15. Leadership: Protecting Your Mind (Your Most Valuable Asset)

Hey, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Leadership in a Nutshell where we're cracking that code of the driven mind. Today we are here to talk about protecting your mind, which is your greatest asset. All kinds of discussion around asset protection in business and as leaders, critically important that we think about asset protection, sometimes not quite enough focus is put on our greatest asset, which is our mind. So in today's show, today's episode, this is what we're going to break down. By the way, if you're having a good time with us, make sure you please give us a rating. I would love to have a review. We get judged on that by Apple and others. So if you're an Apple listener, please go ahead and give us a review. Now. Enough of that. Let's jump into what can we do. I just want to share a few simple things with you today because as a leader, everything kind of revolves around you. And I know that as a young entrepreneur, when I first got started leading teams and people and kind of figuring out how to show up on a daily basis and really how to influence at the highest level, I really did not do a good job of protecting myself, protecting my mindset, making sure that I was feeding myself good information. And so today, I want you to just kind of take a step back. A lot of people talk about different things around this. So I'm just going to give you four kind of key areas today. Number one, the first thing, write this down. Move. That's right. Just simply move. If you want your mind to work better, make sure that you are getting out and getting movement in. You know, one of my mentors talks about the fact that, you know, most people don't die because they get old, they die because they stop moving. And in Western civilization, we happen to believe that as we get older, therefore atrophy sets in. We stop moving around. If you continue to move, if you continue to exercise, if you continue to do yoga, stretching, whatever, riding bikes, swimming, running, jogging, whatever it is. There's different studies around how much each exercise impacts your knees and what. I'm not getting into that. What I'm telling you is just what I said, movement, my friend, that will help protect this asset of your mind right here. Very, very important second key point today. If you want to protect your mind, you've got to give it a break. Give your mind a break. I'm a big fan of meditation. There is a large chunk of Kenny Chapman's life he never would have fathomed being able to tell you that he became an effective Meditator that he meditates every single day. Generally twice a day. I meditate early in the morning as part of my early morning routine. I meditate every single day. And then every night I do some form of mind relaxing exercise in order to slow my mind down so I can make sure that I get. What is our third focus of the day? Sleep now. What's the subtitle of our podcast Time Together here? It's Cracking the code of the driven mind. We have driven minds. We are driven leaders. We want to manage at the highest level all the different things. We want to create all that. So we kind of think, I'll just go, go, go, go, right? How many of you listening right now or watching this on YouTube have had somebody go, I'll sleep when I die, right? When people say that I'll sleep when I die, what they really don't understand is how to refuel the tank right now. Tesla's stock seems to be going crazy and all kinds of different things. The market's all over. The Tesla makes all kinds of different electronic components or whatever. Let's just think about their cars right now though. If you never stop and plug in a Tesla, it is going to be the worst automobile on the planet. And I grew up driving a 1978 Chevette, right? And I would take my 78 Chevette over a Tesla if I had no way to charge the battery for that incredible automobile. You are the incredible automobile. You are the million dollar racehorse. If you had a million dollar racehorse, you wouldn't run it non stop. You wouldn't drive it crazy. You wouldn't feed it full of fast food, nicotine, alcohol and all these different things. You would let it get a good night of sleep, wouldn't you? Then don't you deserve the same thing? Don't your team members deserve the same thing? Don't the people that you lead deserve your very best? Sleep is a massive component. You might be able to tell I'm a little bit fired up about that, about that topic right there. Why? Because I feel like I had so many areas of my life figured out. I was a driver. I was, you know, find my purpose in life. I live and breathe my purpose every single day. I'm coming to you today as part of my primary purpose, why I'm on the planet. I did the work to get clarity. I've accepted who Kenny Chapman is. I strive every day to be a better version of that Kenny Chapman. And I would build and I would grow and I would grind and I would Rock. And I would go to bed late and I would get up early in the interest of passion, in the interest of engagement, in of building for you. I owe it to you, as one of my fans, one of my followers, one of my clients, to make sure that I'm just continually driving and putting. Wait a minute. That is not the most effective. Then I started realizing how important it is to take actual breaks and free time and technology breaks we'll talk about in an upcoming episode. And, you know, I just want you to really make sure that when you don't underestimate. We are taught that sleep is a bad thing. We're taught that, oh, I'm not, not driven if I'm sleeping. Oh, well, so and so got. Got on. On, you know, four hours a night or I read about Einstein and, you know, he only slept about four hours a day. And then you find and dig deep and find some different things that say he also took a nap every afternoon. So when you take a step back and go, wait a minute, you do the study, you know, Google it today and you're going to find anywhere from seven hours is the right amount of sleep. Eight hours is the right amount of sleep. Oh, no, we're not sleeping enough. We need nine hours. Forget about that and focus on you. There's actually technology that can measure your sleep. Now, I personally don't utilize any of that. I know how I feel. But when I first started working with the current coach that I have today, yes, Kenny Chapman has a coach. Yes. I get personal assistance myself is how much I believe in coaching. He said, how, okay, let's look at these different areas of your life. And, and one of them was how, how are you sleeping? I said, I'm doing great, man. I get between five, maybe six hours, but I, I average about five hours. And he kind of took his notes and said, okay, we'll be revisiting that. And I'm like, no, man, I'm good. I don't, I don't, you know, I'm not tired too much. I'm right, you know, I exercise. I feel like I eat pretty good. And he said, okay, cool. You know, and, and now I realize that it is very important. So now, you know, it still varies. Don't get me wrong, some nights I do still only get five. I'm not saying there's any perfection to be had. There's awareness, there's intention, and there's progress. And if you're getting less than, I would say seven to eight, you know, seven seems to be kind Of a good number for me personally, but different people have different numbers. And the other thing is it can fluctuate during the times of year, during times of age, during times of, you know, different moon cycles. Whatever it is, just go with it, make sure. But one of the important things is to try to go to bed on, you know, a certain schedule and time. I'm not here to be your sleep expert. I'm here to be your behavior change expert. I'm here to be your effectiveness expert. And what I know is most of us on the line right now, listening right now, watching right now, are not getting enough sleep. And if we are, it's not quality. I used to be a pretty big drinker, and back when I was drinking a lot, I'd go to sleep early and then I'd wake up and clammy and oh my gosh, a little headache and need to drink 5 gallons of water in the middle of the night. I could stay in bed for eight or 10 hours and wake up exhausted and tired. It's not just quantity, it's also quantity. My quantity, quality. I'm not sure which one I said there. Right. You get the point. It's about how effective it is for you, not just how long you take. Okay, last thing and certainly not least that I want you to think about today is protecting your mind. We talk about, obviously making sure that you move, making sure that you meditate and give your mind a break, Making sure that you focus on sleep. Last thing today, and certainly not least is being future focused. One of the best ways to protect your mind is get out of the past. Not that we don't use the past to measure backwards. Very important. You know, there's a concept called measuring the gap and the gain that Dan Sullivan, one of my coaches and mentors, taught me. And so we're always going to have a gap, you and I, because we're always creating, we're always doing more things, we're always looking at what's next. But sometimes we forget to measure the gain and look going back, however, many of us have our mind running non stop. It's about what happened yesterday. I replay a scenario in my mind over and over. Oh, my gosh, what's going to happen here? What's going to happen then? When I say future focus, I'm not talking about jumping in next week and worry and fear and oh my gosh. And there's challenging times and the government's printing money and giving it to people that maybe they shouldn't be. And all these deals I don't know what's going to happen. The stock market seems to be fluctuating. Oh my gosh. I'm not going to be able to retire. If that's a four letter word that's in your vocabulary. Whatever. The reality is, sorry, I just, I'll never retire. I'm going to die doing what I do because I, I'm in purpose, on purpose. And that's one of the things to protect my mind when I'm doing this. I'm not just grinding. Yes, I prepare. Yes, I work hard to bring you the best content possible, but I protect my mind by staying in that moment. And when we really take a step back and go, what's future focused mean? Always make your future bigger than your past, my friend. What you did last week, last month, last year, last lifetime does not mean matter. I'm not minimizing it. I'm saying take the wisdom from it. And now let's look forward. Most people have a hard time with their mind. Most people get really bogged down with a pandemic and all the arguing online and who's right and who's wrong and political because they're not future focused enough. Their future isn't big enough to help them deal. We are a moment in time, just a little blip on the map of time. When we look, you know, walk through a graveyard and look at the epitaph and look at the year. There's a line, there's, you know, Kris Crew that works for blue collar talks about the dash, right? He's got a keynote that he does about the dash and that's where we're at right now is somewhere in that dash called our lives. And that, my friend, is worth showing up for and it's worth protecting our mind. Get future focused and you'll free yourself up today. Last thing I want to leave you with. Peter Diamandis taught me this concept. You know, it's a big thinking thing that he talks about. You'll find you can Google and find, you know, psychologists talk about this concept and it's this, you know, negative thing about called strategic ignorance. And the way Peter framed it though is I want to be ignorant about certain things. What does that mean? I don't need to know everything that the news is doing. I don't need to know every statistic of the negativity. I want to pay attention. I want to know what things affect me, how I can create positive change and influence, but I don't need to know every single thing about every single thing. I need to know what's important, what matters. Joe Calloway, a friend of mine a long time ago, wrote a book called Be the Best at what Matters Most. Very, Very Important. That's what we're here to talk about. Protect that mind, my friend. It is truly your greatest asset. Like what we're doing, as I mentioned before, please make sure you rate us, review us. Go to kennychapman.com group please get involved in our leadership community there on Facebook. Would love to have you in there. Kennychapman.com group make sure you rate us, review us, Give us a like. Make sure you're subscribed to the channel so we can stay in touch and continue to grow together. I'm Kenny Chapman, your host of Leadership in a Nutshell. We'll talk to you very soon.