2609: The Weight of Caring

LifeBlood: What does it really mean to care? Most people associate caring with kindness, sympathy, and emotional support. While those things matter, they don't tell the whole story. Sometimes caring means holding someone accountable. Challenging them. Refusing to lower the standard because you believe they're capable of more. Real caring requires investment. It costs time, attention, energy, and effort. Want to say “Thanks!” You can buy us a cup of coffee. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifeblood George’s newest book is available! Get your copy of You’re Money Isn’t the Problem- You Are here: https://amzn.to/4uDYFRz Feeling busy but unfulfilled? The Meaningful Few helps you identify what truly matters, eliminate distractions, and live with intention and clarity. Learn more here: https://www.mymeaningfulfew.com/ Thanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review here: ​​https://ratethispodcast.com/lifebloodpodcast You can learn more about us at LifeBlood. Live http://lifeblood.live/, Twitter https://twitter.com/ourlifeblood, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/lifebloodlive, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lifeblood.live/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNQ9Gc4mMwCHZKUHjbt0-qA and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lifebloodlive or you’d like to be a guest on the show, contact us at contact@LifeBlood. Live. Stay up to date by getting our monthly updates https://george-grombacher.aweb.page. Copyright LifeBlood 2026.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:44Speaker 01

  I think that most people think about caring as a feeling, sort of a warm, fuzzy feeling, a compassionate feeling. It can be a feeling of sympathy, of understanding, kindness, and certainly caring can look like all of those things. But I think that we've made a mistake by assuming that that is the only way that caring shows up, because some of the people who care the most don't look very caring at all. They're the teacher that refuses to lower the standard, and the students resent that person immensely and accuse them of grading too tough. That coach who demands that you do one more wind sprint or rep.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  The parent who insists on responsibility, that we're not going to watch TV anymore, or you're going to get your homework done, or you're going to make your bed. It's a mentor that asks the really uncomfortable question again and again and again. This could be the friend who is telling you what you need to hear instead of what you want to hear. And so if we're on the receiving end of that, from the outside, it can 100% look like a very, very harsh thing as opposed to a very caring thing. But oftentimes, it is the highest form of care, because caring is not always about making somebody feel better. Sometimes, it's about helping somebody actually become better. And those are very, very much different things. They're certainly not the same thing.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  And it's certainly something that we've all experienced. Think about the person who saw more in you than you saw in yourself. I can certainly look back and have talked about those handful of experiences, probably a lot more than a handful of experiences. Where other people have seen in me things I did not see in myself. Maybe it was a coach, a friend, a teacher, a boss, a parent, mentor of yours, who knows? And at the time, it may have seemed like they were demanding more of you or asking too much, or just kind of caught you off guard. Because they may even challenged you a little bit. They held you accountable, they refused to accept your BS excuses. And hopefully, looking back, you realize something pretty important, that they cared enough about you

• 2:58Speaker 01

  to expect more from you. The world expects more of you than it expects from other people. That is a profound and powerful idea, and one that I really like a lot. Because when you think about it, I think that expectations are most certainly a form of belief. When somebody expects nothing from you, they're telling you that they don't think that you're capable of much. Ouch, that sucks. What is it? The soft bigotry of low expectations. Somebody just says, "Ah, you know what? That's just George, just the way he is." Versus, "Hey, George, why don't you get your head out of your [bleep]

• 3:41Speaker 01

  and start doing what you know is the right thing to do?" So when somebody expects more, I think that they're really communicating something very different. It's, "I believe you can do this." And that doesn't mean that all expectations are a healthy thing. It doesn't mean that we should just add on expectations for the sake of adding on expectations. Doesn't mean we should be overly critical, or just beat up on everybody all the time, or try to control them, or be impossible to please, or hold standards that you just can't expect to actually ever achieve. But it does mean that accountability and care are also not opposite things. Because a lot of the times, they're partners, they're buddies.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  The challenge and the reality is that caring has a cost. There is a cost to it. To really truly care about something or someone is to invest a piece of yourself, of oneself into that other. You're investing your time, your energy, your attention, your emotional bandwidth. And if you haven't figured it out yet, those are finite resources. So that's why caring can feel and is a very heavy thing. It's easy to say, I care about everybody. It's much harder to stay engaged when somebody is struggling.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  To keep showing up, to keep believing, to keep investing in them. Real care requires resources. And because our resources are limited, we have to be intentional about where we invest them. It's true of every area of our lives. It's true of our families, of our friendships, of our communities, our work, our causes, our goals. Every yes is an investment. Every time you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to everything else. You have a finite amount of energy every day. If you're old enough, you know that. You have a finite amount of attention every day. If you've lived long enough, tried to do a lot of things, you know that to be true also.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  So every time you say yes to one thing, your gauge, your fuel tank, your gas tank, goes down a little bit. So it's critically important that we get good at recognizing what is worthy of our care. Because I can't care about everything. Because then I really care about nothing. It's prioritization.

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• 7:13Speaker 01

  I have to say, this is the most important, this is the next most important thing, and that not everything can be the most important thing, because every commitment requires resources, which means caring isn't just an emotional thing, it's a stewardship thing. Being thoughtful about where and how we're investing ourselves. And here's what I think is most important. Many people spend their lives wanting to be cared for. And there's nothing wrong with that. We all need support and encouragement, and we all need people who believe in us. But eventually, maturity invites a different question altogether. A question like, who am I caring for? Who am I investing in? What am I helping to build? Because a meaningful life isn't just about receiving care,

• 7:57Speaker 01

  it's becoming a source of it. Not necessarily through sweeping grand gestures, not trying to save the world, but through consistent investment in the people and the things that matter the most. An important conversation. Teaching a lesson. Holding a standard. Offering, throwing down a challenge, giving a helping hand, providing a vote of confidence or a moment of patience, and a difficult truth delivered with a little bit of love. These are all forms of care. Maybe that's the real takeaway, that caring isn't just softness. It's not agreeing with everybody. It's not rescuing people. It is an investment.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  It's being thoughtful about who and what I will care about and for. It's choosing to spend some of your finite time, attention, and energy, and effort helping someone or something become better. Better. That may be one of the most meaningful choices that we can make. Because at the end of the day, what we care about is revealed not by what we say, but by what we invest ourselves in. And isn't that the truth right there? You can say you care about whatever. I care about the environment. I care about my town. I care about safety. I care about my physical health. I care about my relationship.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  But where's the evidence? Where's the evidence that you really do care about that? Financially, the evidence is in your budget. Because if you say that saving money is the most important thing, but you're not doing it, and you don't have any money budgeted for your retirement, or your kid's college, or whatever, the down payment on a home, then it's not really something you care about. If you say that your relationship with your loved ones, with your kids, or your spouse, is the most important thing to you, or really important, but then we go into your calendar, and there's no time that's allocated to those relationships, well, then you don't really care about those things. You just say that you care about those things. And we have to be good stewards, because we can spread ourselves too thin, and we can burn ourselves out,

• 10:08Speaker 01

  and then we're not any good to anybody. So like everything else. We need to start at home. We have to start with ourselves. That term self-care is so tired at this point. But that's what it is. We have to care about ourselves enough to give ourselves what we need to physically show up, to give ourselves the right amount of sleep and the right amount of exercise and the right amount of being good and thoughtful about what it is that I'm laying into my head and what's coming out of my mouth. Because I can drive myself frickin' crazy looking at all the problems in the world and caring about those things. And that will drive you crazy.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  And there's a high cost to that physiologically, psychologically, spiritually. You go crazy. Family will go nuts because you're going nuts. And if you're just tired all the time, well, then you're obviously not showing up the way that you want to be showing up. So we need to invest in ourselves so that we can invest in other people. I guess what we're really talking about is that we must do our part by doing our best.

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