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To progress beyond basic communication skills, your vocabulary needs to grow. You will need to learn the language to the point where you start to think in that language.
Years of stuffing and avoiding his emotions had limited his emotional competence.
Over time, he was able to grow in emotional awareness by communicating what he was feeling with greater accuracy and regularity. He even wore a large wristband with a list of emotions attached to help him quickly name what he was feeling.
Until we name them, our feelings are incarcerated, behind bars, unable to communicate with us in healthy ways.
Was I guilty of leading poorly? Or to say it more positively, was I guilty of not leading well enough to create growth?
In her incredibly popular TED Talk “Listening to Shame” (the one that’s been viewed several million times), Dr. Brown says, “Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is, ‘I am bad.’ Guilt is, ‘I did something bad.’ How many of you, if you did something that was hurtful to me, would be willing to say, ‘I’m sorry. I made a mistake’? How many of you would be willing to say that? Guilt: I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Shame: I’m sorry. I am a mistake.”
You see, every emotion you feel is a valid emotion, one that must be listened to, named (acknowledged), and questioned. But every emotion you feel does not have the right to be in charge.
while understanding our emotions can lead to self-awareness, our emotions are not always right. They are products of our circumstances and of the way we interpret the things that happen to us, the choices we make, and the actions we take.
We all have areas where we are more skilled than others, but allow-ing my success or failure in a particular area—and the emotions that result from it—to define or label me is a recipe for disaster. Labels say more about your past than they do about your future.
Roger Federer has a coach, so why shouldn’t I? I have a list of learnings from him, but the one that really helped me on that crucial car ride was something he had said to me about engaging with my negative emotions: Don’t take the bait.
I want to teach you how to form noise-canceling habits that will allow space for this ruthless curiosity.
All leaders face the strong temptation to become focused on external results while missing the internal work that emotional health requires.
Becoming an emotional detective requires three things: listening to your emotions, naming them, and questioning them.
You are already an emotional being and don’t need to become more emotional; rather, you need to become more emotionally aware.
Like anything in life that really matters, emotional awareness cannot be a onetime thing. It’s more than a good cry-fest or a visit to see a counselor. I’m talking about making this a habit, something that becomes routine, like brushing your teeth.
Amazing how another adult can say the exact same thing you’ve been saying in slightly different words and suddenly it makes all the sense in the world.
There are actually two different types of noise-canceling headphones—active and passive. The less interesting passive ones are typically heavier because they contain the types of materials needed to block out noise.
the headphone’s sound waves are 180 degrees out of phase with the intruding waves. That means about 70 percent of ambient noise is effectively blocked, making noise-canceling headphones ideal for airline and train travel, open office environments, or any other location with a high level of background noise.”1 What a fantastic concept!
Solomon uses a wonderful word picture to show what it looks like to lack emotional awareness and health in Proverbs 25:28 (NASB): “Like a city that is broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit.”
Great leaders have unusual habits that create unusual behaviors. But these habits require self-leadership.
In some cases, you have to choose to do the opposite of what your intuition and instincts are telling you to do. For leaders who are used to “trusting their gut,” that can be a difficult lesson.
Whatever you identify as a primary distraction in your life, whether it’s one of the Axis members or a smaller ally like social media or online shopping, consistently turning down the white noise in your life is going to require a radical shift in you and in the choices you make.
But it’s the invisible habits of self-reflection, self-inspection, and self-discovery that will allow you to develop into the leader you want to be.
“Wish them luck but keep moving forward, fixated on the future.”
Andrew Stanton is the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind many of Pixar’s classics. In his TED Talk titled “The Clues to a Great Story,” he talks about the importance of simplicity when it comes to creating a compelling character: “All well-drawn characters have a spine.
And the idea is that the character has an inner motor, a dominant, unconscious goal that they’re striving for, an itch they can’t scratch.
In Andrew Stanton’s TED Talk, he argues that we all have “spines” that are unchangeable and ultimately out of our control. He says we are wired a certain way, and that wiring is what makes us tick, and we can’t do anything about it. This is where he and I disagree.
Human beings are not robots. You are made of flesh and bone. You have desires and ambitions. And you have the power to change and choose. The ancient prophet Isaiah uses an interesting metaphor to describe how we were created:
So in her process for “tidying up,” she has people pull all their stuff out of the closet, make a large pile, and go through each item one at a time. She has them hold up the item and ask one simple question: “Does this spark joy?”
“I really want to clear my life so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.”
I’m not saying you need to get rid of every shirt you own except for one color, but Mark Zuckerberg is a good example of how to turn the concept of simplicity into practical, day-to-day habits and decisions.
To most of us, this whole idea of a simple closet sounds boring, but we can’t argue with the fact that simplicity brings clarity.
Mark Zuckerberg didn’t start by cleaning out his closet. He first took the time to simplify why he did what he did, and once he understood his why, he took action to focus only on the things that mattered. That’s what we want to do here.
If we’ve correctly understood our why, how can we start prioritizing the things that support it?
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
He was making the point that many of us spend our time jumping from one urgent task to another without getting to the important ones.
The problem occurs when we consistently choose those things over the big, overarching tasks we’ve been given.
When we clarify what’s important, we can simplify our lives. If my why is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ, then anything I do that falls under that main goal is important.
There were two different things I had to do within the first month of working there.
First, I had to learn the names of the people who worked in this organization.
He told me why I was doing what I was doing and why it mattered to the overall success of the company.
Guess which task I was more excited to get to every day? The one for which I knew the why!
But out of that larger why, many smaller whys give meaning and purpose to the smaller roles you play in life. And understanding those smaller whys will help you simplify your life down to the important and essential things you should be doing.
Simplicity boils down to knowing why you do what you do.
Start by understanding your personal why—your “spine” or your driving sentence. Then look at your professional why—the reason behind your daily tasks and goals.
Now that you’ve created the list, circle the things that moved you forward personally or professionally. These are the big things. Maybe you closed a deal, finished a presentation, or ran a mile.
just circle the things that you look back on and are proud of accomplishing.
Write down something you wish you had done and circle that instead.
They’re the urgent things that aren’t inherently “bad”—they’re just things that take up time and energy.
Those things have to happen. But you need to look at these tasks with a different perspective. The problem isn’t the monkeys themselves. It’s that they feel like they divert us
