NLP Weekly: Joy, Answering the Call, Heart & Mind of a Seal

NLP Weekly: Making your leadership & performance second nature. 

Performance: Bring the Joy and DGAF.

Our lives are short. Hilariously short. If we live for 4,000 weeks, we live to be 80. I want to enjoy the weeks, the days, the minutes.

Yesterday when picking up my daughter from pre-school we were invited to go watch the "big kids" show off their Halloween costumes in the gym. Naturally the costume parade didn't begin on time. The walls of the gym were lined with parents and younger siblings waiting.

A couple of toddlers were running in short bursts into the empty space.

"Dada, I want to run." 

"Okay. You can go run."

"No. I want to run with you."

"Awesome. But can you catch me?!?!" as I run off into the middle of the gym wearing cat ears being chased by a 3 year old in a white cat costume.

We ran, jumped, hopped, giggled and laughed all around the gym until it was time for the "big kids" to come in. It would have been very easy for me to say we needed to wait. I could have cared what other people would about being silly. But why?

Why diminish joy? Why not have 8 minutes of fun? 

Who (or what) can you bring a little more joy to today?

Leadership: Answering the Call.

Leadership is the practice of inspiring others to dream more, learn more, do more and become. For those few who are willing to answer the call to leadership, and I mean truly answer it, your responsibility is to teach people they can do more than they think they can.

Your willingness to answer the call is to build belief within someone else. It is to invite them into greatness. It is to remind them how they have done something amazing in one area of their life while teaching them to apply those same skills in another area.

Connecting these dots for people, how something perceived as small and unrelated creates courage, ability and a new standard in another area is some of the most meaningful work you can do.

Ask them:

• What is the most challenging thing your biggest fans else would say you've done?
• What did you do to overcome that challenge? What skills and / or mindset did you engage?
• Where else in your life would it be meaningful to apply those same skills and mindset?

Now cheer them on. Relentlessly.

Nature: Have the heart of a seal.

Before a seal dives underwater, before it goes in search of food or safety, before it does anything voluntarily underwater, it drops it's heart rate. Some seal species will drop their heart rate from 80 - 125 beats per minute at the water's surface to as low as 3 beats per minute.

Seals consciously drop their heart rate before critical, intentional moments of performance and execution in their daily lives.

As humans, often we wait until after our hearts are racing, we wait until we are in the middle of situation, we wait until something external reminds us that we need to slow ourselves down.

This happens even though we know and have the awareness in advance of numerous situations and conversations that would be well served to be more conscious about how we want to show up.

A couple tips:

1. 2 minute "Release" meditation: before the moment of performance, before the conversation, before the moment of intentional effort, pause. Slowly say the word "release" over and over for two minutes.
2. Write an intention for how you want to "be" and how you want to feel. The intention should not be about the result of the performance or situation. It is an exercise in "being" not "doing". By subscribing to my weekly Nature of Leadership & Performance newsletter you will receive my "Setting a Personal Intention" worksheet that will walk you through how to set an intention.

Laugh. Lead. Breathe.

be awesome today,

-Graham