106. Slow the Mind and Accomplish More

Foreign. Hey, my friend Kenny Chapman here, your host of leadership in a nutshell where we're cracking the code of that driven mind for home service leaders and really all leaders. But I, as you know, my passion lies in home services and the trades and the skilled trades and just having blue collar conversations with people just like you. So I want to thank you for being here with me yet again. Today is episode 106, Slow the Mind and accomplish more. As I talk to many of you as I observe the driven minded leader in today's world, today's society, you don't have to look very far to come across the challenge. Let's call it an overall challenge, kind of an underlying challenge of this. You know, you're just, your mind's going all the time. It's one of the number one things that I hear. I'm sure you hear it, I'm sure you feel it. Give me a head nod right now if you, I was sitting there with you, whether you're in your car, maybe you're working out, wherever you listen to this stuff. And if you were like, okay, if I said so, do you ever kind of wake up at night and your mind's running, give me a head nod, yes or no. Do you ever catch yourself kind of your mind is squirreling during the day? Yes or no? Okay. Do you find yourself having a thought that comes in sticks and kind of runs and runs and runs? Yes or no? Now one last one. Do you ever feel like the more you think about something, the better positioned you're going to be to solve it? Yes or no? Okay. So if you are like most driven leaders, I got at least a 75% head nod in the yes direction and many of you gave me a hundred percent right. Many of you are like, yes, yes, yes and yes. My mind goes all the time, Kenny. I wake up at night, I can't go back to sleep. I think about things and it'll kind of keep on going. I'll think that I've got a solution and then something else will come up. And I get this. And don't get me wrong, there's power in thinking. There's massive power in thinking. There's not power when your mind is in charge. And that's what I want you to realize today. We're just going to take a couple of minutes and talk about how to slow your mind and accomplish more. Because you know, as, as I've dedicated myself to self care, as I've dedicated myself to elevating consciousness in all beings around me, as I've dedicated myself to slowing down, to finding more peace, to finding more fulfillment, to finding more happiness. Unconditional happiness, let me say, like it's easy to have conditional happiness meaning happy if. Or I'm happy when. And then it would be. I would be happy. But. Right. So I'm happy if I hit budget. I'm happy when team does what I expect of them. I'm happy. But I had an argument with my eldest child. I'm happy. But we might be on the verge of a recession. I'm happy. But I didn't stockpile as much cash as I possibly should have during the last rain. Whatever. Whatever that is. Right. So that's complete conditional happiness. And one of the challenges with slowing the mind is the egoic based mind wants to run on you because it's looking to solve something. And if it has something to solve, that means there has to be a problem. So yes, the brain is a problem solving tool, but the problems that we might give aren't necessarily always thought out consciously. Right. So that's where I want you to just kind of open your mind today. I just, you know, kind of a low key episode today because I just, I really, I want you to start working on this and thinking about this because in upcoming weeks I'm going to be talk coming to you about some growth and follow through and communication and then I may go ahead and do a short episode on some physical relaxation techniques and it's probably about time to drop another meditation as well. But, but regardless today I just really want to focus in on how to slow down and accomplish more. And, and one of the first things that we've got to do is fly in the face of what everybody thinks. Okay? Meaning that we have hung a badge of honor on being driven leaders. We have decided that we are successful that because we outwork everyone, because we out think everyone, because we put in the most time, because we get the least amount of sleep, because we have the highest level of stress, whatever that is, because my mind runs all the time, that makes me successful. And that is BS my friend. Fill in the blank however you want, but that is absolutely an incorrect limiting belief that is rooted in scarcity. And as a thought leader that loves you and cares about you as a human being, as a leader, as a conscious individual, you've got to get that out of your head. Because the more you find peace of mind, the more you slow your mind, the more you will accomplish. And, and it's not even about the accomplishment necessarily because you'll hit your Goals. You're hitting your goals now a lot of times more often than not. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you weren't a driven leader that's seeking some sort of, what do I want to call it, like just peace, some serenity in your mind knowing there's the next level, knowing that there's, there's another level of fulfillment. Right. So you've got all that on your side. Now it's a matter of going, well, wait a minute. Maybe, maybe there is a little bit of a different strategy and you've got to break the mental attachment to being stressed out as a badge of honor. And some of you leaders that maybe you're not company owners and the owners have created that model. I know I am. I did this. I'm very guilty of this. In my previous life, in my past leadership strategies, whether it was for the long time that I own Peterson Plumbing or as long as I've ran Blue Collar. We're over a decade at the time. I'm recording this now and early on, oh my God. I work harder than anyone else. I stress out more than anybody else. I, I got an email from a long term industry colleague this week at the time I'm recording this and I, and I actually, it was a text message and he had been at an event and I wasn't at the event he was at. And he's like, oh, man, miss seeing you here. How's everything? I'm like, yeah, things are great. How about you? And he's like, oh, you know, I'm just like, you always running like crazy. And I just had to sit back and kind of chuckle to myself because, like, yeah, that is how I used to portray myself. And that's how the lovely and Christy built the first part of Blue Collar for sure. But now if, if I run like that, then my team's going to run like that, my leaders run like that. Then my, my coaches and fulfillment team's going to run like, then that nobody's going to have any fun. That's not, that's not how to roll. So what I wanted to do is slow my mind so I can accomplish more. This really hit me. I'm in a, in a small mastermind group of about 12 leaders in various industries. And a couple weeks ago is when this, this episode kind of came to my mind because I was in this mastermind, really high level thinkers, really like very conscious individuals, I'll say it that way, in this mastermind group. And we meet every other week and sometimes there's a topic. Sometimes it's just sharing some wins that we've had or challenges that we, that we need some help with or whatever. And this particular week the title was hacks and techniques to increase your focus. And I thought about you as my listeners when I was like getting engaged in this, in this Mastermind topic because I would be interested to do this with, with our own following. I might, maybe I'll do that as one of my, one of my members only quarterly events that, where I speak to the entire membership in a Life Mastery event. Maybe, maybe I'll explore that a little bit because what, what was fascinating is we jump on and people start going and there's one gentleman from, from Canada that's very into technology and you know, he's got the latest gadgets and the latest stuff. He's on a diet right now and he's got some scale that measures all these biometric stuff. And it doesn't just give him his weight. It, I swear it gives him everything about his DNA and like just information overload for me. And he's got it on his watch and he's got this and that and all the different stuff. And you know, he's just one of these type of guys. He's a successful guy, don't get me wrong. And he's having the walk that he needs to have. But he goes and he's sharing all these things that he does for focus and how he sets timers and alarms and all this type of stuff. And I'm sitting there just kind of watching and listening. And then another guy went on some different hacks that he uses. And, and everything is, is around creating complexity to me and I believe that, you know, complexity creates confusion in the mind and a confused mind doesn't buy. And so if I want to accomplish things and I want a simple, calm, peaceful mind, then I've got to look for simplicity. I just said simple and calm. That just off the top of my head, that's where it goes. And so I'm not saying don't utilize, you know, calendars and reminders and you know, maybe your phone buzzes and reminds you to take a deep breath or to get up and walk around the office. That's all fine if that works for you. But what I wanted to share with you is they, they came to me and, and my buddy Gordy runs the group and he's like, Kenny, I've been waiting to hear from you because it seems like you're always focused and you're always just, you know, right There and in the zone and this and that. Like, what are you doing, man? What? Share with us, share with us. And I just was like, you may not like my answer, guys, because what I do is, is less of the complexity based things that drive my ego and make me feel important or busy and I lean into things that I love to do, things that resonate with my goals, that feed into roles that I enjoy and those roles ultimately feed my soul. And that, that, you know, that's, that's what I believe in. And goal, role and soul, those are, those are the powerful things. And so today as we think about slowing your mind, you're probably going, okay, Kenny, that's all cool. But my mind's still running like crazy. Give me some techniques, give me some thoughts. Okay, so I will. So here's what I want you to, to kind of think about. It's bigger than you think. So if you're taking notes, write that down. It's not just a quick fix, it's not just, oh, okay, let me, let me do a breathing exercise once and I'm going to be done. There is a lifetime of fear based and scarcity conditioning that many of us have. It's the fight or flight part of the brain that has been triggered to run nonstop. And you've got to recondition that to find peace. And there's a lot of different ways to do it and different things work for different people. So anything that I share with you here today, I'm going to give you just a few things overall to kind of think about. But you've got to find your own. Let me say that again. You've got to find what works for you. But number one, you've got to be committed. So don't tell me like, oh, yeah, well, my mind always runs. I've had, I've had high level individual clients that invest a lot of money in the world view. I don't think I charge much at all because I, I don't do anything for money. I charge to get people's attention. And so I charge a lot because I want a lot of your attention if you're going to work with me because that's the only way I can get you to focus and, and make some change. And I've had people work with me and go, oh, I can't meditate. No, I've tried it. I can't do it. Oh no, I can't. So you can, you don't understand. My mind runs like crazy and I just kind of chuckle. It's Like I didn't develop an alcohol and drug problem because I didn't have a driven mind. I was using all kinds of coping techniques and slowing my mind down. And I thought I had it figured out for about 30 years. There where the right amount of marijuana, the right amount of alcohol seemed like it worked for me until it didn't anymore. And it probably didn't work for me for a long time before I came to realize that it didn't. But here's the thing. You're on your path. You're in your own time, you're in your own race, you're in your own lane. And so here's what I want you to do. Number one, I want you to be able to answer what's your why? And I'm not going to go on a, you know, personal purpose, you know, mission here today. But you've got to think about what's your why? Because that will help you with focus and that'll help you with slowing down your mind. Your mind is running out of control because it's all over the place. When you know what your why is and why you want to do what you want to do, you can focus on that. And when you focus on that, the reticular activating system part of the brain has one thing to focus on. That's the little Google part of your brain that's kind of back in the, in the back cortex where it just kind of funnels things out. And if I. We recently got Christy a new little, the, the little Lexus suv and there weren't any of them on the road and now they're everywhere. Why? Because it's on our. It's now in our reticular activating system. And so when you know your why, you put that into your RAs and you can now go, okay, cool, I'm going to focus on this and I'm going to let all that other mind noise go away. I don't need to know all these things that are on social media. I don't need to know how to this particular thing works. I want to focus on my why. So what's my why? And why do I want to slow down my mind? Answer that as well. Like, why do I want to commit to this? Because you've got to get leverage if you're going to commit to reconditioning and reprogramming your mind. So what's your why? Number two, what's your technique? And that's where I'm saying there's a lot of different ones for me. I'm going to share several of them that I do with you today. I use several different things, and what's fascinating is I do about five things every single day. And some days one of them will work just brilliantly and the other four are just very mediocre at best. Some days one of them won't work at all. Some days three out of five will hit pretty well. Sometimes, you know, all of them will be a little bit challenging. But it's the reconditioning from the commitment that makes the change stick. Let me say that again. It's the reconditioning from the commitment that makes the change stick. You might want to rewind that and write that down. One, what's your why to? What's your technique? Three. What does success look like? So if I want to slow down my mind so I can accomplish more, how do I know? What does it look like? What does it feel like? For me, it was. Sleeping was a big indicator. When I started working with a coach several years ago, I went through a phase where I had a coach that I did a pretty deep dive with. I don't. I don't do that same work anymore. But at that time, I wasn't sleeping for anything. I mean, four hours a night was a great night. Now, I don't sleep like an absolute champ all the time, but I've also identified some afternoon iced coffee may have something to do with that here and there. And I sleep better than I ever have, more often than I ever have. And you've heard me say on this podcast before, I'm looking for more often than not, everything in my life more often than not. I say what I want to say more often than not. I act how I want to act more often than not. I go to the gym more often than not. I hike more. Whatever it is, it's more often than not. So for me, that's ultimately how where success shows up. Like, absolutely. There's a couple non negotiables. I will not miss a day of meditation. I will not miss a day of journaling. Everything else can be up in there for certain things or whatever, but I will not miss a chance to. To consciously slow my brain and consciously download my brain by journaling. That's me. And these things work for me. So let's look at a couple techniques and I'll get you out of here. So several things that work, and some of them work in conjunction with. With each other. One is just breathe. Just be conscious of your breath. It's fascinating how when I Said that you probably didn't even realize that you had fairly shallow breath. And you heard me take an actual. Yeah, I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm riffing with you. So. But when I stop and take a deep breath, like, okay, just become conscious of your breath. That's why all meditation, or most meditation will start with just beginning becoming aware of your breath, because that immediately gives your brain something to focus on that's on autopilot all the time. So just taking a moment and just take a breath, give it a second. You know, there's. Dr. Weil has a technique called 4, 7, 8. Some of you have done this technique with me either on virtual events or at Blue Collar's acceleration days event where you go in for four, hold for seven, breathe out for eight. Let's do one together in up to four, hold two, three, four, five, six, seven. Out, two, three, four, five million six, seven, eight. So you're in for a count of four. You hold for a count of seven, you're out for a count of eight. Don't do it more than five times. It will mess with your physiology. Mess with it meaning, like you can get a little bit lightheaded or whatever. So I, I like to stop in throughout the day and do a few of those. So breathe, walk, get out in nature. Like, like, you know, depending on where you live, whatever the situation is when you can get outside, that's awesome. Like, connecting with nature is amazing. I already mentioned journaling slows the mind. I still longhand journal. I do it in a digital form. I write in. I've got an app called Notability on my iPad that I, that I write in in that journal every day. I just like physically writing. It's one way that you can slow down the conscious mind to connect with the unconscious mind. Read. I read every day. I should have said that was another one of my non negotiables. I will read something every day to go along with journaling and meditating. Exercise. I talked about walking, but there's something about getting your heart rate up when you get, you know, get a little cardio, get your heart rate up, something like that, you know, it doesn't have to be all the time. That's a good way to slow your brain and make sure that you're not just constantly, you know, if you're listening to acid metal while you're doing a workout, you're probably not slowing down your brain a whole lot. And I'm not saying listen to something slow. Just be mindful of that and Set an intention before you work out. I already talked about meditation. And then there's some different, you know, muscle relaxation techniques where you can just tense, you know, tense your hands for a minute. Build. Do a fist right now and tense your arms. Hold it, hold it. Release. Do your face. Make a face. Make a face. Hold it, hold it, hold it. Release. And notice how that just kind of, huh? Okay, let me lighten up. Let me slow down. You're looking to change your physiology, change what's going on in your brain chemistry, that's all. So that's what it's about. Slow your mind and accomplish more. So what's your why? Why do you really want to slow down? And why are you really even doing what you're doing on the planet? So why do you want to slow down? What's the technique? What's success look like? Maybe breathe, walk, get out in nature journal, read, exercise, meditate, do some muscle tightening and relaxing. Whatever works for you. But the number one thing you've got to do, my friend, is commit. When you commit, you will make progress. And everything in life is about progress, not perfection. I'm Kenny Chapman, your host of Leadership. In a nutshell, this has been episode 106. Please share this with Somebody. Kick him a quick email and say, hey, I know you got a driven mind, too. I thought you might want to check out this episode, give us a rating, give us a review, and until we talk, make it a better than fantastic week. I'll see you real soon. Thank you.