Larry Weidel explains how to escape a slump by refocusing on what you want, cutting lower-value commitments, and tripling your effort temporarily. He uses the metaphor of a nosediving plane to show why urgency matters and walks through examples like weight loss and team training.
If you're like most of us, you occasionally run into a slump. And it's great to have at least a couple ideas of how to bust out of a slump. Because one thing about a slump, you can't stay in a slump long. You. You got to bust out of a slump. That means you're in a downward spiral. That means you're in a plane, and the plane is headed down into the earth. The thing is, growth takes a long time. Usually takes a. Growth is a long process. Death, falling apart, that comes quickly. So once you get into a negative slide, a slump, you got to turn that thing around. It might take a while to get that plane off the ground, you know, on the Runway, cranked up, get in position, take off, get that plane up in the air, go out there and let's say plane on a Runway, that thing goes down there, and it's okay, we're up and we're at certain elevation, and we're circling and we're climbing and we're circling and climbing. Now the seat belt light is still on. You know, you're getting up like this. Takes forever to climb. To get up to the top, you start your business, you start a new. Learn a new skill. You start to train an organization, you know, a football team, a basketball team, you know, teach somebody how to swim or something. It takes a while to get them to where they're functioning. But if it goes into to get on a winning streak, I'll give you another example. To lose weight takes a while, but to get some positive success. But once death comes, you get that plane up there, something goes wrong, Lose an engine, folks, you're going to go bam. The dirt is going to race up to your face. You can get down there in no time. It takes 100 years to grow a mighty oak chainsaw. You could bring it down in probably 10 minutes. It might take you a month to lose that precious 10, 15, 20 pounds in your diet. All of a sudden, some dessert comes along. You lose your momentum. The next day, two days later, it's all back. So the thing is, you want to break out of slumps. You want to bust. This is danger time. This is like you've got the red light, you know, the alarm going off. Like, you know, you're out in the car in the parking lot with the alarm going alert is like a baby crying. This is crisis time. We've got to stop what we're doing. We've got to get this thing solved. So what it's nice to have before you're in that chaos period of time, you got some ideas of what can you do. Well, let's not make it complicated because you got to grab and you've got to turn around. First of all, let me give you just three. Three things in abc. One thing, and again, I'm talking to myself too, at all these things. We have to coach ourselves before we can coach anybody else. We got to get refocus back on our goals. What do we on our goals, what do we want? See, I noticed when you get into a slump, you start focusing on the problems, you start focusing on the delays, you start focusing on the frustrations, you start getting sidetracked on little issues and you lose track of your big goal. And as a result, you lose track there of what you really want, of why you wanted it, why it was worth it, why it was so compelling. Now when you lose refi. When you refocus back on your goal, all of a sudden the light bulb comes back on is what you need to do next. Man, if I'm going to get to there, you know what and when, what you want, why you want it and when you want it. You want to get that thing in a hurry. So you got to re establish it and get back on track of controlling it, not let your mind drift. Slumps come because you let your mind drift under problems and delays. You know, you get mad about things that happen and people did to you. You did to yourself. You got to get back on what you want. You got to get back on your horse. Why, when? And then you got to get back on what's next. Well, if we're going to get this done, man, I want to get that done. I want to have it ready by this time. It's important to me because we do this and the deadline's coming fast. Now it immediately starts coming. We need to do this, this, this, this, this next. We got to get these things done. Clock is ticking, so you refocus on your goal. Second thing is what? Clear your stinking schedule of the garbage that has snuck in. Your schedule has gotten trashed up with unimportant schedule. Clear that schedule. Clean that thing up. Clear it, clean it, get it back ready. You've let yourself get sidetracked on unimportant people, unimportant projects, unimportant issues. They're important, but they're not the main thing. They're good, but they're not great. Remember, good is the enemy of the great. This is the great thing you want. These are the things that get you sleepless nights Delirious with joy. This stuff is just stuff. And what happens is your schedule starts filling up with stuff, people, things to do. You start hearing stories slow down, you start hearing about stories that you just bore you to tears. But you're not really doing anything, so you get wrapped up in it. Would you mind coming over here? How about helping us out here? You got to clean that schedule up, create time to where you can get back going on the things you need to do. Now what's the third thing? The third thing is you've got to not double triple activity. You know, let's just say you want to turn your health around. You want to get back in shape. Well, maybe you walk, you know, when you were in shape and you were moving forward, maybe your program was, I'm going to walk three days a week. Well, now you're going to have to do it every day in a couple days, twice a week. Maybe your day was, you know, your schedule. We went out and we walked a half hour every day. Well, now you're going to have to think about doing a half hour three times a day for a period of time to get back on track. You got lost time to make up. You got to move it up as a priority. See, if you do not triple your activity, all this garbage is going to leak back in. It's like in the Bible, they, you know, they. Jesus told the parable of the house with seven demons and you know, the people, you know, I don't know, disciples or what. The thing was, they went out there and they cast out the seven every. He was telling the perfect. It's not good enough to cast out the seven demons out of the house. You got to fill it with good spirits. You know, you got to seize that. You can't have a void. You got to clear your schedule. But then you got to pack that schedule with the good stuff over, pack it overdue so that these time wasted stuff can't sneak and elbow their way back into your schedule. You got a triple. It makes it a big priority. You send a big message to yourself that I'm serious about this. And when you're spinning, this will occupy your time, occupy your thinking, and it'll cause you to keep focused on this stuff. It's you taking charge. You won't triple your activity forever. But if you're in a nosedive, folks, you're in a plane like this and you're going down. You got to turn that thing around. You got a crisis on you. It's not like, okay, I want to stop going to the Earth. You know, I want to slow down that down. I can't go 100 miles an hour towards the Earth. I want to slow that down to 50. No, you want to turn your direction, you got to take charge. You got to assert yourself. And if you can't assert yourself now, you're going down. So that's why you want to triple your activity. You want to challenge yourself. You want to send a message to yourself. I'm serious about this thing. I'm not just talking. I'm going to do things and I'm going to triple the my normal activity. Those are three things that I focus on if I was going to bust out of a slump. And if you get more than that, you're probably not going to get out of a slump. You're going to spend all your time thinking about getting out of a slump, wishing you get out of slump as you continue to head towards Earth and total disaster. Those are three things. Take charge, turn it around now and get going in the right direction. That's how. That's my suggestion on how you bust out of a slump.
