052 It Starts Long Before You Show Up

Foreign.

This is Dr. Torrey.

Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better and we influence for good. I'm not sure why I've been reflecting on time so much lately, but as I was doing, I'll tell you, there's a concept that kept recurring for me, and it's something that I've noticed in every single different discipline that I've studied over the past 23 plus years. Every discipline I've studied as it pertains to communication, relationships, health, wealth, all of these things as they relate to influence, whether you're influencing someone else or influencing yourself to improve, they all reflect on this concept or this principle. But I don't think I've heard it well described. So I just want to reflect on it here for a moment and see if it resonates with you. This also shows up in all of my coaching work. Every single client that I have or have had, this is a component. And so it's kind of shocking to me that I haven't heard it so well described. But essentially the principle is, I sum it up like this. It starts before it begins. It starts before it begins. Now, perhaps it's so obvious that it's not well described, and maybe that's the case. But I'll tell you, every time you see it, it shows up in a different way. In the productivity world, you'll see it in terms of preparation. They'll talk about preparing for the thing. In business and leadership, they talk about preparation. How do you prepare for the thing? Whether you're preparing physical aspects or messaging components or whatever it is, you're doing this stuff before an event, right? In the case of influence, one of the most common ones, and probably the single most important one, is the concept of managing your state. I first heard it described by Tony Robbins, but I've also heard it in every single discipline I've ever studied. It has to do with your emotions, that we are emotional creatures. This is not some soft skill, poo poo, reptilian brain thing. It's actually part of our being. And so we need to pay close attention to it and our behaviors, our emotions, our performance of tasks, the frames that we can see through, the, the stories we have available to us, the knowledge that we have available to us, our ability to learn, our ability to remember, our ability to recall, our ability, all of these things are state dependent. Our body language is state dependent. Our word choice, tone of speech, our cadence of speech, all of these things are state dependent. Our rapport with somebody else, state dependent. So Managing your state is vital. But as I was reflecting on time, I realized these don't go far enough. There's another sort of preparation that occurs, and that is that of skill development. Sometimes long before you reach the championship game, or long before you reach your job in that high ranking role, long before you launch the business, there are certain skills that you're developing. Sometimes they're along the way, but nonetheless there's deliberate focus on how it begins and the skills that are needed before it begins. So it starts before it begins is probably the best way I can think of it. But there's something else. I think about it like this. If you think about an event or a moment in time that you're preparing for, the closest in time to that moment is probably state management right before that moment. Managing your state is incredibly high yield. But what comes before that? What comes before that is preparation for whatever that event is or that, that thing that's about to happen, that rollout, that communication, that interaction. The preparation beforehand comes before the state management. And actually before that, before the preparation, there's skill development. Are you developing the skills before you start the preparation? So in fact skill development is just further back in time before the preparation and before the state management before the event. But there's something even further back. It's like it's a longer term play, it's the long game. And that is character. It's character. If you want to make a good first impression, there are all kinds of people and books out there that'll tell you you want to make a good first impression. Manage your state before you do that prep. Before you go in there, think about how you're doing these things. Develop some skills in terms of how you interact with other people. They talk about all those things, but character. You want to make a good first impression, have great character if you want to be a better leader. Character. Yes, there's state management. Yes, there's preparation, yes, there's skill development. But if you're doing all of that stuff consistently, it's shaping your character. And your character is how you make that first impression. It's how you show up as a leader, it's how you show up as a parent, it's how you show up as a teacher. It's if you want to find your soulmate character. If you want to advocate for a cause, character. Your character affects your health. Your approach to other people and society in general affects your health. If you want to be a better public speaker, character. You know why? Because when people have that first impression they can detect authenticity. One of my core mentors in my life, Dr. Mark Smith, used to say, people, especially when they're in vulnerable situations, have heightened authenticity detectors, especially in the roles of, like, patients or clients or anytime somebody's expressing or experiencing some sort of vulnerability, they have heightened authenticity detectors. Your character shines through. It's not something you prepare for, it's something you are. It's your way of being that is shaped by how you managed your state in the past. It's shaped by how you prepared for interactions and how you developed your skills. It's shaped by all those things and your intentions when you showed up to these things. Your character is shaped by all that. In the case of managing your state, in the case of preparation, in the case of skill development, it's often building up to an event. But when it comes to character, character is all about congruence. It's about no matter what event or moment or cause or rollout or experience, you're about to have or shape for someone else, no matter what is coming up, character is about being congruent in multiple different contexts. So character is something we should be working on all the time. And it starts with us managing our state. It starts with us managing our intentions. It starts with us managing our actions and our behaviors. If we have good intent and then we follow that up with good behavior and good interactions, our character then shapes how we show up, what enters the room. When you enter the room, guess what? It's your character. It shines through. So your small decisions, they might seem small, they might be internal, but your small decisions on your intent to say something or not say something, to do something or not do something, how you show up in those moments with your intention will absolutely shape your character. Be deliberate about your intention, and then from there, be deliberate about your action. And along the way, that's when you manage your state. You prepare, you develop skills, and then it becomes part of your fiber. It becomes how you show up. It becomes who you are, who enters the room. When you enter the room, it's your character. And we can all see starts before it begins, and it begins with your character. So be deliberate about it. I'll see you in the next episode.

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