How To Make The Competition Irrelevant
The Coca Cola vending machine outside your office sells 100 cans per day. You arrive one morning to see a Pepsi vending machine has arrived next to it. How many do they each sell per day?
Most assume that each machine sells about 50 cans per day.
What actually happens is…
Read MoreThinking BIG
How to get yourself or others to think bigger seems to be a challenge I run into often.
A bias worth knowing about is, Attribution bias:
Be aware of what you attribute people’s actions to.
Read MoreDo you ever find yourself asking, “What’s wrong with me? “
If you do then you aren’t alone.
It’s a question asked surprisingly often even by those who by external measures seem to have everything together.
Something I’ve learned through my years of using neuroscience to help leaders to transform their health, businesses and relationships is….
Read MoreThis word urgency has swept through the start up world. Many business are trying to follow suit and become more agile.
“Move fast and break things” as Facebook told us.
The question is asked in leadership meetings everywhere,
How do we create a sense of urgency?
Look up the word urgency and the word anxiety is used as a synonym.
For good reason too.
What tends to lead…
Read MoreThere is a reality to how brains function.
You know this obviously.
You don’t work 24/7 because you know you need sleep for example.
Ok, people do sacrifice sleep all too often but you get my point.
There are realities to human nature.
If we align with them performance goes up.
When we misalign with them it goes down.
Read MoreDo you hold your breath when you’re looking at your phone?
If you don’t you are one of a rare few.
Anticipation causes us to hold our breath
A workaholic boss is a big red flag 🚩
Guilt often seems to be the thing we’re talking about when we say work life balance
When we are at home we should be at work when at work we should be at home and that’s without considering fitness and friends.
Every show of force reduces your power
People speak less in meetings you’re in
People start taking less responsibility
The future looks bleak
Less money
Fewer opportunities
More struggle
It’s just impossible to switch off
Your mind won’t stop thinking about work
You feel pulled towards your phone
You just have to check your email quickly
There never seems to be enough time
Everything takes too long
People don’t move fast enough
I made a huge mistake - I tried to get the job
It was a few years ago now.
I’d been put on a short list of coaches to work with a leadership team and they wanted an interview.
The worst days start reactively
In bed until the last minute.
Grab your phone.
Check social.
Check emails.
Check slack.
Start reacting.
Trying to regain the advantage.
Get ahead.
It never quite works.
You don’t quite get to do what you hoped.
You are overrun by correspondence.
By requests for your time.
By meetings that run on.
That don’t quite achieve their objective.
The whole day somehow entirely chased and reactive.
All because of how it started.
The best days start proactively.
1. With something like meditation, perhaps formal meditation, or thinking or just peace. It’s preparing your internal state for presence. The assurance that you are right where you are supposed to be.
2. A reminder of who you said you’d be. A reminder of your values. A note that tells you how you’ll operate and how you won’t. Maybe that’s patience, calm, curious, engaged, enthusiastic and a reminder to not blame, point fingers, react, and an operating procedure to help you keep to it.
3. Sweat. - where the body goes the mind follows. When the body feels strong, stable, supple, energised and connected the mind feels the same. A short bout of daily morning exercise aligns body and mind.
4. Prepare - how will you achieve what’s important, stop the day begin reactive, win the day?
We all know that proper preparation prevents poor performance.
My clients turned preparedness into a ritual.
How do you prepare?
When things get busy your health is the first thing out the window
You stop exercising
You start eating more sugar
You mess up your sleep pattern
50% of CEOs report feelings of loneliness
60% of first time CEOs report loneliness to the degree that it negatively impact performance.
Not surprisingly really
Nobody really sees themselves as a victim or as playing the victim
I certainly didn’t anyway,
I would read about playing the victim in personal development books and I’d just skim over it thinking it wasn’t for me.
Grabbing your phone on waking doesn’t guarantee overwhelm
But it is a common step on the path to overwhelm.
Over the years of working with leaders, founders and C level folks I’ve seen a bunch of things that seem to move them towards or away from overwhelm.
STOP telling people to JUST be consistent
It’s said by the exerciser who exercise daily
It’s said by the writer who writes daily
How many times have you told yourself the future is going to be great if you just get the the other side of the present hell?
Unfortunately that’s rarely true.
The future isn’t bright, only the present can be bright.
