The past three weeks we’ve been discussing how to find your voice using the three A’s of Anchoring, Awareness and Agility. Anchoring is the practice of intentionally defining our vision or purpose for our work, the values we will live as we pursue that vision and the expectations we have of ourselves and others in that pursuit. When things get crazy, we continue to use these defined items to ground ourselves.
Awareness is the understanding that we are constantly assigning meaning to life’s circumstances. By using the Thought Model, we can determine what that meaning is and why we feel the way we do.
Today’s topic is the third A, Agility. This is mental fitness. Athletes train their bodies to move quickly and easily through set regimens for conditioning and recovery. They don’t show up to perform without preparation and expect their muscles to simply adapt. Leaders must do the same with their minds in order to rise to unexpected challenges, make decisions under pressure and bounce back quickly.
There are three core muscles to work when strengthening mental agility:
The first muscle is the ability to shift out of your head and back into the present. How often do you find that your thoughts are getting more attention than the person or people you are interacting with? When you exist in the present, all the thoughts about what isn’t getting done, what might go wrong, what you don’t like about what is happening, and what you need to do tomorrow or next week are gone. You are fully present in the moment with a focused and clear mind.
Last week, I discussed a situation where my client was leading a project meeting each week that she dreaded. She was spending so much time in her head during these meetings that her perception of the meeting experience for everyone else was completely skewed. When she set out with the simple goal of remaining present and engaged in the discussion, she was blown away at how much better she felt and the energy she had retained at the end of the meeting. This is something you can start working on immediately, any time you notice you are in your head. Simply bring it back to the present with a keen focus on what is actually going on, shutting off your brain’s constant chatter and analysis of life.
The second core muscle of agility is the ability to notice when your brain is feeding you information that is unhelpful, false, or from a lens different than the one you’ve intentionally chosen for yourself. I like to refer to this as a mental hijacking. You’ll know it’s happening because of the negative emotions associated with your thoughts. Irritation, frustration, stress, pressure, and anxiety are all indicators of a brain hijacked. Being able to recognize when it’s happening, labeling it for what it is and not believing the thoughts is the result of building this muscle.
Back to the example of my client who dreaded her project meeting. Once she could see her thought model, she was able to recognize during the call when her brain was starting to drift into judgment or trying to control the flow of the discussion. By noticing, she could label for what it was – just a thought her brain served up – instead of dwelling on it, then moving on instead of indulging in it.
The third core muscle of agility is the ability to choose your actions from deliberate thoughts and emotions. Consider the same client example, she wanted to show up to the meeting present and focused on the topic at hand, curious and open to the opinions of the other participants, and willing to explore solutions to the problems that were presented. We spent time working through what this would look like and how she can best capture the emotions of curiosity, focus and presence. She came up with the following thoughts to shift into these emotions during the meeting:
The only mess is in my head
My only job is to be curious
I am open to all of it
It takes continued practice and flexing of these muscles, but over the course of a few weeks, her point of view of the meeting had completely changed, her energy increased and she came back saying “I can’t believe how much capacity I have now because I’m not exhausting all of it on unhelpful thoughts”.
So in review, there are three steps to finding your voice as a leader:
Create your Anchors by defining your vision, values and expectations. Repeat them often and widely. Prioritize work by them, make decisions by them, live by them.
Build your awareness. Use the Thought Model to understand how you are perceiving situations. Pay attention to trends in your thoughts, feelings, and actions. What are your chronic thoughts that show up over and over. Do they serve you?
Boost your mental agility. Strengthening the three mental muscles I discussed will help you achieve peak performance, maintain peace of mind and foster healthy relationships.
The best time to start finding your voice as a leader is right now. Take the time to define your anchors and then bring them to a coaching session. You can sign up for a free introductory 1:1 session right now by clicking here.