It's time for the Daily Stand Up Podcast presented by Agile Dad with your host, Lee Henson. Without any further ado, let's get started. I've read a story once about leadership. And it was an interesting story I'm going to try to convey it the best that I can. But the gist of the story or the gist of the whole episode is how to know if you're a great leader. And it starts with this story. I have a neighbor whose daughter is the same age as my son. Their birthdays are two days apart, and they play outside with each other often. And not too long after her fifth birthday, her mother passed away after a multi-year battle with cancer. That night, me and my three kids were goofing around at one giggling. But across the street, there was a family mourning, and then it hit me. There are two realities happening at the same time. The one with me and my family, and the one with my neighbor's daughter who just became a single parent family. People who have trouble accepting and respecting this fact turn out to be poor leaders. The fact is that many realities exist at the same time. These are people who tend to speak more than they listen. But the greatest leaders know how to do this one thing. They're able to feel the discomfort of holding opposing realities at the same time in their mind, without reaction, without fear. This discomfort is cognitive dissonance. So why should we embrace cognitive dissonance, and why is it some kind of secret weapon? The feeling of cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable. It tends to trigger the brain to get into a reactive state where it can't think. That's when you experience a lot of overwhelmed frustration and anxiety because of it. And research shows that emotional pain can be as painful as physical pain. This is why the brain reacts to these feelings as if it were life-threatening, as if there was a criminal in front of you with a gun pointed to your face. And moreover, when our brains are afraid, it needs to enter into a black and white type of mentality.