Mastering Self-Management to Level Up Your Leadership

Have you ever been tired, frustrated, or annoyed before? And that tiredness, that frustration, that annoyance caused you to react to the people or the person or the situation in a way that you actually didn't want, and then the end result was not what you actually wanted to have happen because of you being tired, frustrated, or annoyed? If so, I have a strategy to help you to fix yourself when you're tired, when you're frustrated or annoyed, to manage your own state. To show you what I mean, let's jump into this video. Many years ago, I was driving to school and I stopped at a red light and I got a text message while I was at the red light from a friend that their mom had just unexpectedly passed away. Horrible news. And so then I was reading this news, trying to craft a response, when I saw the red light switch to green. Completely missed it because I was absorbed in my text message. The guy behind me did not miss it. He saw the red light switch to green, gave me the little tap. I didn't hear it right away. Gave me a more of a tap. Didn't quite hear it right away. Then he just laid on the horn. I heard that and I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry. And so I started to drive on a little bit more, but he wasn't done. He had a few more words he wanted to say to me. So he pulls up next to me and I'm thinking, oh, this is a chance for me to explain what happened. And then he'll understand and apologize for honking the horn. No, that's not what happened. He rolled down his window and threw profanity he could at me and gave me the middle finger and just went all out. I was kind of annoyed by this. I was like, you know what? Let's just let it go. Moving on. But he doesn't stop there. He drives on a little bit further, cuts in front of me, and then slams on the brake in front of me. So now I almost hit him in the road. So now I go from a good day to a sad day to an annoyed day to now I'm kind of angry. So then I turn over to the other lane, and now we both start switching, speeding faster and faster down this road. And of course there's a police officer. And the police officer sees both of us speeding, but he can only pull over one of us. And guess who he pulls over? This guy. And he pulls this guy over and he gets a speeding ticket on his way to school. Still gotta give you a speeding ticket. Now when I got to School. I was supposed to run this recruitment event for my student group where I was supposed to recruit new people and stand in front and get them excited. I was at that stage tired. I was frustrated, and I was annoyed. How many people do you think we recruited for that club? Zero. My state caused such a negative reaction that no one wanted to join it. There's a thing called emotional contagion where the person with the strongest emotions are going to influence everyone else in that room. And I showed up with such negativity that no one wanted to be around me. In fact, I caused them to be negative, too. That's frustrating because I wanted to recruit a bunch of people, but my state at that moment caused them to not participate. Now, I know some of you are like, what state are you talking about? The state of New Jersey? No, I'm not talking about the state of New Jersey. I'm talking about the internal state. There are three parts to your state. There are thoughts, your emotions, and your physiology. The thoughts, the things you're thinking inside your head, your emotions, things you feel inside your heart, and the physiology, the way your body's positioned at any given moment. These three parts make up your state. State at any given moment. Now, I used to have the hardest time saying these three parts until I started saying it with my best British accent. You know, something like this. False emotions, physiology. Stop. Stop right there. Okay. Not a good accent at all. But I locked it in, and I was like, why does this matter? Why do these three parts matter? And I kept reading about a little bit more, and I found out that your state equals your outcome, meaning what you're thinking, how you're feeling, how your body's positioned. So if you're thinking negative thoughts, if you just have, like, a huge emotional situation, you slouch down, your. Your stomach hurts, you have a leg cramp. All three parts make up your state at any given moment. Your thoughts, your emotions, and your physiology. Your state will equal your outcome in any situation. Now, here is the one trick that you may not know is that all three parts are interconnected. Like, try it out. Slouch all the way down in your chair and try to see if you can be excited. Close your eyes a little bit, slouch down, give a grumpy face, and see how excited you are at that moment. Because our thoughts, our emotions, our physiology are all interconnected. But here is the secret. If you change one part of your state, you can change all three parts of your state. The question is, however, which part of your state do you think Is the easiest to change at any given moment? Is it your thoughts? Maybe. Is it your emotions? Maybe you're getting closer. Physiology, yeah, physiology is the easiest part of your state to change at any given moment. Here, let me give you an example. If you have a test coming up and this test makes up 50% of your grade, but you did not study at all, how easy is it to be to forget that mentally, that's probably not going to be very easy. Or maybe you emotionally, you just broke up with someone, how easy is that to emotionally just let that go? My guess is it's probably going to be very difficult for you to let that guy I know some of you like, no, he's done good, ridden. But for most of you it's probably emotionally difficult to do. And then lastly, physiology, your physical body, how easy is that to change? Pretty easy. You can physically just stand up, sit down, move your arms, do jumping jacks, go outside, take a walk, take deep breaths in, and if you change one part of your state, you change all three parts of your state. So now going back to that day when I was tired, I was frustrated, I was annoyed and I held that recruitment event and zero people joined my organization. If I would have changed my state before I went in there, I would have had a better outcome. I should have done some physical movement, enjoyed the sunlight outside, take some, some deep breath, read some gratitude statements, something to get me to change my state so that when I went into that event, I was in a different place and I would have had a different outcome. Hopefully this helps you to have a better outcome next time you're tired, you're frustrated or you're annoyed. And if you like this video, I highly recommend you hit that subscribe button and subscribe to all of our videos because we keep giving you content like this. My name is Thom. I'm here to help you to engage the people on your dance floor. I'll say, see you in the next video.