⭕️ You will never fully convince someone they are wrong, only reality can. Support them to expose their reality

⭕️ The place you most need to go is hidden where you least want to look. Get a coach, board, mentor and give them freedom to challenge you.

⭕️ There is no evolution without skin in the game. Evolution is often dependent upon facing your fears.

Good leaders are good at grinding out those difficult weeks that come with big decisions and many business critical things outside of their control. The trouble is that the grind creates survival habits and a survival environment that serves to make these weeks more stressful and the rest of the time recovery for leader and company.

Great leaders step back and find the perspective shift required to embrace what ever comes allowing them separate their choices from their current level of certainty about the future. Whether chaos or calm, it’s chop wood carry water.

1. List all the stuff that prevents your from achieving your daily objectives and create a plan for dealing with each one.

2. Set realistic daily objectives.

3. List what you have a tendency to do when things get tough. (Do you distract yourself with a new shiny idea that’s fun to talk about and imagine? Write that down so you recognising it as the enemy when it walks in you’ll be far less likely to fall for its lies).

.1. I loved school and was always incredibly excited to go although it was mostly about the people. I really didn’t understand why school was important so when it came to the work I just did enough to get by.

I wish I had realised sooner why learning, focus and skilful communication was important.

2. I went to church every Sunday from the age of 4 which remained a source of embarrassment for me right up until I stopped at 16. Despite this review I really loved the people and the conversations and laughs we used to have

Getting defensive

Withdrawing from some people

Explaining to people how they’re wrong

Getting agree when people cancel on me

Basically being someone other than I wanted to be with others.

I was pretty relieved when I discovered everyone has their own version of this going on.

Although probably a far less sarcastic version.

The brain is always measuring our level of safety within the tribe

Via a part of the brain called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (mostly) it constantly scans for risk of loss or opportunity to gain hierarchy and connection.

The guest on the show he listened to was explaining something about the brain.

As a client of mine he knew that this was my area and that I had a different perspective that he’d found useful and adopted himself.

He wanted to know why I didn’t jump in

and if I found it hard to not jump in.

I’m writing this because I think the answer is useful or at least it was to me.

I used to find it REALLY hard to not “correct”.

Something about just leaving it seem unsafe.

The thought is something like,

“He’s wrong, I must speak. What if he thinks I agree with him. I MUST correct him”.

⭕️ You will never fully convince someone they are wrong, only reality can. Support them to expose their reality

⭕️ The place you most need to go is hidden where you least want to look. Get a coach, board, mentor and give them freedom to challenge you.

⭕️ There is no evolution without skin in the game. Evolution is often dependent upon facing your fears.

2. You’re using hierarchy to move people.

You have become so wrapped up in urgency that you are crossing the boundaries into telling people what to do or doing things for them. This serves to make them think that they are useless and that you think you are better than them. Driving stress, poor culture, quiet quitting and high staff churn

3. You have become reliant upon short term negative consequences to cause you to act

They have always been people with a lot of responsibility. CxO’s, Partners, Doctors, Judges, Entrepreneurs etc

But back in my personal training days working with these folks I would be pulling my hair out trying to get them to create the habits necessary to achieve what they were paying me for.

Their lives were just so unpredictable.

They would get incredible results in 21,30 and even 60 day programs but eventually they would regress back to mean and back to the shape they were previously in.

That’s when I started exploring neuroscience and quickly discovered where I was going wrong.

You’re supposed to be yourself and say what you think which is the extreme opposite of the old advice, ‘fake it til you make it’.

I speak to leaders all the time who say words to the effect of,

“I know I know my stuff, I know I know my business, why can’t I shake this impostor feeling?”

Do you find yourself making things up on the fly trying to sound like you know what you’re taking about even when you aren’t sure?

Do you find yourself avoiding new approaches even when the current approach isn’t working so well?

Do you feel like you always have to be the smartest in the room?

Do you hate having your ideas challenged?

Nobody says to themselves ‘TODAY I will overwork and negatively impact my health and relationships.’

Just like nobody saying to themselves ‘today I will under work and jeopardise the success of the business and my career.’

We all know this really.

It is BELIEF that drives action and ADVICE seldom changes belief.

So even with awareness of the particular case, actually seeing evidence of overwork or underwork the advice is ignorant at BEST.

This didn’t come to me in a moment of realisation.

I absolutely LOVE working with leaders who are inspired to build something amazing while also uniting a group of people behind that cause. The truth is that they are highly competent individuals BUT in MOST cases the skills that got them to where they are are the exact same skills that are causing their struggles in health, energy, communication and relationship.

Through my REINVENTION programme I support them to adopt the skills of understanding and embracing their brain to use it more to their advantage. Using prediction and response to create calm in themselves and others and using curiosity to give themselves and others the clarity they need to become autonomous and happy.

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.

Sometimes it seems like a pursuit of being good enough. Avoiding too much conflict or criticism.

Like we live to make other people happy.

👉 You know what you want to achieve, and how to achieve it but you lack the particular skill required to achieve it.

😃 You know what you want to achieve but you are unclear on the ingredients required to produce the desired outcome.

🤷🏼‍♂️ You know exactly what to do and you are sometimes able to do it but you are unable to carry it out consistently enough to produce the desired outcome.

Usually it’s an overlap of these but objectively this is what’s happening.

It looks terrifyingly simple mapped out like this doesn’t it?

The brain is a survival machine that creates survival mechanisms to protect itself.

Many of these protection mechanisms can inadvertently cause problems inside an organisation.

The leaders must master these 8 skills to not be taken over by these mechanisms.

That is in part, what it means to lead.

To own your own emotions and behaviours in response to what is happening around you.

Which of these 8 do you most need to place your attention on?

Throw your mind back to when you first got together, you were the dream team. You loved spending time with each other. You shared values, beliefs and ideals and you were going to change the world while constructing a utopia together. Something like that anyway.

You had a mutual admiration for each other's skills and you strongly believed that together you could go further and faster than you could alone. You complemented each other in the best way imaginable.

The business that you were going to create was going to be fun and seamless, because you could almost end each other's sentences. You were so excited to get started because you knew how much fun it was going to be, and the incredible things that you could accomplish together.

It all started with a dream. For some that dream began at 6 years old, for others it didn’t come until college. That entrepreneurial itch. They were going to create something amazing in the world. They were going to break free from the world that was trying to define them and discover who they really are. They were going to show the world what they can do when they have the freedom to invent themselves.

It’s what Steven Pressfield calls, the hero’s journey. It’s a journey filled often with hard work, struggle, and failure as well as a whole lot of fun, fulfilment and adventure.

Whether you’re building to sell or building for profit or BOTH suffering your way to success is a process that has a lot of victims. You SUFFER because when you’re living a life you loath you experience the EXACT life you didn’t want for yourself along with your health, energy, mood, and relationships all suffering.

Your loved ones suffer as they get the worse of you as they get the tail end of your energy, the worst of your mood, the guilt of your suffering for them and the least of your time. Even your colleagues and the business suffer as the energy, enthusiasm and inspiration required to both operate and sell a business can’t be faked for long.

Who I don’t work with

Over the last 16 years of working 1-2-1 with clients I have learned who tends to get the best results from working with me and who I play with best.

Without any attempt to criticise I have identified 4 traits or characteristics that tend to prevent people from getting the best possible results from my programmes.

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.

Sometimes it seems like a pursuit of being good enough. Avoiding too much conflict or criticism.

Like we live to make other people happy.

More than anything else your energy is contagious.

Enthusiasm and passion are great and I’ve seen leaders carry themselves on it for incredible lengths of time.

But wired energy, nervous energy, hyper vigilant energy, afternoon energy slumps and home energy crashes take their toll on your health, ability to focus, and your significant relationships while also setting the tone for the type of energy running through the business.

The best part is, that these changes don’t require massive investments in time and energy outside of what you’re already committing to.

They just require a change in habit. The reward will be more energy, more focus, more clarity, more calm and more presence.

The potential of where those things will take you and your business are impossible to measure and limited only by your imagination

The reason it is wrong is that the filter through which we must look at general health knowledge (YOUR LIFE) tends to renders what might be healthy for one unhealthy for another and ANOTHER today means most business leaders.

Long bouts of cardiovascular exercise (over 20 minutes) might be beneficial for someone but it also increases stress hormone release and reduces muscle mass.

So if you are already experiencing symptoms of stress such as constant worry, anxiety, stomach fat, low energy, alcohol dependence, excessive phone usages, poor sleep to name a few then cardiovascular exercise is likely ANOTHER coping mechanism that will ultimately if not immediately do more harm than good.

You don’t have a GREED or LAZINESS problem

It’s true, you might have a problem that manifests it’s self in excess fat storage.

It’s also true that part of the ingredients of that problem might be an overconsumption of calories for the amount you are burning from day to day.

But laziness, as in the deliberate and wilful resistance of movement is not nor never has been the problem.

Nor is the problem the deliberate drive towards overconsumption of calories to the point of discomfort at each and every meal because you want it ALL for yourself.

1. I invite you to try slowing your breathing before each meal and savouring every mouthful. (Your digestive system won’t work with any other approach)

2. I would invite you to assess how much you consume from day to day. I am yet meet a person carrying excess fat who wasn’t UNDER eating to the point of other health issues coming up.

It notices hormonal, postural, tonal and pitch changes in others and then changes how we feel in order to guide us towards making decisions that might save ours or even our children’s lives all without us being consciously aware of it.

Again, I won’t go into detail here but the important question I think is,

Is it more likely that this incredible piece of equipment is broken in some way, that we somehow have to contend with a lazy, demotivated, angry, shy, anxious, overwhelmed, depressed or stressed model?

He didn’t know it but I was also living that meaning in that moment.

That’s what purpose is.

It’s not some off in the distance goal.

It’s who you are being in every moment.

Who you are in your relationship

How you parent

How you act with your friends

How you eat, sleep, exercise

How you lead.

It’s all pointed in that direction.

2. You’re using hierarchy to move people.

You have become so wrapped up in urgency that you are crossing the boundaries into telling people what to do or doing things for them. This serves to make them think that they are useless and that you think you are better than them. Driving stress, poor culture, quiet quitting and high staff churn

3. You have become reliant upon short term negative consequences to cause you to act

9. People will infer all possible meanings of the leaders communication. If the boss is being mis-interpreted it’s on them to get more skilful at communication.

10. If you interrupt people at their desk to ask for 5 minutes or for help NOW, task switching that is the culture you have chosen and it’s a stressful one to operate within.

11. When people don’t experience their own competence throughout the day their general state is anxious and overwhelmed. It’s on the leader to create that for everyone in the company.

60% of first time CEOs report loneliness to the degree that it negatively impact performance.

Not surprisingly really

When polled public speaking comes out as # 1 of peoples greatest fears. That is to say, it ranks HIGHER than fear of death.

The Anterior Cingulate Cortex in the brain is on constant high alert to public failure and in particular INDIVIDUAL public failure.

Which is a thought that can make someone feel pretty alone and under the spot light.

These 9 things aren’t easy. They usually come as a set. If you can’t imagine doing one it’s probably because another one is not already in place that is making it seem impossible.

But if you want to be the calm, consistent and stable leader to your team you must operate yourself in a way that creates than calmness, consistency and clarity inside of you. You cannot fake it. The body, your words and your actions give off too many clues. You are the indicator that your team responds to. They will only change when you do.

Are you ready to start spreading calmness and clarity?

Or perhaps a better question, how much longer are you willing

I should be helping more at home, I should be helping my team, I should be connecting with the customers and keeping them happy, the show ends if I don’t keep the board happy, I’m getting fat, unhealthy and my sleep is suffering I should be doing more for my health!

The first step I have my clients take is to let go of the should, the must, the have to, even if just for a while.

Focusing on what’s not being done only grows the feeling of hopelessness which grows that feeling of overwhelm and exhaustion.

That’s cool and you’ll get better and better at that with practise too but when there is opportunity to refine NOW your best gets better NOW. You are literally missing an opportunity to get better every time you fail to do this (I added that last line on my second run through this).

You don’t need to wait for your 100th book to produce something you’re proud of.

This ISN’T about perfection at all.

It’s about EXCELLENCE.

Which means taking a step towards more closely fulfilling your pre-defined criteria every time the opportunity arises.

An email is not just an email, a social media post not just a social media post, a book not just a book and a conversation not just a conversation.

Advice from a qualified source is rarely bad. People tend to give the advice that they need to hear and if they have been or are in a similar situation to you then its likely good advice.

If it’s the advice that they need to hear though it probably means that a. It worked for them but b. They weren’t able to stick to it.

This is what neuroscience teaches us.

Most often we know what to do, we just can’t get ourselves to consistently do it.

What follows is 3 examples of Good Advice that we struggle to take and what to do about it.