“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What’s the best way to start your day?”
I’ve been asked this question many times and my honest answer is:
“Whatever gives YOU the best start to your day”
This is because we’re all different and it’s up to you to figure out what really works for you. But I do know that what won’t give you the best start to your day includes:
“If you don’t change your belief, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?” – W. Somerset Maugham
“This isn’t going to work for me, I’m just not a numbers person”.
These were the words spoken by a smart entrepreneurial woman who was adamant that she couldn’t understand the financials of her business.
This was a problem because I’d been asked to help her turn the business around from a difficult financial situation. Yet the one area she didn’t want to talk about was the numbers!
“If you lower anxiety one notch, it’s a better world.” – Murray Bowen, pioneer of family therapy
Anxiety is a word you rarely hear leaders speaking about in relation to themselves, especially men, probably because of perceived negative stigma. Yet it is more prevalent than you might imagine.
Stress, anger, frustration, doubt, insecurity, mental fog and dis-satisfaction are all symptoms of anxiety.
Don’t be fooled by what you see.
It’s very common for outwardly successful people to be inwardly crippled with high levels of anxiety at times – it doesn’t stop them being good at what they do but often it causes major blips in performance and severely hampers their ability to enjoy life.
“The first requisite of success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without growing weary.” – Thomas A. Edison
The talk in Europe for the coming months is all about energy supply and possible restrictions around same. But what about something more important?
Your own energy reserves and your own energy supply. This is actually the critical factor that helps us to better navigate the relentless challenges of business and life.
I was having a rummage around some old notebooks & journals recently recently when I found something that struck a chord – it’s within the realm of Personal Energy Management or PEM.
This graphic conveys it well.
“Hope is the last thing that dies in man;
and though it be exceedingly deceitful, yet it is of this good use to us, that while we are traveling through life it conducts us in an easier and more pleasant way to our journey’s end.”
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
A client, who was very experienced in dramatic business turnarounds, once said this to me:
“I’ve come to realise that while hope may not be a strategy, if it leaves the room it’s game over.”
I wonder do we watch hope as much as we should? Be it sport, business or life.
“It takes a great person to be a good listener.” – Calvin Coolidge
To change it up a little, and also because I am currently on holidays…:), I thought I’d share some podcast episodes that I think you’ll enjoy if you like what’s on my weekly emails.
First up is an interview I did a few weeks ago with Tamara Howard. Tamara runs a successful strategic marketing and communications company and over the course of an hour she had some interesting very questions that provoked some useful answers that I believe you’ll get value from.
“The coach doesn’t have to play the sport as well as you do. They have to watch you and get you to be your best.”
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google
“I just don’t get why business leaders need someone like you.”
This, or a version of it has been said to me many times by business people. Now when I hear it, I have to stop myself laughing so as not to come across as rude.
“Many public school children seem to only know two dates – 1492 and the 4th of July; and as a rule they don’t know what happened on either occasion.” – Mark Twain
“Why would I want to go to America?”, said my son Sam (13) recently.
“Kids get shot there and they all hate each other.”
Perhaps just a tad extreme in his view, but it’s an indication of how young minds are now seeing this global super-power.
I grew up in a time when going to the US was the dream. Indeed many of my ilk spent long, glorious summers on what was then called a J1 Visa. Happy times.
“There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself – an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly.” – Antisthenes
“It seems like I’ve been focusing on the wrong thing”.
These were the words from a smart business owner who had been asking a group I was in, for input on a big business decision he was being facing.
For the previous 20 minutes he had shared his analysis of the situation as he saw it.
Even though the guy was bright and articulate, I’d found it very difficult to stay with the logic of what he’d shared. He was jumping from point to point erratically and not thinking clearly.
“At this critical junction in the history of humankind, leaders that are proficient in magical thinking aren’t going to solve our problems. Creating alternative realities is not the answer.
We need a very different kind of leadership— leaders who can resist the calls of regression and whose outlook is firmly based in reality.
The problem we all have is that what most people ‘think’ is reality, is not. It’s their ‘thinking’ about reality. In fact, getting my clients in touch with reality is the first challenge I face when working with them.”
– Manfred de Vries, Professor of Leadership at the renowned business university Insead
My experience of working with people over the last 20 years has been the exact same as the Professor above. The first big problem to overcome with every client is to help them get in touch with what’s actually going on and not what they ‘think’ is going on.
