Minute Mindset

Have you ever met yourself coming back and didn’t realize you had been there yet? Have you ever gone through a time when you felt your life was just out of control? The harder you worked the less you got done; the more you tried to achieve the more you found waiting for you around the corner.

Most who are high achievers or who have this strong desire to succeed, find their #1 enemy is not time; it is actually pace. Each year I take on five people and work as their mental coach for a year. One of my great challenges is to get them to slow down and move at a pace they can manage.

When I talk to them about slowing down, I always get this funny look that says. "Yea, right. I am going to slow down. I am already so far behind I will never get caught up."

It is a major lesson for them to learn. The faster you move the less mental clarity you have. The faster you move the less calmness you bring to anything you touch. The faster you move the more you open yourself to the negatives...

Have you ever had a day that was going great until you got out of bed? Have you ever gotten up, felt good about your day, arrived at work to be greeted with, "We got a problem?" Have you ever felt the tension increasing within you? I mean everything you looked at stared back at you with a problem or something that needed your attention

When you are not controlling your day and the events of the day are emotionally controlling you, that is a stressful day! It is amazing what stress can do to you:

• It can emotionally drain you until there is a pounding in your head.

• It can mentally paralyze you to the point that you don’t have the energy to emotionally deal with anything.

• It can physically wipe you out so nothing gets your attention, and if it did, it would only get messed up.

Stress is such an interesting fact of life. Reality is — you can’t live without it. It is a medical fact if you could take all the stress out of your life, you...

Do you have any idea how many businesses I go into where the environment is out of control? I mean you walk in and you can feel the confusion. You stand and watch and see the emotional interchanges that are going on.

Most don’t seem to understand the need to create an environment that is calm. I know, I know — you are thinking this guy doesn’t live in the real world. There is no such thing as calmness around here. All I do is move from one crisis to another.

That is not how things have to be! That is how leadership has designed the environment. You see, any business is simply an environment that is decision driven or crisis driven. The difference is the style of leadership.

Show me an environment that is crisis driven and I will show you a place where people are constantly involved in emotional collisions. Someone is blaming someone else for what is happening. No one is really looking for resolution; their only concern is protecting their territory.

Someday...

Do you ever have days when you feel you just don’t get anything done? Oh, you start the day with good intentions; you have an agenda of things you want to achieve, BUT the minute you walk through the company the day you planned turns upside down.

Some have a problem and they feel compelled to share it with you. It sounds like:

              Hey, boss I need to talk to you…

              I got to tell you what happened…

              Hey, I got this problem…

The interruptions start and your agenda is out the window. Does it ever frustrate you that you don’t get to do the things you feel you should be doing? Is it ever exhausting to end your day and still have a million things to get done?

So what do many people do? They get up and go in early so they can get...