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You're watching Mike and Sam. We're gonna dive right into this. Sam, worry, man, a lot of us are worrying, right? And for legit reasons. But what does worry do to the business environment, to the workplace? How does that affect it?

Oh my gosh, worrying is like throwing on the brakes. It's like throwing the anchor out. It's a ball and a chain. It stops you in your tracks. It, it totally eliminates achieving and accomplishing and moving forward. Worry just bogs you down.

Yeah. And I know for me, when I start to worry, it's the unknown, of course, right? We don't worry about the known because that's been answered, whether good or bad. It's the unknown. And when that gets into my head, and I know a lot of people are like me in this way, I can go down a rabbit hole that goes deep and far. And all in that, it creates more worrying and more worrying. And suddenly I'm diving in all these places. I don't know about you, maybe the people viewing right now that are watching right now, if you do that too, leave us a comment below. Tell us if you do that. Once you worry, you tend to go down all these different possibilities and it gets more worrying upon more worrying. You just do that by leaving a comment below. Are you— do you find the same thing?

So, what happens, Mike, that worry, when you're going down that rabbit hole, it just pulls you in a total opposite direction from where you're trying to go and where you want to go. And so, I see Charles is saying hello and I'm glad Charles is on today. Here's the thing that I've discovered: the stuff that we worry about the most is the stuff we cannot control. And so, and and and so the point is we can't control it. And so, getting wrapped up in worry is literally a waste of time. I've always said you have to eliminate or discern what you can't control and what you can control. And the most effective people I know, Mike, are always those people that stay focused on what they can control. When you focus on what you cannot control, you make excuses, you have worry. When you focus on what you can control, you make decisions, you make choices, and you move forward.

Yeah, let's, let's pause there, Sam, because I think that's a really important part. When we look at what people experience in the workplace and in their companies, their number one worry is other people usually. Who's doing what? Who's not doing what? It's by far the number one worry. It's a bigger worry than revenue. It's a bigger worry than— it's what Johnny's doing over there. And because we all want control and we can't control Johnny, we worry, right? So how do you help somebody with that?

Well, so here's the thing. When it comes to control, there's 4 areas. There's the things we can control, the things we cannot control, the things we try to control and the things that are out of control.

Mm-hmm.

And the number one thing that we try to control are people. We try to manipulate them. We try to get them to do something that's to our advantage. We try— we have to turn our focus from that. It's stop trying to manipulate people, control people, direct people. That is— that's just gonna hold us back. We have to make a decision. We're not gonna control anybody. All we can truly control is ourself, and we control ourself through the thoughts that we have.

Yeah, and it's so important. I think one of the things we have to realize is trust that we've given this person what they need. Because if our worry is that they're gonna make the wrong choices, that usually is actually a worry of our performance, that we failed at leading or managing that person, and now we're doubting them instead of saying, wait, What could I give them with this project? How could I support them with this project? Not in a way that's stepping in, controlling, directing where it goes, because people hate that. But what could I do right now that I'm worried I didn't do? And that's why I think they might struggle. What could I give them to support them?

You know, I see Ricky Kalman joined us, and Ricky is, is, is really amazing because his message is all about personal empowerment and controlling your thoughts and using that to control direction that you go into. And I think that's what you're talking about, Mike. It's It's really, it connects to mindfulness. It's about in that moment being able to discern which direction we're going. We're faced with these critical choice points, as I call them, all the time during the day. And we either choose to go to the left or we choose to go to the right. Someone cuts you off, you either choose to honk your horn, choose to ignore them, choose whatever it is.

You're leaking a little personal in there. I'm just saying.

But that's a moment that's a choice point. And so when, when we are making decisions, it's because of a choice point. We need to recognize when we have a choice point. And in this situation, we have a choice of whether or not to try and focus on other people, manipulate them, try and direct them, or focus, turn our— choose to focus back on ourselves. What's our purpose? What's our, what's our mission? What are we trying to accomplish? And then what's the most pressing issue that I need to be focused on right now? Because that's the only true control that we have in our lives.

Yeah, and I think that's what's really important. Where do I need to have my energy focused? And I think sometimes even take away the word need and replace it with choose because need can add more work. Where do I need my time to be? Where do I need it? Versus what am I going to choose to do in this moment? How am I going to choose to use my time? Where am I going to choose to put my focus? Because that's something I own then versus feeling there's a demand coming from above me, from either management, it could be the board of directors, it could be anything related to that, but where I choose.

Well, here's again, a lot of times I've talked about this, you know, it comes back to our values. Are we living our values or are we letting other people around us direct us based on a a different set of values, a different agenda, a different purpose. And we really have to be able to ascertain, are we, are we, are we on purpose? Are we on mission? Are we living our values? Are we making decisions that connect to those important areas in our life? And when we are, we're probably going to be making some pretty good decisions. We're probably going to be moving forward. Not every decision is great. Not everything works out the way we want it to work out. But we have a lot better opportunity or chance when we are on purpose, on mission, on values. When we allow the loud voice in the room to enter our life and redirect us, that's when we're going to get in trouble.

And to be compassionate to ourselves, to allow ourselves to know, yeah, this might not go perfect and that's okay. Part of the problem with worry is it expects perfection, right? Worry feeds off failure. And so if you're getting in your head that this has to go perfect, worry is going to soar. It's just going to take off, right?

And so—

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So we've got to say to ourselves, hey, I put forth my best. This might not go the greatest. Let's see. Let's find out. But have a curiosity versus an expectation of excellence. of perfection. Like, excellence is awesome, but perfection is dangerous and unhealthy.

Well, exactly. But I want to take that one step further, Mike. If we're going to have compassion for ourselves as leaders, we need to have compassion for the people around us. We need to take that expectation off of their shoulders. We need to reduce their worry. And when we do that, then we're positioning them for success. So yes, do we need to have compassion for ourselves? Absolutely. As leaders, the most important compassion we have is for our people. Making sure that we're taking the worry and stress off of them, letting them know we do not expect perfection, giving them the, the ability to mess up, to screw up and still move forward. Because when we allow them to do that, over time, they learn that we trust them. They will move faster and they'll get more done.

Yeah. And what's beautiful about that is they learn to trust themselves. Not only do they realize we trust them, but they believe way more in their own strengths. Their own gifts because they recognize, oh my gosh, I did really well at this. All right, and they start to feel good about their work because it doesn't demand your approval. Right? When somebody's like, oh, I never get the approval, that usually means you, the boss or the management, failed to create a setting where they could feel good about their own work. That it always needs that approval, and that again creates more worry. Right? So we want to free them. Right? And that's what you do. You trust to free, and that reduces worry. Dramatically.

Ultimately, the bottom line is eliminating worry ourselves, eliminating worry for people around us, being compassionate so that we recognize that we could be helping to generate worry where we need to be relieving worry. And when we pull that worry out, then what's going to happen is we're freeing ourselves up. We're freeing those up around us in our personal life. We're freeing those up around us in, in our organizations. And in that situation, Then we're all gonna be moving forward.

Love it. What a great way to wrap up today's episode. You can catch the Mike and Sam— that's us, the Mike and Sam Show— every day at 1 o'clock, or right here where you're watching. Uh, easiest way to go is YouTube, either youtube.com/samsilverstein or /centerforrespectforme, and you'll find us there. It's 10 minutes or less just for you. Have a great day, everyone.

Take care.