home mom, my son is 22 months old and, at that time, I was very successful as an account manager in the telecommunications field.

It was my wake up call to really say “What am I going to do with my life?” and also “How do I want to be remembered?”  I remember sitting at the doctor’s office after being given the news — the 30% survival rate and experimental treatment is the remedy that we can try — and I remember sitting there thinking to myself “How am I going to react to this?”

The doctor told me a couple years later after I had gone through the treatments and was still doing follow-ups, which I still do today, he told me … he said “One of the things I remember about you, being your cancer specialist, is that when I told you three out of 10 survive, you looked at me and said ‘I’m going to be one of those three.’”  I feel like my experiences can be a blessing to others, and I can use my testimony to help others believe in themselves and also believe that they can overcome anything in their own life.

Toni: Well, based on your experience, I would imagine that you have lots of experience to bring to the table to help someone to overcome their obstacles.  Steve, when you are working with people to do this, can I just ask you to describe briefly what you might take them through?

Steve: Well, one of the things that I do, I have a tool that I use in my business called the Change Grid, and I use that to basically hone in on what are some of the areas of greatest concern that they have.  How engaged are they in things going on in their life, whether it’s work or business related?  And truth be told, most of the time it’s work related.  Listening and also listening for key words and trying to understand exactly where someone’s coming from, because their experience is their experience.  Their perception is their reality.  And so, if there are areas that they feel like they’re maybe not achieving as much as they would like to, then I can work with them to help them accomplish whatever goals or get to wherever they want to be.

Toni: Well, that’s a great lead-in to the next question, which is what do you do to help explore the potential in others?  And you’ve spoken to using a tool, the Change Grid, to do that.  What other things happen that you might do to help explore the potential in others?

Steve: Okay.  Well, one of the things is that I find is that people have a lot of limiting beliefs about how they can accomplish or not accomplish certain mission-critical things in their life; and again, it could be personal or business.  And so, in listening and then maybe sharing some of my own personal experiences or experiences of people that I know … there’s strength in numbers.  So people, if they’re in stress about something, knowing that there are other people that have been in similar circumstances and have been able to overcome, you know, that helps them.

Then you have people on the other extreme where they feel like everything is perfectly fine, and they’re definitely in control of the situation, but they’re really not.  In those people, it’s asking questions to just see if they’ll realize it.  And of course, if they don’t realize it, then there’s nothing that I can do anyway to help them.

All I can do is ask the questions, listen to them tell me what they want to tell me about whatever’s going on, and then, based on where they want to be, help them devise that plan to get there.  I’m not really emotionally involved in the particular situation that they’re involved in, so I’m an objective third party to be able to give them a good sounding board.

Toni: Okay.  I wrote down a phrase that you used in this.  You said mission-critical.  What does that mean, mission-critical?

Steve: Well, mission critical can mean different … the actual activity could be something different to each person.  For some people, mission critical might mean making a certain amount of money every month.  It might mean making a certain amount of cold calls per month.  It might mean going on a date with my spouse or significant other every week.  Mission critical is if you did not accomplish that activity, it’s not going to be a good result.  It could be a short-term or long-term.

Toni: Right.  Thank you for clarifying.  I think that that’s incredibly important.  Let me ask you, Steve, what do you need to be inspired?

Steve: Well, one of the things that I do is every morning I start off each morning with what I call first fruits devotion.  This is a minimum of 30 minutes where I go upstairs, and I’m in a room by myself.  And spiritually, I’m very involved in my church and other activities, civic activities.  And what I do is I just spend time following The Lord’s Prayer model and then also a men’s study Bible doing a devotion, so that I start off each day on the right track.

One of the things that I want to do is to have God directing all areas of my life, and I believe that nothing happens, good or bad, without his approval.  And so I spend time getting my focus off myself and really trying to focus on serving God and serving others.

One of the things that I do every day — and I got this idea from a book that I read on servanthood — is I pray that God will help me to be his miracle delivery person that day.  I want God to have me come across the paths of people that maybe need an encouraging word.  Maybe they need something to eat.  Just whatever they need in their life, that God can help me to cross their path and recognize the opportunity and act upon it, because it’s not about me.

It’s about serving God and serving others so that when it’s all said and done — and I didn’t mean to get off on a tirade, a religious tirade here, but it’s important, it’s my core belief is … when it’s all said and done, I want people to say that they remember me as being someone that helped them feel better every time they encountered me.

Toni: And that’s what inspires you.  Are there tools or other things that you reach for when you know, “I’m feeling a little low in the inspiration area, I need to be lifted back up?”  Are there other tools that you use as well, and in addition to your spirituality tools?

Steve: Well, I also use the Change Grid tool as a self-management tool.  So I will make my own list of activities of mission-critical things in my life, and I will take the tool and then use it as self-management to become aware of some things where I might be letting things slip.

I also read a lot of books from many different authors, business, inspirational type books, even religious type books in order to be able to glean things that can help me be a better person.  It’s not about building my own kingdom, it’s about becoming the best that I can be to help others.

I’ll mention this.  Two organizations that I’m involved with — and these are international organizations — are Rotary, which is “service above self,” and Toastmasters, which is an organization that can help you improve your own communication and leadership skills so you can be of better service to others.

Toni: Thank you for mentioning those, because people can reach out to those organizations as well if they’d like to, listening to you.  Steve, did you always show up this way?  Were you always in this position and in this mindset that this is what you wanted to do, that you wanted to be in a place where you could always help people and always be there?  Was that something that happened to you along the way as part of your own journey, or were you always that way?

Steve: Well, honestly, it’s always something that I’ve wanted to do, but until I had the cancer experience in 2000, it was something that was on the back burner.  When I had that epiphany in 2000 of realizing I might not have that much time left, then that’s when my journey really kicked into high gear to say “If I’m going to do something, I need to go ahead and start acting on it versus talking about it and never doing anything.”  It’s always been ingrained in me, but it never came to the surface until a little over nine-and-a-half years ago.

Toni: Boy, it would really be something — as I’m listening to you and as others are going to read and listen to you — that we don’t need to wait for a catastrophic event in order to leave that legacy that we know we want to leave, and live the legacy that we know we want to leave.

How do you explore your own potential?  What do you do in order to stay in this place so that you can continue to inspire others and help people through their own obstacles?  What do you do to explore your own potential?

Steve: Well, it sort of alludes back to the first fruits devotion time.  Basically, if I keep myself out of the picture — and I’m talking in a sense of believing that I am some big time person that’s arrived and knows everything and things like that — if I can keep my own self in check, then I can be of best service to others.

Toni: And how do you do that?

Steve: The way that I do it is by reading my Bible and praying every day, because when I look at … I’ve heard someone say “You need to have a lot of self esteem.  You can’t do anything without self esteem.”  That’s something that’s very predominant in the world today.  I heard a gentleman speaking at a Rotary luncheon and he said “People need to have self-esteem.”

But when you put yourself next to God, you realize that you’re really nothing, and so you’re able to be of benefit to others because you’re going in with a servant’s attitude versus going in acting like you know everything and you’re just going to share your knowledge with them.

I find that people appreciate that approach better anyway as far as coming in and saying “Hey, you know what?  We all have things in our life that are challenges.  Let’s work together so that we can help each other overcome whatever challenges we have.”

If you’re working with a client, of course, your job is to help them overcome their challenges.  But at the same time, if you’re coming in with that attitude of servanthood, you’re of a whole lot more benefit, I believe, than if you’re coming in with an attitude of arrogance.

Toni: Right, right.  Wow.  Thank you so very much , Steve.  You’ve given a lot of information, not only just with what you do in your life, but what you’ve been through in your life, and it’s very powerful.  It just never ceases to amaze me how powerful people are, and what you’ve said today in just this short amount of time is amazing.  So for coming to the Get Inspired! Project and agreeing to be interviewed, we thank you so very much .

Steve: I really appreciate the opportunity, and it’s an honor to be interviewed for this Project.

Toni: Thank you, Steve.

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For more information about Steve Eanes:  www.changing-matters.com, www.freechangegrid.com

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