Here are five symptoms:
- Your schedule is so full and you feel like you have no choice but to toil through it.
- You won’t slow down even for five minutes because you are worried results will suffer.
- If you are not busy and doing things, you don’t feel useful and you feel guilty.
- Asking for support and help is nice but clients, teams and family come first…and you come last.
- Vacation (and one day, retirement) is your only time for downtime.
All this conventional wisdom results in the fatal flow of enduring.
Enduring is riding out till some distant point in the future to FULLY live and lead…instead of living and leading with presence, authenticity, joy and compassion right now.
Waiting for the day when you come home from work with plenty of energy to engage with your family.
Waiting for the day when you can regulate the repetitive and secret thoughts that negatively impact your performance and relationships: I am not capable, I can’t trust that person, I am going to fail my team and my family, as examples.
This fatal flaw indefinitely delays you from transforming your fragmented attention so that you are making decisions that you are confident about—and from replenishing your energy when routine gym workouts or running no longer do the job.
This conventional wisdom makes you settle, it leaves you feeling resigned or maybe even stuck as if there is no way out.
And it delays you from realizing that you don’t need to plow your way through this on your own.
Even three months of “enduring” is >1000 hours of accidental living and leading!
Here are some suggestions on what you can do about it!
Conventional leadership training doesn’t encourage leaders to establish intentional daily “mental hygiene” routines allowing time to align with values. This is what separates many leaders from the world’s most successful people.
- When you first open your eyes in the morning, instead of jumping out of bed, take a few seconds to allow sounds, and sensations slowly reach you.
- Notice your first thought when you wake up in the morning–and choose one that will set a positive tone for your day.
- Establish a daily meditation practice to build the muscle of laser-sharp focus and resilience.
- Complete daily and weekly deliberate scheduling to align time with priorities and goals to create desired results.
- Practice journaling or visual imagery to help anchor supportive patterns in the brain to focus on priorities like well-being and happiness.
What are your favorite mental hygiene habits?