Mindset Monday -Action vs Vision

This is episode 183 of the Empowered Team podcast.

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Welcome to the Empowered Team podcast, where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport, and life. And now, your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Monday, we're focusing on vision versus action. We have these grandiose ideas. I can use Christmas as an example, but I'm going to use some other examples with these incredible, imaginative, incredible ideas about what it's going to look like when we reach that goal, what it's going to look like in our new home, what our holidays are going to look like, what our vision for the new year is going to look like. And then this thing happens. We get right up close to the moment that we're doing the hard thing, and our brain goes, holy cow, this is really uncomfortable. You've never done this before, so stop. And it might be an emotion, it might be a physical feeling. It might be any sorts of discomfort. It might. And your brain says, stop. And that's the difference between vision, our potential imagination, and what we can actually create in our mind and what it comes down to when we get to doing it. So there's a big, big difference. There's a big gap there. So I'm gonna use a couple of examples. I've been fortunate enough to be the person who. That people come to to make their vision a reality. This could be in their personal lives, in their physical goals to make the Olympics in their businesses. But people come to me to see their vision become reality. So I've had this happen many a time where someone will come in and say, I really want to be this incredible track star. And so we go further and we're assessing. I had this woman at one point, she wanted to run really fast and be competitive, and. And I was very excited for her vision. And then we got into an assessment, and then we understood more about her body. The truth about now, that's one of the most important steps, is the truth about now. And we found out the truth about her now. And then what happened is that we discovered okay, she's got some growth to do in order to get to that vision. But then I started asking some of the questions, like, okay, where do you train? How do you train? What does it look like? And what I learned after asking a lot of questions was that she normally trains on a track, and the track was going to be shut down for a span of time, and then she was going to start training again. And that span of time was so long that she would not only detrain, but she would lose the momentum that she had gained and the growth that she gained going forward. So I said, okay, we're gonna have to run on the treadmill and run outdoors a little bit, maintain and keep the growth going. And she said, well, no, I won't do that. I can't run on the treadmill. I don't like to run outdoors. I will only run on the track. And that right there was the moment that I knew I couldn't help her. So even though she comes to me for a specific job, I knew in that moment that I wasn't the person who could help her to her vision. And because she wasn't willing to get uncomfortable enough to do some things that she didn't like to do. And so, as unfortunate as it was, I wasn't willing to work with her going forward because she wasn't willing to do any of the things that I could give her. And she had a very specific timeline. And I wasn't going to be able to help her with that because I knew that it wasn't going to come down to possibility in reaching her goal. Now I'm going to give you a different example. We'd have interviews for people coming to work for our company at various times, and on the resumes, it was that they worked with elite athletes, and they worked with various clients, and they'd been coaching. And then when it came to defining in the interview, what does it mean to work with an elite athlete? And we discovered that it meant that they worked with some university levels of athletes. And we also learned in that moment that their definition of elite was. Was very different than our definition of elite. Our definition of elite was national level, Olympic level, professional level, and their definition of elite was Canadian university level. And we just had a very different definition. And that meant there was a big gap between our definitions of elite. So we had to discover what the discomfort would be to bridge that gap. Were we willing to lower our standard or our definition? Were they willing to increase their standard or their definition? Their vision. And our vision didn't Match. So there was no possibility of us being able to take the actions together because our visions weren't even on the same page. So I could give you countless examples of differences in vision or differences in willingness for discomfort in action. But ultimately it's going to come down to this common concept that's going to happen for all of us. And it's this, that when we have imagination and when we have vision, it's very expansive and it's meant to be. We're supposed to be able to visualize the most amazing things so that we have something so compelling to go toward that we are going to take some sort of action. So we want this imagination and this vision to be incredible, to be awesome. And at the same time, the discomfort of being in new action is so profound that our brain goes from being expansive to being very, very limiting and stops us from taking action. And I'm going to give you an example of that because it sounds counterintuitive. If our brain can be so expansive and so visionary and so imaginative, then how on earth does it become so restrictive in the moment? Well, this is what happens. We get to be this imagination in one moment. But when it comes down to the action moment and discomfort in our body happens. And the discomfort can be physical discomfort from moving like exercise, or it can be the discomfort that comes physically as well from emotional discomfort. Either of those two physical discomforts, this different frequency in our body signals our brain and our brain says, oh, shut it down, Stop right now. Doesn't matter how big the vision was and how compelling it was and how much we really, really want it, stop it right now. Because I don't like this feeling. So what that would sound like physically, and I've seen this hundreds of times, is when somebody goes to do a maximal chin up test and let's say they can get five chin ups and they go to do that sixth chin up. They get five and they stop and they drop. And instead of trying for that sixth chin up, it was uncomfortable enough at five that they didn't even attempt six. Six. And I tend to have this uncomfortable moment when I look at them and I say, hey, well you did five and you could have gone for another one. They were like, no, I think that was all I had. And that's the moment where I tell them, you can do far more than you think in that moment. Because the people who go for it almost always get that extra one extra and maybe even part of a next one after that. Most of them have that extra one in them. But they never even tried. The other thing I see happen all the time is on a max conditioning test, so something running or biking, the person stops. And at the end when they recover, they say, oh, I think I had a little more in me. But they didn't go for it because in the moment their brain said, this is so hard. I think we need to stop. I can't stand this feeling. It feels so bad. And then they stop. No matter how compelling it was to have a new personal best, no matter how compelling it was to win the race or train for the event that's coming up, and that could be even Olympic in nature. So realize this is the vision versus the action. Realize that when push comes to shove, our beautiful, compelling vision is, is going to be really thwarted by our brain as soon as it receives some physical discomfort, physical body discomfort or emotional discomfort. When that happens, our brain stops the vision and says, stop what you're doing right now. Even if that is a business action, even if it's a physical action, as long as you're aware of that, then you've got the chance of being in that really tough spot, being in that horrible feeling position and still taking action going forward. I don't care if it's that uncomfortable conversation with somebody at work, whether it's that extra chin up in the gym, whether it's that work sales promotion or sorry presentation that you have to do, whatever the thing is, keep going forward in that discomfort. And because you can do more than you think in that uncomfortable moment, you can do way more than you think in that uncomfortable moment. That is where the magic happens. That is where the growth happens. That's where from a physical standpoint, the muscle fibers get created. The breaking down happens to create the new. Exactly. Same thing comes from. Along with our neurons in our brain, we create new connections when we fail. So I'm going to give you three steps that are critical in order to do more than you think you can. When your brain starts to tell you to stop and they're really, really simple, you've got this great vision. You've actually started to take action on the small steps to get to the bigger vision. And then it gets tough. So when it gets really tough, it feels really hard. Number one, try harder. Try harder. Try a little more effort. Try something different. Try harder. Number two, acknowledge that it feels miserable. And like I said, that's where the magic happens. Some people say, we've said this in the gym many a time, we've said it in business many times. This is worth it. When it feels really hard. This is so worth it. You'll hear also embrace the suck. That's the Navy Seals version. Embrace the suck. So acknowledge that it feels miserable and recognize that that is where the magic happens. And lastly, if you failed, and by the way, stopping is called an escape fail. Stopping is failing. You escaped by not allowing yourself to truly fail. So if you failed or you stopped, then start again. So many times I gave you that example of the chin ups. So many times when someone just stopped, I I look at them, I say get back up there and show me that you tried until you actually failed. Not just stopping because it got uncomfortable. Keep trying, keep going and actually do it again. If you stopped and did an escape fail. Because when you truly fail again, that's where the magic happens. That's where the learning happens. That's where the growth happens. So those three steps again, just so you have it clearly, the vision is going to be expansive. When you start taking the smaller steps to the goals, the accomplishments that need to happen along the way toward that vision, it's going to get uncomfortable. And when it gets truly, truly tough, try harder. Try a different way. Look at a different angle. Try harder. Number two, acknowledge that it's miserable and that's where the magic happens. And number three, if you failed or you stopped, which is an escape fail, then get up and do it again. That is where that action is going to get you to that bigger, expansion, expansive vision that you've been looking for. Okay, that is your magic for Mindset Monday. I hope you have a beautiful, connected, expansive, joyous, loving rest of your week. Be powerful in what you do and keep going. So much love to you.

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