There are always going to be rules, policies, systems, expectations, and circumstances we do not agree with. The question is: What are we going to do about them?
In this solo episode of Business, Finance and Soul, Shaun shares a philosophy he has used at work for years: embrace it or enhance it.
You can embrace the way something currently operates, accept it as part of the deal, and stop giving it your energy. Or you can enhance it by questioning it, improving it, and doing the work required to create change.
What does not help is remaining stuck in the middle—continually complaining about something while making no attempt to accept or change it.
Shaun reflects on growing up around people who frequently complained about how the world worked but rarely said, "I don't like this, so I'm going to do something about it." He explains why change should begin with the smaller areas of our personal and professional lives before we try to tackle larger issues in our companies, communities, and government.
Change is difficult, but it is also a skill. Once you learn how decisions are made, who has the authority to make them, and how to present a better solution, change becomes less intimidating.
You do not control everything that happens around you, but you can decide whether to accept it, improve it, or continue allowing it to frustrate you.
You are not a passive player in your own life.
Key Takeaways- Embracing something does not mean agreeing with it.
- Acceptance can be a deliberate decision to stop wasting energy on a battle you do not need to fight.
- Complaining can feel productive, even though it rarely changes anything.
- Criticism becomes more valuable when it is accompanied by a possible solution.
- Before trying to change a system, learn why it exists and who has the authority to improve it.
- Start by changing small things in your personal life, career, or workplace.
- Successfully creating change builds confidence and makes larger challenges feel more manageable.
- You may not control every circumstance, but you can control how actively you participate in your own life.
00:00 – Introduction: Embrace It or Enhance It Shaun introduces the philosophy he has used at work and explains why it can be applied to nearly every part of life.
01:28 – The Three Ways We Respond to Frustration We can accept something, work to improve it, or remain stuck complaining about it.
03:05 – Growing Up Around People Who Complained Shaun reflects on hearing people criticize how things worked without hearing them talk about taking action to change them.
04:45 – Becoming an Active Participant in Your Life The difference between believing life is happening to you and recognizing that you can influence what happens around you.
06:05 – Start With the Smaller Areas of Your Life Before trying to change the world, begin with your schedule, finances, career, relationships, health, or daily habits.
07:44 – Embracing Something Does Not Mean Agreeing With It Acceptance can mean deciding that an issue is not worth any more of your attention or emotional energy.
09:18 – Why Enhancing Something Is More Difficult Improvement requires research, conversations, persistence, and a willingness to understand how a system actually operates.
10:57 – Bring a Solution, Not Only a Complaint At work, questioning a process can be extremely valuable—but the next step should be suggesting a better way to do it.
12:35 – Learning How Change Really Happens Find out who makes the decision, why the current rule exists, what alternatives are possible, and who needs to support the change.
14:10 – Taking the Philosophy Into Your Community The same approach can be used with neighborhood issues, school policies, local ordinances, laws, and government.
15:45 – Change Is a Skill You Can Develop The more you practice creating change, the better you become at finding the right people, presenting an argument, and building support.
17:20 – Give Yourself a Limited Amount of Time to Complain It is normal to vent when something is frustrating, but eventually the conversation must become: "Now what?"
18:12 – You Are Not a Passenger Shaun closes with a challenge to identify one recurring complaint and make a decision: embrace it or enhance it.
Memorable Quotes"Complaining creates the illusion that we're doing something when we're actually doing nothing."
"Embracing something doesn't necessarily mean you agree with it. It can mean you've decided it is no longer worth your energy."
"Criticism without an alternative is easy. Improvement requires ownership."
"Most of the systems around us were created by people. If people created them, people can change them."
"You're not a passenger in your own life."
Closing ChallengeThink of one thing you have repeatedly complained about in your personal life, career, workplace, or community.
Then make a decision:
Embrace it—or enhance it.
[00:00:01] Welcome to Business Finance and Soul. My name is Shaun Enders and I'm a Curious Entrepreneur. I love exploring business, personal finance and consciousness. I'll jump around topics, offer my opinions and occasionally interview interesting people. Looking forward to going on this journey. Let's be curious together.
[00:00:29] Welcome back to Business, Finance and Soul. Embrace it or Enhance It. This is a phrase that I've been using at work for many years. The more that I think about it though, the more I realize that this has almost nothing to do with work. It's a framework for life. You know, there are rules, there are laws, there's company policies, there's traditions, there's systems, there's expectations.
[00:00:58] There's things that your spouse does, things that your kids do, things that your boss does, your employees do, things that your town does. And inevitably some of these things are going to annoy you. This is part of life. We're walking through life experiencing kind of a multiplayer reality, right? We have the way we set up our life, the way we engage on a day to day basis.
[00:01:25] And then we have everything else built around us, our neighbors and our community and everything else professionally and personally. And some of the way things are built, you might disagree with. You might completely disagree with logic on the way a stoplight operates or why they put a stop sign at a specific four-way.
[00:01:53] But you have two choices in life. You can embrace it. And that means accept the way that the thing works. You can understand it. You can understand it. You can make peace with it. You can figure out how to operate within that construct. And then you can move on with your life. Right? Simple enough. You can find a way to be happy with what your surrounding is offering you.
[00:02:20] So that can be either something that's, you know, more on a permanent basis or something that's more temporary. You know, lines at a theme park. Right? You embrace it. Or, or you can enhance it. You can change it. You can improve it. You can challenge it. And you can come up with a better solution.
[00:02:45] But what I don't think that we get to do, or at least what I try not to allow myself to do, is sit in the middle and complain about it. Because what I've come to realize is that complaining creates the illusion that I'm doing something. It makes me feel like I'm actually actively participating in taking action. But I'm not doing anything. It's just me voicing my concern.
[00:03:14] Like, I say, oh, I hate the way that this operates. Whatever this is. And it feels like I'm doing something because I've, you know, I'm astute. I've, you know, I recognize this thing that I'm experiencing doesn't work. For me. And for some reason, complaining about it makes me feel like I've identified it. And I've voiced my concern.
[00:03:44] And I'm right. And someone should fix it. I grew up around some complainers. And before my mom hears this episode, she gets a pass. But I remember being around some family members, other adults in my community, and people talking about how something wasn't fair. Why does this person get to do that? Why does the government do this?
[00:04:13] Why does my company do that? You know, why is this got to cost so much? Or shouldn't somebody fix this? And what I don't remember hearing very often was, I don't like the way this thing works. So I'm going to try and change it. That's a completely different mentality. You know, one mentality says, hey, something is happening to me.
[00:04:39] And the other says something is happening around me and I need to decide what I'm going to do about it. That's agency. You know, the older I've gotten, the more important agency has become to me. I don't like being a passive player in my own life. I like feeling empowered that I can actually take action and change things.
[00:05:05] Now, there are some steps to this because I see things that are extremely difficult to change that I experience. Right? Healthcare being one of them. I own a company and for every year we've been in business over 20 years,
[00:05:31] we've increased, our premiums have increased, even if our claims have dropped. Right? So I have healthier employees, no claims in terms of any big healthcare costs from our employees. And premiums still, they keep going up. So, of course, I kind of complain about that. But I recognize I'm not doing anything about it.
[00:06:01] And if I want to change it, I need to figure out how to do that. Now, we all know, listening to this, that changing something massive like that is not something one person does. And that's why I'm saying there's steps to this. You have to start small. But depending on how frustrated you are about something, that's the catalyst to big change. Right?
[00:06:31] Because I think, you know, when you start small, because people hear the word change, we all go big. Like healthcare, like the world, like education or the government. Right? It's too big. You have to start with your personal life. Things that you might even subtly complain about. Like internally even. Your schedule. Is it your own? Is it too busy?
[00:07:00] You know, what's happening there? Your weight, your finances, commuting. You know, your house or relationship. All these things. You can ask yourself, am I going to embrace this or enhance it? Because you're in charge of those things. For the most part. You can make, you can, you can make the change. You can be that change agent in your own life. And that's the ultimate embrace it or enhance it.
[00:07:28] But maybe you're working at a job that requires that you're in office five days a week. You can disagree with that policy. But at some point you're going to have to make that decision. You can embrace it and say, hey, this is part of the deal. I like enough of the other things about this job that I'm willing to accept it. I love that. That's cool. I mean, if you already like that, this isn't a good example. Right?
[00:07:52] But if you're somebody who doesn't love it, but it's good enough because of the trade-off, then embrace it. Lean into it. Put your energy in that direction. If you're spending mental energy about being angry about it every morning, then you have to enhance it. You've got to talk to your boss. You've got to make a actual case for more flexibility. Or you've got to find another job or start your own company. You have to do something.
[00:08:21] Because sitting there for three years telling everyone how stupid the policy is doesn't improve your life. And if you're listening to this and you've been doing that on something that you can be an active participant in that change, hey, you're not alone. But you're making that decision because you're scared. You're scared of what the work entails or what the ramifications might lead to. And embracing doesn't mean that you agree to everything.
[00:08:50] And I think this is an important point because embracing can simply mean I've decided that this isn't worth my energy. That's powerful. There's a million things happen around us every single day that we could be angry about. And sometimes the healthiest decision is I wouldn't do it this way, but I'm not going to spend my time fighting this battle. Cool. That's embracing the reality that you experience. And the trade-off is evident.
[00:09:19] So, you know, complaining about it for a minute and then understanding, hey, listen, I accept it. It comes with it. That's part of the deal. Traffic after a concert. Totally get it. If you're going to complain, you're upset and then you don't go to concerts because of it. That's a different story. But if you're ultimately like, hey, there's big traffic after this awesome concert, I just embrace it. It comes with that reality. There's a lot of people packed into one spot and everybody's got to leave.
[00:09:49] So. That's embracing it. And I think sometimes people often confuse acceptance with weakness. It isn't. Just like that traffic choice. I'm not weak because I accept it. And I'm also not going to change it. That's not a huge net positive on a return of my invested time because enhancing it requires a bunch of work. Sometimes. Bigger things like that requires work.
[00:10:20] If you can't accept it, then you have to enhance it. Because enhancing things is harder. Complaining is incredibly easier. You can complain from your couch. You can complain online or, you know, at dinner. But changing something requires that you learn how the system actually works. And that's where most of us are going to stop. Because once you decide that you're going to change something, that is where the homework begins. Right. Why does the policy exist?
[00:10:50] Who made the decision? Who has the authority to change it? And, you know, if I were the architect, what would a better solution look like? And how do I get others to buy into this? Sometimes there are opportunities to change things that are already in place. You're just not aware of it. In my neighborhood, there are some fire hydrants that are hideous looking. They've just been beaten on by weather.
[00:11:18] And I was like, man, these things should be painted. So, yeah, I go online and specifically there's an area within our town to be able to put in a notification that a fire hydrant needs to be painted. So I took a photo. I put the address of where it was located. And in less than a month, the fire hydrant was painted. Right.
[00:11:45] So I didn't have to, you know, become a councilman to change something. It was already in place, but I did have to educate myself. You know, I could have sat there and walked by that thing for the next 10 years and complained about it. But someone else had already put a system in place. I just needed to figure out what that system was and how I was going to, you know, be a change agent. It cost me very little. And the neighborhood looks better for it.
[00:12:16] One of the things you can do is you can start at work. I love when my employees take that embrace or enhance mindset. I don't I don't allow complainers to stay around me for very long. They don't like the way something's being done. Create a new process. Tell me how you would improve it. I think you can start at work. Right. Maybe you have identified that something is super inefficient.
[00:12:47] Great. You know, maybe we've been doing something the same way for 10 years because nobody questioned it. Has that happened around work? People noticing those issues and then being the person that helps rally a team and be a change agent is how companies get better. If you work at an organization that embraces this. And I think most organizations, even if you are working at a large company, you don't go to the top.
[00:13:16] You start with your manager. And you say, hey, I'm just curious. Why are we doing it this way? But the next sentence should be. Here's what I think we could do instead. That's the enhanced part. Right. Criticism without an alternative is easy. If you're going to be part of improvement, it requires ownership.
[00:13:42] So once you start at work and you see those small changes, you can go bigger if you want. Maybe there is something in your neighborhood, like I said, the fire hydrant. But now there isn't a system in place. You learn how your town works. You go to a meeting. You call someone. You read the ordinance. You talk to your neighbors. Maybe there's a local law that makes no sense. But you find out who has the authority to change it.
[00:14:09] The reason I know that this is true is because for many years in the neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods that I lived in in San Diego, there was a lot of affluency around this area. And I noticed potholes would get fixed really fast.
[00:14:34] And so I imagine that the people who were change agents, people who knew how to get things done, you know, very quickly called people who get things done. And that led to a better physical experience for everybody, driving cars and, you know, living in those neighborhoods.
[00:14:58] And so you got to find out who the authority is to change things. Maybe it's an issue at your kid's school. You got to understand the process. Maybe there's something happening politically that you care about. You have to get involved. You don't have to necessarily run for office, but you have to learn how change actually happens.
[00:15:19] Because one of the greatest realizations that I experienced was that most things in our society were created by people. Policies were created by people. Laws were written by people. Companies were designed by people. Processes were created by people. And if people created them, people can change them. Not always easily, not always quickly. And not always in the exact way that you want.
[00:15:46] But you should be thinking, I have more influence than I probably give myself credit for. And you have to also think change is a skill. Changing things is a skill. You know, the first time you try to change something, you might have no idea what you're doing. You'll call the wrong person, send an email, nobody responds, you get frustrated.
[00:16:13] And then slowly, with intention and effort, you'll learn. You'll figure out who actually makes the decisions. How do you present an argument? How do you build support? Getting angry doesn't work. But you start learning that relationships matter. And that persistence matters. And you stop being an independent player. And you be a collaborative player.
[00:16:42] That's at home. That's at work. That's in your community. Collaboration is everything. But then there will be that moment. That suddenly, things start to become a little less intimidating. And that's why I think it's important to practice these areas in your life. Small areas in your life. So you start developing that muscle of personal agency. You start teaching yourself, hey, I can actually affect the environment around me.
[00:17:13] If you want to stay in the complaining zone, you know, if you want to be the person that continues to complain, recognize that you will accomplish the least. I'm not saying that you're never allowed to complain. That's a ridiculous statement. Of course. Everybody does. You know, sometimes something sucks. And you say, this sucks. Fine. Complain. Vent. Get it out. But then ask the question. Okay. Now what?
[00:17:44] Am I going to embrace it or am I going to enhance it? Because I don't want to spend my life constantly frustrated by situations that I've made no attempt to either accept it or improve it. Because you're not a passenger. That's what this philosophy is all about. You're not a passenger in your own life. You don't control everything. Not even close.
[00:18:06] But are you thinking about moments where you might have influence? Because there are going to be circumstances where you wish these circumstances were different. There's going to be decisions made by other people that absolutely affect you. And you're going to ask yourself, where am I going to put my energy?
[00:18:36] What am I willing to accept? What am I willing to work on to change? So start looking at your life. What have you been complaining about for six months or six years or longer? And that's the question that I want to leave with you. Look at your personal life and your career, your community, and find the thing or things that you've been complaining about. And then decide. Embrace or enhance.
[00:19:06] But it's really time to get in the game. Appreciate you listening. Please like this podcast if you haven't already. Give it a review if you're enjoying it on Spotify or Apple. And I hope you continue to listen in. Give the feedback as many of you have. And I really appreciate it.
[00:19:34] Our numbers have continued to grow in our listenership. And for that, I'm super grateful. So until next time, stay curious.