First Quadrant (Q1): Get Right – To properly align himself, a Leader takes the Daily Red Pill (DRP). This is his daily commitment to accelerate his fitness, fellowship and faith.

Get Right is usually part of my spoken message to the pax on the days I’m fortunate enough to Q. This is because the Get Right quadrant resonates with me. It rings so true because staying upright is my bane. This Q Point gives me adequate motivation to drive past my normal desires of sleeping instead of exercising, eating too much food that tastes way too good and boozing until my words slur. Maybe I was blessed with an inordinate amount of Jesters, but I think most can relate. 

Getting Right incorporates the tenants of F3: Fitness, Fellowship and Faith. Understand, that this is a very specific order. Why does the first F in F3 begin with Fitness, not Faith? “Because men who have no self-control over what they eat or drink and the daily use to which they put their bodies become captive to their lack of physical fitness. Ultimately, that defines them, primarily in their own minds but also in the eyes of those around them.” Getting up to work out at a stupidly-early time each morning helps reshape how we define ourselves. It gives us belief that we can hold our Jesters and bay and continue to Accelerate toward a better version of ourselves—a better man for our family, friends, community and workplace. 

Then, Fellowship “requires the High Impact Man (HIM) to put the needs of others before himself.” We are not prepositioned to put others first; we are engineered to survive by thinking of ourselves first. As we age though, we find that others become dependent on us. Our wives and children, our colleagues, our community all begin to need us more and more. This is a weight that can feel extra burdensome if we are not in the upright position. “Only in maturity does a man develop the discipline and desire to consistently promote the cause of his loved ones over his own and seek Preparedness.” This is not possible if we are overcome by our base desires of doing whatever we want in our pursuits of pleasure. 

Finally, we come to Faith. How do we define Faith in F3? It is the realization that we are not the center of gravity, and this great gift of life is not given so we may serve ourselves but to serve something greater. God, Yahwey, Vajrapāṇi, Zeus, SkyQ—F3 does not define this Greater Divinity, but we do recognize it is absolutely not us. “For the un-Fit man, this is simply not possible. His lack of control over what he eats, drinks and does renders him captive to other forces.”  

It is important to understand that we are not the center of the universe. It is also important to know that we cannot Serve anyone or anything without first being able to control our gluttony and sloth because “they are all-consuming.” As we continue to learn Leadership from the QSource, do not be fooled into thinking you have graduated from Get Right and can move on to the next quadrant. You, my friends, will always have a foot in the Get Right quadrant. Life moves fast. It can be difficult. Staying upright is hard. The following Q Points are a roadmap to helping up stand strong again when life drops us to our knees. 

If you see me down, know that I’m in need of your Leadership. You’ll have the same from me.  

SYITG,
Esso

If you remember no other Foundational Principles from the QSource thus far, this is the one to remember. To me, this is the basic point of all QSource and of all of leadership. It’s near and dear to my heart, and everything else contained in the QSource is simply leading us to Preparedness (that’s why G3L is called the 4 quadrants of Preparedness…). I will ask your grace as I share some personal experiences, but they are the only kind I have.

So why is Preparedness hoisted up as such an important virtue? Though this has been true for all of time, the last couple of years have pointed out in some clear ways how if we as a people were more prepared, the overall level of suffering and struggle could have been diminished. As the pandemic started to spread and so much was still unknown, we saw all kinds of behavior that was strange and often disturbing. We all saw videos of people beating each other up in grocery aisles for toilet paper. Toilet paper… let that sink in. Accosting another human being because you are so afraid you might not be able to wipe your ass in the most comfortable way you want to. But it wasn’t really about that. Because the masses live their lives so unprepared, they were reacting to a complete lack of knowing what to do next in an uncertain situation. As we learn in GrowRuck and other F3 Leadership training, in periods of high stress and limited visibility, you are likely to default to your level training/preparedness. Under pressure, we often see the results of being reactive vs. proactive.

The good news? This is all fixable with a tiny amount of discipline applied over a period of time. Like drops of water that eventually wear a hole in a rock, with the right guardrails in place, and a small but compounding effort, we can become largely immune to the tough situations that life will throw at us.

But only if we are prepared.