Cru’s Letter
A client of mine named TJ has been a consultant for about 15 years and currently works for a massive company doing somewhere around $1B in sales per year. He works with some of the biggest CEOs in the world, leads a team of 50, travels often, lives in a sweet apartment, he seems to have it all right?
We were chatting last week about business and life and I asked him, “If you had to sit in an empty room for an hour with no phone, nothing to read, nobody to talk to, what would that feel like?”
He started to explain how his mind would immediately spiral into anxiety. He’d worry about the work that needs to be done, all of the things that are going wrong, the pain of his own anxious tendencies… the list goes on.
I wasn’t surprised.
TJ has achieved so many amazing things and has done it by taking control of as many variables as possible. If more work needs to be done, he can rise to the occasion or lead someone else to step up to the plate. If a sacrifice is necessary to close a deal or have a conversation with the right person, he’ll do it. In the realm of forcing productivity, he’s the guy and that’s a very valuable person to be but the way you do one thing is the way you do most things and that can become a huge problem when force stops working.
Force can only take you so far and when it comes to things like relationships, big life changes, and mental health, it’s destructive.
When you force yourself to be positive, it builds resentment.
When you force someone to like you, they hate you.
This paradox is painful for most high-performers.
The only way out of the force mentality is to practice the art of “letting go” which to most successful people will sound like “be lazy and do nothing.”
What it really means is to still act out of incredible work ethic but adopt state of mind that has full trust in the self and the process.
Now the question is, how can you trust yourself if you don’t know yourself?
Well, you can’t.
In order to know yourself, you must spend that undistracted time with your own thoughts. No music or podcast to drown it out, no work to get done, just you and your thoughts.
Now, maybe you’re like TJ and the thought of doing nothing is pretty scary. That right there is your window of opportunity.
Every night, when you eat dinner, your phone should be out of reach, your TV should be off, there should be no tablet or laptop in sight, and you should practice existing in the present moment with yourself or of course those you typically eat with.
Your tendency will be to reach for something to distract yourself with and you need to push back.
The more you are exposed to a certain stressor, the less threatening it becomes and the weight of your own mind is no different. If you are going to be on a great team with yourself, you need to know your teammate better than anyone else.
No phone dinner is a simple practice that has been so beneficial for me and I know it will change your life too.
-Cru
P.S. If you’re anything like TJ and you need extra guidance in turning your mind into your biggest asset, I’d be more than happy to help.
Click here to learn more about my 1:1 mentorship program.
