How to Create Time to "Think" So You Can make Better Decisions

G' day guys.

Dan here with this week's Shorty. So I wanted to jump in because, well, I'm gonna try and do something a bit different this week. I've decided to knock the music intro off and just go straight into giving you some value. I was actually listening to my own podcast at the weekend to kind of try and have that experience with the listener. Because when you produce a lot of content, you just put it out and you kind of watch the stats. And I did something yesterday that I thought was really valuable and I wanted to share with you and that was just taking six hours out of my Monday to really get involved in some strategic planning. So what I did was I actually drove about 30 minutes from my house to a lake, parked up with the dogs. And as part of our accelerator program, I've got this, this planning booklet that we use every quarter. So I took that off and it's a manual process of actually writing down all of your achievements and lessons learned and doing a self analysis process which, you know, really digs deep into kind of your soul, I guess. And it's already based on this whole idea of taking full extreme ownership for your life. And it's very powerful, but equally kind of intimidating because, you know, I work pretty hard, I love working, I love building a business, I love helping people.

But to take six hours out of a Monday and just go and sit by a lake with a pad and a bit of paper can sound really kind of peculiar. Because you think, well, there's all these things I've got to be doing. But here's the kind of the side effect of that. And that is, you know, when you go on holiday and you take time away from the business, what happens? You start to get creative. You know, you start to actually.

Get, come up with ideas, come up with ways of solving problems. And all too often when we're busy running our businesses, we're very much involved in the day to day you know, firefighting, dealing with shoots, organizing and you know, video production is one of those all encompassing full on activities. You know, when you've got a project on it, it's very hard to think about anything else. And that can be a lot of fun as well. But at the same time, um, if we don't give ourselves time to sort of stop and think, then you could ask yourself the question, what's, what's the downside of that? And for me it's, you lose perspective. And I was chatting to my clients this morning on our call and I was saying, you know, for the last three months or so, it's been very Covid centric and that's meant a great deal of.

Uncertainty, a great deal of disruption. And maybe you'd plan to have a holiday during that time. I mean, we. We'd actually planned a week away, camping, and it just got shelved. And so I realized that I hadn't really had a break. And so with. If you're not having a break, then how do you recharge? How do you actually, you know, re. Get those ideas flowing again? So one of the things I've been doing recently, and it's been very, very effective, is a lot of meditation. So I was reading a book by Dr. Joe Dispenza called Becoming Supernatural, and my wife had recommended to me, and it kind of, you know, paid lip service to it. Oh, yeah, I'll check that out. And hadn't really kind of gone there, but, you know, but four or five years ago, I started meditating using an app called Headspace. And at first, you know, it was. It was really difficult. I couldn't quieten my mind. I kept racing off in different directions until I realized that that's. That's part of medit. Know, mindfulness is. Is accepting that your brain is going to move around and take you in different directions. It's learning how to manage and control that. So I did Headspace for a number of years and then I kind of dropped off. Just, you know, as you do with things, sometimes they kind of. You lose momentum. But I started reading, or rather listening to Joe Dispenza's book Becoming Supernatural, and found it really, really fascinating. And so Sam sent me some audios to download. I started listening and tuning into this meditation. And at first it was like, oh, this is a bit weird. It's a bit different. You know, Haste style was very much kind of, you know, it's just very different to any meditation I've done before. But I stuck with it. And.

What I can certainly report back to you is that after about six weeks of doing it, it's. It's radically changed my life in a way that's hard to kind of explain without saying, just, you know, go and try it. But I guess what I'll do, I'll try and explain it. So I. I do a morning meditation and an evening meditation. So I do it lying in bed, put my earbuds in and just, you know, hit play. And it's a process of some breathing and then.

Just kind of listening, really. And what it does is it takes you on a bit of a journey. And, and you kind of go into this trance like state.

And the best way to explain it is that if you were driving a Formula one car, Formula one racing engines are capable of incredible performance.

But if you raced that Formula One car for 24 hours a day, day after day.

It would probably start to wear out and something might blow up because you just can't, you know, perform at peak performance all of the time. And someone relayed the idea that meditation is, is very much like that. It's like your brain is the Formula one engine, and if you don't give it a chance to cool down, it won't perform as well. And so meditation is like allowing your brain to cool down at the end of a day. And I've never really had a challenge, a problem sleeping, but for a little while there, I was kind of struggling to get to sleep and I wasn't sleeping very well. And I think I was just, you know, thinking about the business and trying to work out through problems and, and figure stuff out that hadn't been perhaps resolved during the day. And what I found immediately with this meditation was that.

It was kind of decoupling my conscious thoughts of the day and processing them and saying, hey, well that can go into that little box there and then over overnight that will get recharged. And that's probably the best thing I can say to describe how, how it feels to me is that sense of recharging. And so I do this evening meditation at night and it lasts 30 minutes.

And I'm always like, really kind of sleepy at the end of it, so go straight to sleep. And it's kind of real, really great sort of feeling. And then in the morning, I start my day with a morning meditation, which is kind of like a kind of wake up meditation, which again, just, I find this one really powerful. It really helps you focus in on your energy and, and what you're looking to achieve. I guess the thing that it really does is.

Really channels in the idea of making a newer version of future version of you, that whatever happened yesterday is a lesson and today is a chance to be a better version of yourself. And so without kind of, you know, really going into much deeper than that, I'd love for you to try.

Took me a while to get it, get into it, but it's. Yeah, it's, it's been phenomenal actually, in terms of just my energy levels, my stress levels, my anxiety levels. It's got it all under control completely naturally.

And, you know, couple that with taking, you know, I Take half a day out, a quarter to go and do some strategic planning. It's remarkable what that combination of meditation, reflection, self reflection, and some space and some outdoor space and some nature. What that did in terms of helping me craft my next 90 days in business, because I know what my overall objective is.

But to break it down to be 90 days and actually reflect on that is important. So the. One of the first things we do in the planning process is we. We reflect on the. The accomplishments from the last 90 days. And it's an A4 page, and you draw a line down the middle and. And I have this rule that says I can't move to the next part of the process till I've filled that page with accomplishments. And when people tell me about this process, oh, yeah, I can usually write five or six and get. I'm going to get a few down. But when you give yourself the challenge and the discipline of actually filling the page, that's where the magic happens. And this yesterday, and I kind of got to a page of like 2/3 the way down the page is like, oh, kind of think that's it. But then I'm forced myself to. To go deeper. And so, you know, I'm only human. So I picked up my phone and got distracted and looked at Facebook and dogs were getting tied up under the table. So under them and went and had a snack and came back and went, right, what else? And. And during that process, identified three strategic issues in my business in the last four lines that I wrote down on the page. So I guess the moral of the story is you need to give yourself time and space to really think deeply and, and not give up too quickly. Because if you give up too quickly.

You. You'll end up finding yourself in a position of missing out on the magic. And that's what I did. I kind of found myself in a position where I was able to dig deep and find the resources. So, guys, I hope you find this helpful. I would recommend if you've you're new to meditation, then try something like Headspace on the App Store and I'll post a link to Joe Dispenza where you can access his stuff as well beneath this episode. But yeah, have an awesome day, guys, and I'll talk to you soon.

You've been listening to the how to Scale a Video Business podcast with me, your host, Dan Lenny. If you're a video business owner who's hit a ceiling and we benefit from mentorships, support, and coaching, then check out how you can work with me. Over@denleny.com don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review. And don't forget to share if you feel you've gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers, you know, then please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. See you next week.