Chad Silverstein takes the medical check "awake and oriented times four" and reframes it as a leadership tool: know who you are, what moment you're in, where you're headed, and what just happened. He developed this after his father-in-law woke from open-heart surgery.
Chapters
Day 169. Awake and oriented times four. I'll never forget the first time Chet shared this with us in our team practice. And it was probably more than a decade ago. And this past week I had a wake up call. My father in law had open heart surgery, and I was there when he woke up after being under anesthesia for seven hours. And there's something that Chet taught us about this awaken oriented times four. And that is that whenever you have something happen to you and you have an ambulance come, or you're with a doctor, or you get knocked out, or you're waking up, they ask you a set of four questions to kind of even keel. They ask everybody this so that they can gauge how you're doing. And the first one is, do you know your name? They ask you, do you know who you are? What's your name? And so, you know, you have to think about that. And so, you know, the reason I'm bringing this one up right now in this part of the playbook is because I just saw my father in law come out and he was disoriented. And as I watched it and I realized how we take for granted when we're feeling good and when we're healthy and when we're supposed to know our name. You know, we tend not to think about it because things are going good. But there's a level of depth in this that we tie to, build to lead, which is, do you know who you are? This is tied to our core. This is tied to our identity. You know, just because your name is your name doesn't mean you know who you are. So there are certain times in life where you'll get knocked out, and there are certain times when things are going great and it's really important to know who you are at all times so that you can always kind of feel centered and make sure that, you know, kind of you know where you stand in any situation because you have a good sense of your identity, who you are, what's your name. So again, this is sort of a figurative play on a way that, you know, we take something in the world and then we apply it to our core. The second question that they'll always ask you is, do you know what time it is? Right? So as I say these, I want you to try to think about, you know, what's the built to lead tie in? You know, where is he going with this? So what time is it? So again, you know, I think Chet's story in the book is that he got into an accident on his mountain bike, I think it was. And you know, he hit his head. So, you know, what's your name? Second question is, you know, what time is it and what time is it is. Do you know what time it is in your life? Your. We call it your Kairos moment, right? We all have these moments of truth in our lives. This is why we don't like the word balance at build to lead, because nothing's balanced. If you just had a kid, your life's going to be more heavily tilted towards being a new parent. If you get a new job, you're going to be really pouring yourself into this new opportunity in your career. So there's never a balance of anything. And knowing what time it is in your life, knowing where you are on your timeline, it's really important to have a good sense of that at all times, people, because you don't want to kind of waste time when you should be pouring yourself into something that's really important. Maybe it is family, maybe it is career. Knowing what time it is, it's really important. The third question is, do you know where you're going? You know where you are, where you're going? And the built lead tie in for that is of course our opus. Do you know where you're going? Do you have a highway? Do you have an opus? Do you have a vision? Do you have something that you're aiming at? And you know, you could be just as disoriented falling off a bike and hitting your head that you are when you're healthy and everything's good and you don't have an aim. You know, if you see someone who doesn't have an aim in life and they don't have purpose driving them, they're lost completely. Just like the person who's on the ground with the ambulance and they're lost. They don't even know where they are in the moment. You could just be, you know, completely healthy and not know where you are in life. And so to have that aim, to know who you are and to know what time of the, you know, your life period that you're going through. This is why they talk about midlife crisises. Do people understand why they're in that moment in their life and do they know where they're going? And the last one is going to be, do you know what just happened? Right? And this is a big one because something's always happening. You always have things going on in your life at all times, and a lot of times it's going to hurt. And this ties into having a strong core because you're going to want to be able to stand strong when things happen to you and when someone backstabs you and when you experience sabotage, or you lose a big amount of money in an investment, or the deal didn't fall through the way you wanted, or something tragic in your life happens with health or family, and they're coming. I mean, no one's immune to any of that stuff. And you have to be able to be strong. And so, you know, do you know what just happened? You know, we have things happening to us all the time, and you're gonna have to stop and reflect and like what just happened and then be able to reflect and be able to then take action based on, you know, a healthy way of kind of moving forward through whatever pain that you're going through. So being alert and awake oriented times four, this is a big deal. You gotta ask yourself the hard questions. Do you know who you are? Do you know your name? Do you know your identity? Do you know what time it is and what time of your life or you're in right now? Everybody who's watching this is at a different point and has a different amount of time left, which is unknown. Do you know where you're going? Do you have an aim? Are you authoring your opus? And do you know what just happened? Are you aware of what just happened to you? And are you going to be strong enough to be able to stand strong through it? So tell me what you think about that and maybe you can identify some of those in your life that you're going through right now and pick one in them and put some productive actions in place.
