Mindset Archives

Category: Mindset

March 27, 2023 By Scott

Don’t Live in the Brown Zone

Perhaps, if you’re like most people, you often hear things like “you gotta hustle and grind” if you want to be successful.

On the other hand, you might have heard people talking about the concept of life balance, the idea of ideal fulfillment, or the search for eternal happiness.

The truth is, nothing is permanent. Life ebbs and flows.

There are good days and bad, empowering moments and difficult moments, times to hustle, and times to recover.

If you live life with your foot on the gas pedal full time, you will at some point blow the engine, and that will express itself as burnout, depression, sickness, injury, or relationship issues. All of these things are symptoms of too much, too often, with no recuperation.

No matter if it’s about how you work, how you workout, or how you socialize, it’s important for you to create an approach that actually allows you to achieve and recover.

A conceptual model for this approach I’ve titled “The Green, Yellow, Red Zone Strategy”.

You can think of the Red Zone as going over the top, overreaching, going beyond your means, taking on more than you believe you can handle or feels right.

Fundamentally, without overreaching, you just won’t grow.

This is a fact of the physical, mental, emotional, and psychological spheres of our lives. Over-reaching stimulates or demands adaptation, your body, your brain, your physiology respond to increased stress, whatever that stress may be, by accommodating to it, building more capacity to handle that stress so that the next time you encounter such intensity you are ready and no longer challenged by that same level of stress.

This is how we grow and get better at anything.

Want to learn how to ride a bike?

You have to lose your balance, wobble, fall a few times, catch yourself, all in an effort to accommodate and adapt. Slowly but surely your body recognizes when to zig when to zag, and voila, you are riding a bike.

But, that then becomes pretty easy, so if you want to take it to another level, be able to handle, say some single-track mountain biking, well you need to try that now, and start all over with the wobbling, stepping off, crashing, or going completely ass over tea kettle!

You want to run a business, make it successful?

Red zone work means long days, big days of work, trying things, making mistakes, trying risky approaches, maybe even doing things people say you shouldn’t do, just because you have this “feeling”. In short, no red zone, no learning, no overreaching, no business. You will not succeed.

But here’s where the shift in consciousness has to occur. There are two other zones you need to recognize and live in from time to time so that all that accommodation and adaptation can take place.

If you ride that mountain bike and you don’t pause to let your body absorb what it’s just learned, for a minute, for an hour, for a day, maybe even for several weeks, if you just keep trying and trying and trying, your body will either break, or you will cease to absorb the stimulus.

You won’t get better, you might even get worse!

Maybe you run a trail a little less difficult, one you are familiar with, or one you can manage well to negotiate, and in so doing your body starts to incorporate the adaptations. You start to manoeuver over and through things with just a little more confidence, you feel a sense of accomplishment and your body starts to go from that sympathetic flight or fight response you feel whenever you are on the edge, to a state of greater calm, one where you feel like you have to be on your game, but not on TOP of your game!

This is Yellow Zone work. It’s still challenging, it still requires focus and intentional connection, but it isn’t requiring absolute and complete commitment every moment. This is the sweet spot of adaptation and regulation. The zone where you get to show off a bit, demonstrate that you know what you are doing, and do it really well. Gain confidence in your ability, demonstrate an ability to be in the game!

You need to effectively allow yourself to live in this zone more frequently than you do. Seemingly these days, you are either all on, in the red zone almost constantly, or you are in the green zone trying to recover but doing a crappy job of it because you are too tired to actually engage in the green zone work.

Yes, I said it, green zone work.

Green Zone is the real recovery zone. Where you give yourself permission to just absorb life, tune in to yourself, be alone, sleep, read a book just for the pure escape of it, go for a walk, and think about……..nothing!

If you’re like most you likely pay limited mind to really resting. You are in the red zone all day, then you hit a self-imposed zone I call the brown zone. That’s the exhaustion zone. That’s the zone where we stare at the TV for an hour and forget what we watched.

That’s the zone where you sit beside your loved one and pretend you are spending time together.

That’s the zone where you eat a pizza and chase it with a bowl of double fudge chocolate ice cream.

That’s the zone where you drink five glasses of wine and only realize when the bottle is empty!

That’s the zone where your head hits the pillow with deep exhaustion, but seconds later won’t let you sleep because your brain won’t stop thinking shitty thoughts!

The Brown Zone is the shit zone and it’s not something we create, it’s something we accept.

Brown zone is like drinking brown water, it isn’t very healthy!

Red zone, brown zone, red zone, brown zone, and thus the days flow on and on until we hit a wall.

Heart attack!

Loss of a loved one!

Kids that misbehave!

Divorce!

Business fails!

Lose all your money!

And the list goes on.

How do you build a Red, Yellow, Green Zone life?

Consciously and consistently understanding what each one looks like, learning what they feel like, living in each one intentionally.

The first thing you need to do is evaluate each day, consider what you do each day, apply a form of intensity monitor on each thing you do, recognize the redness of your actions.

Start learning what is truly green for you, intentionally engage in green lifestyle choices. Naps, meditation, reading, deep conversations, walks with no distraction, nutrition with impact. Begin to learn about these things.

In the coming weeks, I will be writing more about the red, yellow, and green zone lifestyle, and how to do it right. Come back and visit, and we will grow together.

No more running in the red, and flopping into the brown.

Live life with intention, live it in the red, live it in the yellow and live it in the green!

Own it!

Want to re-invent your life, or perhaps experience your life journey through a guided process?

The next cohort of our amazing LYM Life Lab begins in May

Here’s a FREE Kickstarter to help you out, and let you see some of what we’ll be doing.

Password: LYMLab4U

We would love to have you with us.

Mindset

March 20, 2023 By Scott

When I Started Loving Myself

I saw this post on the internet recently. I thought it was a poignant share of the realizations of one of history’s great creatives.

As a man myself, turning 60 at the end of this year, the reflections and realizations of a lifetime are real. When you reach this age, you know that you have less time on this earth than you’ve spent.

If you’re really lucky, you might get 40% of what you’ve experienced, and this realization is sobering, and thought provoking at the same time.

Charlie Chaplin is 26 in this photo.

He read this poem on April 16, 1959, on the occasion of his 70th birthday.

I hope you find value in its words.

When I started loving myself

I understood that emotional pain and grief are signals warning me that I was living against my own truth.

Today, I know it’s called Authenticity.

When I started loving myself

I understood how much I could offend someone by trying to impose my desires on them knowing that it was not the right time and that person was not ready for it. And even when that person was none other than myself.

Today, I know it’s called Respect.

When I started loving myself

I stopped dreaming of another life and I could see that everything around me was inviting me to grow.

Today, I know it’s called Maturity.

When I started loving myself

I understood that I was always in the right place at the right time.

And I understood that everything that is happening is right.

From then on, I experienced deep peace.

Today I know it’s called Self-Confidence.

When I started loving myself

I rejected everything that was not healthy for me:

food, people, things, situations, anything that pulled me down and pulled me away from myself.

At first, I called it “healthy selfishness”, but today, I know it’s called Self-Love.

When I started loving myself

I stopped always wanting to be right,

and from then on I was less mistaken.

Today I understand that this is called Humility.

When I started loving myself

I stopped living in the past and worrying about my future.

Now I focus on my present, where everything takes place.

So I live each day to the full and I call it Appeasement.

When I started loving myself

I recognized that my mind could make me sick.

I had therefore called for help from the forces of the heart, which my spirit welcomed as a valuable partner.

Today I call this connection Wisdom of the Heart.

We need not fear arguments, conflicts, and problems with ourselves and with others since even the stars sometimes collide and create new worlds.

Today I know, it’s called Life.

– Charlie Chaplin, a poem written ✍️ by Kim McMillen

Want to re-invent your life, or perhaps experience this journey through a guided process?

The next cohort of our amazing LYM Life Lab begins in May

Here’s a FREE Kickstarter to help you out, and let you see some of what we’ll be doing.

Password: LYMLab4U

We would love to have you with us.

Mindset

March 6, 2023 By Scott

Build Good Habits and Overcome Resistance

James Clear has written a book called Atomic Habits in which he describes four stages of habit formation and how they can be applied in coaching others to create new, more serving habits.

Even if you are not a coach, some of the thoughts in this blog will surely serve you in questioning the habits that serve, and the ones that don’t.

The four stages of habit formation are:

A Cue: The first stage of habit formation is the cue, which is a trigger that initiates the behavior. The cue could be something like a time of day, a particular location, a specific feeling, or an action that precedes the habit. In coaching, you can help individuals identify their cues and become aware of what triggers their current habits.

The Craving: The second stage of habit formation is craving, which is the motivational force behind the behavior. The craving is what drives the individual to act on the habit. In coaching, you can help individuals understand why they have a particular craving and what they hope to gain from the habit.

The Response: The third stage of habit formation is the response, which is the actual behavior or action that the individual takes in response to the cue and craving. In coaching, you can help individuals choose an appropriate response to their cues and cravings that aligns with their values and goals.

The Reward: The fourth and final stage of habit formation is the reward, which is the outcome or benefit that the individual receives from the behavior. The reward reinforces the habit and makes it more likely that the individual will repeat it in the future. In coaching, you can help individuals identify the rewards they receive from their current habits and help them create new, more serving rewards for their desired habits.

By understanding these four stages of habit formation, coaches can help their clients create new, more serving habits by identifying and addressing each stage, and so can you!

Coaches can help individuals identify their cues and cravings, choose an appropriate response, and create new, more serving rewards that will help reinforce the desired behavior.

Additionally, coaches can help individuals develop strategies to overcome obstacles and maintain their new habits over time.

Here are some questions you can use to help discover what is holding your client’s or yourself back:

Cue:

· What triggers your current habit?

· When do you find yourself engaging in the habit?

· Are there any patterns or specific times when you tend to engage in the habit?

· What emotions or thoughts precede the habit?

Craving:

· What do you hope to gain from the habit?

· How does the habit make you feel in the moment?

· What emotions or thoughts are associated with the habit?

· Is there a deeper need or desire that the habit is fulfilling?

Response:

· What actions do you take in response to the cue and craving?

· Are there any specific barriers or obstacles that prevent you from engaging in the desired behavior?

· What specific steps can you take to create a more serving response to the cue and craving?

Reward:

· What benefits do you currently receive from the habit?

· Are there any negative consequences of the habit?

· How can you create new, more serving rewards that align with your values and goals?

In addition to these questions, it can be helpful to explore your client’s beliefs and values around the habit, as well as any past experiences or traumas that may be contributing to the habit. By understanding your client’s motivations and barriers at each stage of habit change, you can better tailor your coaching to their individual needs and help them achieve lasting behavior change.

Further to his groundbreaking book, James Clear speaks publicly about the four stages using different words to describe the stages.

He describes the stages in his presentation that you can find on YouTube (https://youtu.be/mNeXuCYiE0U) as;

1) Noticing

2) Wanting

3) Doing

4) Liking

While James Clear’s descriptions of the four stages of habit formation may use different words, they are still referring to the same underlying concepts as the previous four stages I mentioned earlier. I don’t see these descriptions as contrary positions, but rather as complementary ways of framing the same process.

For example, “Noticing” in Clear’s framework is analogous to “Cue” in the earlier framework. Both refer to the trigger or prompt that initiates the behavior. “Wanting” is similar to “Craving,” referring to the motivational force behind the behavior. “Doing” is similar to “Response,” referring to the actual behavior or action taken in response to the cue and craving. Finally, “Liking” is similar to “Reward,” referring to the outcome or benefit that the individual receives from the behavior.

By using different language to describe the four stages, Clear may be emphasizing different aspects of the habit formation process or appealing to a different audience. However, the underlying concepts are still the same, and both frameworks can be used effectively to help individuals create new, more serving habits.

Resistance is a concept introduced by Steven Pressfield in his book “The War of Art,” which refers to the inner force that holds us back from pursuing our goals and making positive changes in our lives. In my opinion, resistance can be a major obstacle to habit change or formation.

When we try to create new habits or break old ones, we often encounter resistance in the form of self-doubt, fear, procrastination, or other negative thoughts and emotions. This resistance can make it difficult to act and can cause us to revert back to our old habits, even if we know that they are not serving us.

In order to overcome resistance and create new, more serving habits, we need to develop strategies to manage our thoughts and emotions and take consistent action toward our goals. This might include setting specific goals, creating a plan of action, seeking support from others, and practicing self-compassion and self-care.

Additionally, it can be helpful to reframe our mindset around habit change and view it as a process of growth and self-improvement, rather than a task to be completed.

By focusing on the positive benefits of our desired habits and reminding ourselves of our larger purpose and values, we can stay motivated and committed to our new habits, even in the face of resistance.

Overall, I believe that resistance is a natural and inevitable part of the habit change process, and learning to manage it effectively is crucial to creating lasting behavior change.

There are several symptoms or expressions of resistance that you may notice in yourself or your clients when trying to create new habits or make positive changes in your life. Here are some common signs of resistance to look out for:

Procrastination: Putting off tasks or actions that are necessary to create the desired habit.
Rationalization: Making excuses or justifying why it’s not the right time to create a new habit.
Self-doubt: Feeling unsure of your ability to create a new habit or achieve your goals.
Fear: Being afraid of failure or success or feeling anxious about the changes that creating the new habit might bring.
Distraction: Getting easily sidetracked or allowing other tasks or activities to take priority over creating the new habit.
Negativity: Focusing on the potential obstacles or challenges of creating the new habit rather than the benefits.

It’s important to note that experiencing resistance is a normal part of the habit change process, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you or your client is doing something wrong.

However, it’s important to be aware of these symptoms and to develop strategies to overcome them in order to make lasting changes.

When you or your client notice these symptoms of resistance, it can be helpful to take a step back and re-evaluate the underlying motivations and goals behind the desired habit.

It may also be helpful to seek support from others, practice self-care and self-compassion, and break down the habit-creation process into smaller, more manageable steps.

By being aware of the symptoms of resistance and developing strategies to manage them, you and your clients can stay on track and create lasting, positive changes in your lives.

Good luck with habit change!

Mindset

February 27, 2023 By Scott

The Practice of Journaling – Part 2

If you had a chance to read my first installment on this theme last week, you will recall that I prescribed three things you could write in your daily journal that would make a definite improvement in your state of mind.

1 – Your inner conversations – what you say to yourself each day, good or bad

2 – Your Smile factor, one thing you would like to do each day that you know will make you smile

3 – Your Wins, three or more things you did today that you are happy you accomplished

Hopefully, you invested in the consistency of writing in your journal this past week and you are understanding the value of the habit of journaling on a daily basis.

Today, I promised to bring back some more thoughts so you could maximize the effect of journaling.

As far as your internal conversations are concerned, you may have begun to notice that you have some common theme discussions.

I wish I……

I hate doing……

I’m fat…….

I’m not doing enough……

I’m being lazy……

I’m not enjoying work…….

I’m scared to try that…….

Most of the conversations we have with ourselves tend to be negative and unproductive. If this is not the case, and you are having positive conversations with yourself, then keep writing those things down and keep reinforcing the positive!

If you are writing a lot of the above, or some variation, then the next thing you can do is put a name on your negative characters.

As an example, if a lot of what you are doing is judging yourself or others, then name that character judge Jerry as an example. If it’s always about being scarred, then call that character fearful Fred. The idea here is you label these characters and you begin to recognize them when they are appearing in your conversations.

Over time, you’ll start to recognize that one or two of them are often in your head, messing with your state of mind. You want to begin to recognize them so you can cut them off and redirect your conversations.

Remember in one of my previous blogs (January 30th, 2023), I discussed the concept of the 4As. The practice of journaling is about becoming Aware, A number 2, and the idea behind naming your ego characters (the conversations that keep circling in your mind) is the third A, accountability. By naming the characters, you can now become accountable for their existence and actually do something about them!

The next thing you are going to add to your journal, best done in the morning, or established at day’s end, is your daily plan. Take 10 minutes each day, either when you get up or before you hit the sack to determine your key intentions for the next day.

This is not a “To-Do” list!

These are things that link to what you are most passionate about and driven to do in your life.

That doesn’t exist for you right now you say? You are working at a feverish pace, but not connected to it? You are listless and unmotivated?

I understand, it’s not uncommon.

If that is you, then your job is not to write your daily plan, but to write the answer to this question:

“Unrestricted by my current circumstances, un-limited by money or time, absent any restriction, what would I like my life to look like? What would I love to be doing? How would I like to feel?

Ask yourself this question each day, and truly reflect unbound by your limiting perspective. If one of your characters appears, just observe the thought and return to your focus on your truth.

Who do you want to be?

With consistency, you will begin to recognize that you have limiting statements (characters) in your daily conversations and that they are stopping you from really being the person you wish to be. Once you have seen and recognized these two realities, you can begin to plot a course to shed yourself of those limiting characters and focus on your truth.

If you know who you want to be, then all the things you put down on your daily plan should be those things that will contribute to you achieving that intention.

Ask yourself if what you have written is helping you move towards that intention. If it is, get it done, and move one step closer to who you wish to be!

If your daily plan is empty of truthful intentions and full of “To-Do’s” you know you are just staying busy and not moving toward your truth or away from what’s holding you down.

Fill your day with things that pull you and push you towards your truth, celebrate your achievements daily, plan the day ahead, and learn your inner language. The more you know, the more you can shed the negative and accentuate the positive!

Here’s what you can do starting tomorrow in your journal:

1 – Learning your language, what narratives and characters keep circling in your internal conversations.

2 – Name your ego roles, the characters that keep turning up.

3 – Set your intentions each day, a few things you want to do each day that contribute to who you wish to be, and where you wish to go.

Mindset

February 20, 2023 By Scott

What the Heck Should I Write In My Journal?

Three things you can write about every day that will make a difference in the quality of your state of mind and your life.

I design solutions for human performance problems. One of the pieces of advice I give my clients is to journal daily.

For some, this tends to be received with a squished-up just sucked a lemon type of face. The type of face that says, I am not interested in journaling, period.

For others, the face is more one of dismay, followed with “I wouldn’t even begin to know what to write”.

Still, others listen and even give it the college try, but they often come back with the same sort of reaction; “I’m lost on where to start or what to write about”.

So here’s what I do every day, that helps keep my state of mind open to the possibilities, clears the mechanism so to speak, and helps me craft a positive and productive day. There may be much more you can write about after reading this, but I suggest you get consistent at just writing these three things down each day first.

Why, because consistency is the key to the outcome. If you don’t do it consistently, there will be limited positive effect, and you will determine (incorrectly) that there is no value in journaling.

So, heed my warning, give this a fulsome try, do it for a minimum of one full month every day (if you miss a day once in while don’t give up, just get back on the horse and keep rolling!), and I will guarantee you will feel a difference in your life.

What do you write?

First, decide when you want to journal and try as best you can to pick a time of day that is relatively consistent. This way you begin to see the trends in what you write, and it is in identifying or realizing those trends where all the gold is located. Stay with me here.

First thing you write is what story or conversation you have been having with yourself today. We often chirp incessantly at ourselves about a whole host of things, some negative and occasionally some positive, and often just repetitive themes. A lot of times we have “what if” conversations about things that might happen to us, or we beat ourselves up about something we judge about a recent moment or encounter. Bottom line, we have real conversations with ourselves that we would NEVER have with someone we love, is or even someone we like!

We often talk to ourselves the way we might speak with someone we hate, but we’d likely not have that conversation because we wouldn’t give them the time of day. But we sure do give it to ourselves! Nastily!

So, write the most recent conversation down on paper, experience your language, and realize on paper how insensitive you are being with yourself. Purge the ideas circling in your mind.

After you’ve done that, immediately switch gears and write something down that you will do today that you know will make you smile. What one thing are you going to achieve today that makes you feel positive. It might be as simple as calling a friend, or reading a book, or taking a walk, or it could be completing a project, making a sale, helping a friend or family member. Bottom line is there is at least one thing you can do every day that you can appreciate as positive.

Finally, write down the one thing you did yesterday that you consider a win. Something you are happy you completed or did, or experienced.

If you write your personal conversation, your smile factor, and your win from the previous day down in a journal every day, once a day for one month, you will begin to notice trends. Trends in your language, trends in the things that make you smile, and trends in the things that make you feel accomplished.

Stay tuned because I will be back with what you can do with this information to begin to really change your personal conversations, and take your life to a wonderful place.

Mindset

February 13, 2023 By Scott

How to Manage the Three Golden Personal Resources

There are three golden resources we humans get to manage in our lives (aside from the resources of this earth!), time, energy, and money.

We seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to accumulate the first resource instead of managing our time and energy so we get maximum ROI (return on investment).

Changing our focus from earning money to managing our time and energy will, ironically, end up allowing us to earn more money.

Why would that be you might ask?

If we have a clear sense of our use of time, and our energy is maximized, we bring far more to our working pursuits, and the quality and quantity of our work grow exponentially.

As we know, time is a VERY limited resource, there are just 24 hours in every day.

Five to eight hours are spent sleeping, so 16–19 hours of productivity time are available to us each day. Roughly 1200 minutes to get stuff done!

Energy is limited as well.

Energy can be replenished, but we need to invest in its recovery so that we actually accumulate more overnight or throughout the day through optimum nutrition and sleep practices.

Energy is also sucked from us rapidly, like Superman touching kryptonite, when we do things we hate doing or spend time with people or in situations that are negative or draining we may find our internal batteries drained.

Most of us have no idea where we spend our time or energy to the level or degree that we should.

We like to complain a lot about “having no time” or being tired, exhausted, and running on fumes, but what are we doing to change it?

Complaining about it isn’t going to change it!

Unfortunately, a lot of the things we compromise in order to gain more time are just the things we need to prioritize in order to gain more energy!

Becoming more aware of these time and energy suckers so we can begin to mitigate them or manage them out of our lives is a first step in maximizing our real earning and life potential.

Maybe you’ve heard yourself saying a few of these statements to yourself:

- I need more time during the day, so I get up earlier and go to bed later, maximum productivity! Ya! Grind it, baby!

- I cut my workout short, or don’t even do anything physical because it takes too much time. Who needs a workout anyway, totally overrated!

- No time to cook so I’ll just grab something quick at the fast food joint and eat in the car while I drive to my next appointment.

- My partner or kids, ah they’ll be fine without me, I gotta get this project finished, that bonus is going to come in handy at Christmas!

- Journaling, meditating, breathing, that’s a total waste of time, I need to be getting S*$% done!

Do any of these thoughts sound familiar to you?

The bottom line is:

Sleep quantity, and especially sleep quality are imperative elements of energy recovery. Poor sleep and energy are not recovered as well. Now you slowly start to reduce your daily reserves and a cycle of compromise begins.

Exercise not only improves our physiological capacity and increases our adaptive buffer to physical and mental stress, but it also helps improve the quality of our sleep, so by skipping it, or eliminating it entirely you reduce your buffer AND your energy recovery. Another drop in the reserves!

Poor quality nutrition, high in saturated fat, sugar, processed food, and low in quality nutrients, oh boy, down go those energy reserves again!

Cutting corners on time with loved ones? How do you expect the quality of your relationships to improve? Poor relationships = more energy drain!

No journaling or time to decompress, take stock, think about life, where you want to go, how you are doing, so no time to breathe, and no time for you?!

The above ingredients make for lower and lower energy reserves, more and more compromise, less and less quality productivity, and a vicious circle that sees you grow more and more desparate as the quality of your life diminishes more and more daily.

This is all before we factor in the interactions we have with others who drain our energy, the things we have to do that we don’t like to do, and the overreaching stress of deadlines and expectations that come with life within and beyond our living quarters.

You can have all the money in the world but this energy-draining life is not going to feel good!

So what can you do?

A Time Audit – Own Your Time

First up, take stock of your day. Create a spreadsheet (if you like spreadsheets) or just a simple paper journal page with an hourly schedule on the left and a column on the right where you can write down everything you do each hour of the day for 3–5 days straight.

Once you’ve done this, take a cold hard look at where you are expending time in the least profitable manner.

When I say profitable, I mean is the time you are using being used to generate energy or money, or more time?

Take real stock of how much time you are spending (notice the use of the word, spending) doing energy sucking things.

Also, take stock of how much time you are spending doing things that are energy-in for you, like exercise, sleeping, napping, meditating, eating well, taking a bath, and spending time with people you love and energize you.

How much time is getting delivered to raising energy levels!

When you are “working” how much of your work time is truly productive and how much of your time is wasted with emails, social media surfing, negative or unproductive conversations, useless TV, procrastination, or low-priority tasks?

Get Rid of Fluff

Build a plan for each day (roughly so that you can be flexible to the ever-changing realities of daily life) so that you maximize energy-in contributions, and you get rid of fluffy unproductive time sucks. Schedule blocks in your day of specific amounts of time to catch up on emails.

Same thing for social media, put the phone away, even turn it off when you are doing energy in things, like good conversations with your partner, or watching your kid’s baseball game, or hanging with good friends.

Kids or no kids, how about some recreational activities during the day, like wall climbing, playing a game of chess, going for a walk in the park, or scheduling a competitive game of squash or tennis with a buddy?

What’s that you say? What if someone texts me and I miss something important? What could be more important than what you have planned to do? What could be more important than talking to the person who you arranged to meet for coffee? What could be more important than taking care of you?

We’ve become way too interested in what is NOT in front of us instead of being focused and listening to the person or the moment we have right now!

Inject High Energy-In

Make sure every day has high energy-in elements, things that increase or maintain your energy.

Maybe you love having a great coffee and reading a newspaper, book, or even something on the Internet?

But instead of just endlessly surfing, lurking on other people’s Facebook feeds, or selfie posting, truly take in some content, learn something, or be inspired by something.

There’s just so much junk out there, use your time on social media to inspire or to contribute!

Do you have certain friends or family members who inspire you, or elevate you, put more time and energy into those relationships, and in most cases the energy will come back to you in spades?

Don’t get driven to exercise by what you read in a magazine or what the newest fad might be, instead craft exercise opportunities in your day that leave you feeling energized and alive. It could be as simple as going for a brisk walk in the park, climbing a tree, or running some stairs in your office tower. You don’t always have to “go to the gym” and lift weights and do cardio. It shouldn’t be a drain, it should be uplifting!

Schedule a session with a good personal trainer, do a tri-biathlon (Sauna, hot tub, cold plunge!), or make a date with a massage therapist.

If all of that seems too extravagant, think about something for a second.

How much money do you spend a year on car maintenance? Just do a ballpark rough estimation. If you’re like most people, minus big repairs you are probably spending anywhere from $1000 to $4000 on car maintenance a year, easily.

Massages are inside of $100 a pop in most places, and you can usually do a tri-biathlon at most good fitness centers, or go to a specialty spa when you get the massage. You can do that probably 10 times during the year for inside of $1500.

Spending it on the car, no brainer, spending it on you……..?

Whatever it is you feel creates energy for you, do more of it, start to take stock of what drains it from you, and begin taking steps to remove it or mitigate it in your life.

More energy, and more time, will eventually lead you to more money!

Things to try this week:

1 – Do a personal Time Audit for 3-5 days

2 – Reflect on the things you love to do that bring you energy

3 – Reflect on the things you hate to do that suck your energy

4 – Take a moment to see how much of your time is used to do the energy-out list and how much of your time is used to do the energy-in list.

5 – Create a daily working schedule that maximizes energy-in and minimizes energy-out

Mindset

February 6, 2023 By Scott

The Four Pillars, What They Are and Why You Should Do Them

Why are they Called Pillars?

I want to pay homage to the people who taught me much of what I understand about mindset. Almost ten years ago now, I began to learn about mindset from Brian Grasso and Carrie Campbell. Carrie had been a career counselor by profession and Brian was in the process of doing a PhD in Theology after leaving a career in human performance as a coach.

What they taught me changed my life and I am forever grateful for their mentorship. I was given permission by them to share this knowledge, as fundamentally their mission is to help as many people as possible live more fulfilling and satisfying lives.

The central tenant of their mindset process is the Four Pillars. Fundamentally the idea of pillars is that these are the foundational elements of establishing a quality mindset. If you do them on a regular basis, you will establish a self-reflective practice for the life you wish to create.

Nothing about these Pillars is a “have to do”, the idea is to figure out how the process works best for you and what circumstances work best for you so that you do the work of self-reflection.

The whole, however, is more powerful than the sum of its parts. A combination of purposeful skills that reinforce an empowering mindset is the key to your success.

Pillar 1 – Counting Your Wins

Counting your wins is probably the most powerful of the five pillars and likely the easiest to do. Counting your wins is a counter-punch to your inherent negative bias.

Counting your wins acknowledges the things that you are intentionally setting out to accomplish. In turn, this positive reinforcement creates momentum and supports further growth and accomplishment.

Imagine for a second, a bucket full of energy water. Our naturally negative bias tends to drain the water from the bucket. If left unchecked the bucket soon empties and you are left with no capacity to counter-point the negative dialogue almost certain to reveal itself.

Counting your wins is pouring positive proof into your energy bucket and saying, “I am accomplishing these things that matter to me”.

You are counter-punching negative language, which, by the way, we all have, every human being has this negative language loop. There’s a reason for it, our brains are wired to protect us.

Functionally our brains are always biasing to the negative to be protective. In order for us to counterpunch this bias, we need to create and recognize our positive language.

Counting your wins is a great way of doing this because it is positive-centric, it is acknowledging and connecting with the accomplishment of your intentions.

Part of the four A’s concept of creating change is the foundation of acceptance that everything you believe is just a story. Once you become aware of the stories you are telling yourself and whether they are serving or non-serving you need to become accountable to this knowledge.

Counting wins as a mechanism of accountability to the positive and supports adaptation and change.

The great power of this process is in the connection of our wins to things we are intentionally trying to accomplish. There is no right or wrong when counting wins.

Whatever you count is a positive acknowledgment of the things that you are making happen. And there’s going to be stuff that you didn’t plan to do or didn’t intend to do, that happens, and you might count those things as wins as well.

But, the key is how connected those wins are to the creation of the life you seek.

Let’s say for example that you want to be more connected to your partner, or a better colleague at work. Your intention becomes being more present in the conversation, listening more effectively, and doing your best to understand what the other person is saying.

A win is recognizing when you have been present in a conversation. I was present in my conversation with my partner today when they talked to me about X. I was present in a conversation with my business colleague. These are the types of wins that directly connect to something we are intentionally trying to change or improve.

The better and better you get at this strategy, the more and more connected your wins become to the true intentionality of what you are trying to make happen in your life.

Pillar 2 – Setting Your Intentions

Pillar one, counting your wins is all about reinforcing intentions. Pillar two is setting your intentions. Are you aware of the things that you want to accomplish in the long term? Do you have a vision of the life you wish to lead?

Setting intentions is about creating tangible outcomes that weave a fabric of this vision. Finding words or images to express how your life will look and feel. If you think of your five senses you want your intentions to connect to a long-term vision or feeling and invoke these sensations in the vision.

This is what we recommend, visualizing your life from a place of work/craft, health/wellbeing, spirit/soul, and connection/love allows you to define more distinct outcomes for each quadrant, and to design balance within your process.

Using these four quadrants to express the elements of your life is a great way to begin to bring more granularity to the process, but it isn’t the only way. Please feel free to take this concept and re-invent it so that it serves you and your process.

What do you want the work you do each day to look and feel like? Don’t be constrained by what it is now, but explore what it could be if you removed all the belts and braces your mind places on you.

Imagining the possibilities is Pillar Four and we’ll talk about it in a few paragraphs, but for now, it’s really about this concept of future visualization. Unconstrained positive what if? The idea of investigating your intentions as future visions can be a bit daunting if you have no grounding from which to push toward such aspiration.

So as you come back to your day-to-day and week-to-week, this is when these visions need to be more granular. They now become goals because they are realistic, measurable, and achievable.

They can be granularized into something that you want to accomplish on a week-to-week basis. That might be making a phone call to somebody you love once a week or getting a workout in, or it might be eating 4 servings of vegetables each day.

What are the things from a granular perspective that are necessary to achieve in order to create the image you’ve crafted in your mind? This is a what question, not a how question. How questions can be instigators of resistance, that sticky, gummy feeling that holds you back from moving forward. Save the how questions for a future conversation, right now, focus on the what.

What are the steps you see to moving towards your intentions? You don’t need to know them all, you just need to know the first one. Make it happen, and then keep moving.

Let’s say you want to look and feel better in your clothes by the end of the year. You want to feel proud when you look in the mirror. Forget about how much weight you need to lose, or how hard it’s going to be, simply focus on one thing you can do not that will begin to help create that vision.

Walking for 20 minutes a day might be your initial objective. But, what if you’ve never done that before, and even the idea of starting to do that is overwhelming? Then start by simply putting your walking shoes and socks at the foot of your bed each night to remind you that going for a walk in the morning is a priority.

If you just do that each day and count it as a win, soon enough you will be putting the shoes and socks on, counting that win, and then, eventually, walking out the front door and starting to actually walk. Before you know it, you are walking each day for 20 minutes.

You didn’t ask yourself how, you just simply did the what. What were those incremental steps, those empowering wins that you made happen every day?

When you are setting your intentions on a day-to-day basis, or a week-to-week basis, you want to be aware that the things you are writing down really have a connection to your vision for the future.

You might have your list of things to do for your GSD (get shit done!) stuff because everybody still has that to-do list; take the garbage out, mow the lawn, clean the bathroom. You still have to do those things.

But if this list of things to do is getting in the way of you doing the things you are intentionally working towards, that’s when you want to reflect on how much of your day is being directed towards intentional change and growth, and how much is just GSDing?

I’ll cover a strategy for evaluating your day in a future post on time/energy auditing, but for now, just become a little more aware of how you are using your time and what you are doing with it. Our goal over time is to do things we have set out to try to make happen to create the life we want to live.

These to-do items are things that we may be able to delete or delegate to somebody else. Nothing you write down in your journal from your intentions perspective should be a GSD item.

Depending on the cycle of your year your intention list might be very short because you’ve got a lot going on in a particular area of your life. But by still having one or two simple connection points to your overreaching vision, you can maintain momentum.

Pillar 3 – Learning Your Language

Learning your language is about recognizing your narrative, the stories that keep circulating in your mind and hold you back from creating the life you wish to live, or accomplishing the things that matter.

Recognizing the circular conversations you are having, the noise that consistently returns or is always returning. Also recognizing the precipitators of this language. Is it a person that you’re running into? Is it a work situation that you’re in? Is it a group of people or a specific set of circumstances? What drives the noise?

Journaling is about recognizing and connecting the dots. You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge, so journaling not only helps you become more aware, but also has you acknowledge the narrative, and learn what drives this noise in your head.

Pillar 4 – Imagine the Possibilities

Imagining the possibilities is the pillar that many people find relatively challenging, simply because we’re used to using our imagination to really consider the negative all the time.

Tony Blauer, a world-renowned self-defense and tactical intervention expert coined an acronym using the word FEAR; False Expectations Appearing Real. We have these false expectations, these fear loops floating around in our brains, using our imagination to think about all the terrible stuff that might happen. Instead of using our imagination to visualize all the wonderful stuff.

In the spring of 2001, I was in the middle of a pretty nasty divorce. lost all my money to my ex-wife had to sell my house while trying to complete a renovation during the sale. I totaled my car, and then got fired by the GM of the New York Rangers all in a period of three months!

Now, that sounds pretty crappy, right?

It was not a wonderful time. But the opportunity in that moment exposed itself.

I had a job offer from the Montreal Canadiens and could go back home where I had history and friends during a difficult time. I reconnected with a good friend who later became my wife and business partner. We had an amazing daughter named Gretchen, and we built a thriving brick-and-mortar and online education business.

On one side of the scale, deep difficulties, on the other side, incredible opportunities and outcomes.

So imagining the possibilities is an intentional time to blue sky and think about what might be possible, even in negative moments.

Imagining the possibilities set the table for the creation of your intentions. What would be the ideal outcome of the future, what is possible, not how do you get there, but what would the ideal look like if you could snap your fingers today and imagine it?

This becomes the beacon for where you wish to go, and from that beacon, you will create your intentional steps toward that imagined outcome.

How do you start?

Here are a few things you can begin doing tomorrow that will help ignite this process:

1 – Start to journal daily, if even for a few minutes.

2 – Write in that journal the narratives that keep coming to the surface in your internal conversations

3 – Remark upon the precipitators of those narratives, what happened, what state are you in at the time (tired, hungry, frustrated)

4 – Set one intentional thing you want to make happen each day that makes you smile

5 – Count the wins!

Starting is just the beginning of an amazing journey toward the life you seek.

Mindset

January 30, 2023 By Scott

A 4-Step Process to Changing Your Mindset

Something we often don’t recognize as we go through life is how much the narrative that circulates in our mind throughout the day, determines the flow of our day, the connections we make or don’t make, and the outcomes of so many of the interactions and efforts we put out.

Despite what we would like to believe or hope, our brains are biased to think negatively. It’s a neurophysiological truth. A negative mindset biases everything that happens to us, or that we chose to do or not to do.

Our brain’s most important role is to keep us safe. It filters all the information coming into it based on a predictive, not a reactive model. If our brain waited to react to everything that was going on around us, we’d often be too late the the party, and that might end up being a loss of life equation.

We even have reflexes that are pre-wired into our neurological system to protect us from immediate harm, things we can’t afford to ruminate about, or we will most certainly be damaged.

But the rest of the information is filtered constantly through a lens of prior influence and experience, and any influence or prior experience that has been labeled as dangerous get’s a red flag.

When it comes to things we get to think and ruminate about, we love to dwell on our mistakes.

Think about it, if I asked you to remember your worst day, you would likely recall it in a heartbeat, with all the details and ugly facts. In short, it would be an easy answer to a softball question.

But if I asked you to remember your best day, you’d probably ponder, think for a little while about something suitable for consideration, and you’d probably question whether it is a good enough answer.

We love talking about the bad stuff that happens to us.

We love judgmental conversations, if not judging ourselves, then judging other people.

We are all quick to kick someone else in the ass or take a poke at them.

But, we are even better at self-deprecation.

Why did I do that!?

How stupid was that!?

What was I thinking?!

Common, you’re just so stupid sometimes?!

That’s the type of language circulating in our minds all the time.

When we look inward to take stock of what is going on in our life, we are already biased to see the crappy stuff. We are biased to choose the one tough thing that’s in the way, versus the twenty reasons why things look good. Even when things look good, we question how it can possibly be that good!

So if this is our natural state of mind, how do we change it? How do we move towards a more positive state of mind? How do we begin to see things with rose-colored glasses instead of dark lenses?

Acceptance

We first have to accept that this is our tendency. The tendency to be negative, thinking negatively, is a truth. So let’s get past debating it and understand that it’s a biased starting point for most of our internal conversations. Even those who profess to be glass-half-full people, the conversations going on in our heads are rarely quite as positive as the image our faces might profess.

Acceptance that everything we believe is a story is the essence of this process. Our stories, born of our influences and experiences, have shaped our belief system, yet these stories are falsehoods we continue to reinforce through our internal conversations.

Accepting that we have false beliefs and that our tendency is to reinforce the negative, and dismiss the positive is the first step in successful mindset change.

You have permission to grow and change, it is the purpose of your life.

Awareness

Once we accept that we lean towards the negative and that everything we believe is just a story, becoming more aware of the negative language that circulates in our mind is the next step. How often do we allow the stories we believe to drive our narrative?

Most of us don’t even realize how negative we are most of the time. It becomes habitual.

We wake up and we start thinking about how bad we feel, how crappy our sleep was last night, how late we got to bed, how hard it was to fall asleep, how tired we are, and on and on. This is the narrative our mind takes on a daily basis from the minute our alarm sounds and jerks us out of our comfort zone.

And the conversations just keep coming.

It might be a thought train about the daily commute, what project we’re working on, or who we have to deal with today, but these conversations just keep coming.

So awareness becomes our next step in the process of change.

We need to start to acknowledge these conversations and recognize that we do live in this negative dialogue space.

You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.

So, we need to start recording it.

Journaling daily can be a very powerful mechanism for increasing our awareness. Writing down the narrative that is circulating, and becoming more aware of the common threads or the traditional discussions that keep coming up.

What are our favorite negative topics?

Is it self-judgment?

Is it a lack of patience?

Is it anger at everyone or anyone?

What do you think about regularly?

When we recognize the frequency and consistency of these conversations, we can begin to understand where our state of mind likes to reside. Now we can become accountable to our language.

Accountability

Being accountable means that we don’t just have these conversations without any recognition. We start to see them, and understand how how often we have them.

Like understanding how many calories are in a cookie, or a bowl of ice cream. If we don’t know, then we can’t be held accountable for the cost of eating them. But if we know we only have 2000 calories to eat in a day, and the cookie and ice cream are worth 800, we know that we’ve used up a lot of our allotment on two little snacks.

But, that knowledge in and of itself is not going to be enough to change things. Just like knowing an Oreo, and a carrot doesn’t have the same number or quality of calories, this is just a starting point for change.

Accountability means we do something about it. It means that when we notice ourselves in these little conversations, we do something to change it. We recognize it, and we apply a strategy to change the direction of the conversation.

We want to flow switch, counter punch, or reframe the conversations.

A simple and effective flow switch is intentional breath.

When you start to have a discussion that is one of your favorites, acknowledge it, and then take five long slow intentional breaths while you clear your mind.

Breathing intentionally is an amazing counterpoint to a negative narrative, essentially flow switching the narrative.

Sometimes this won’t be enough, and you perhaps need to counter-punch the dialogue and bring a different perspective, simply thinking in opposition.

An example might be when your dialogue becomes judgemental of someone else and what they have accomplished, simply being more curious about how they accomplished it will shift your narrative to an inquisitive space. Counter-punching the narrative flips the script.

Re-framing the narrative is another way of changing the dialogue. Instead of looking at how something you did or didn’t do that is causing you to ruminate is a failure or a negative, how can you reframe it to find the opportunity or the positive outcome?

Perhaps you’ve missed an appointment, or are late for a meeting. Instead of beating yourself up about it, can you simply apologize and reframe what just happened, using it as an opportunity to show you are human, and that you make mistakes? Don’t ignore it, own it and move on to something you both value.

We either win, or learn, there is no losing in life.

The more accountability we bring, the more we flip the script, and the more we begin to see change and adaptation to a new state of mind. We adapt to a new level of thinking.

Adaptation

When we start to recognize our daily language, we can then begin to apply accountability strategies and tactics to move away from the negative and move towards the positive.

Another extremely powerful mechanism for positive adaptation is counting your wins. At least once a day, preferably at the end of the day, take stock and count the things you achieved, or happen to you that was positive.

Injecting your mind with intentionally positive thoughts helps to shift the flow towards the positive. By ending the day with positive thoughts, you start the next day with a more positive narrative.

The combination of being more aware and accountable for your internal language, and then injecting intentionally positive language will begin to shift the tide. You will never be perfect, no one ever is, but you will begin to see life in a new light.

A light that lifts your mojo and sends you on your way each day with a little more jump in your step.

Take the time over the coming week to do the following:

1 – Accept that everything you believe is just a story and that negativity is your bias

2 – Become Aware through journaling and acknowledgment of the stories and narratives that circulate in your mind

3 – Be Accountable, when you see these stories influence your behavior, shift the narrative; flow switch, counter-punch, or re-frame the discussion

4 – See the Adaptation, as you take control of your narrative, and make real change, acknowledge the adaptations, see the benefits, count your wins!

Start taking these steps today, and walk the road to a more positive life!