What stops us from being proactive or responsive to situations we encounter at work or in our lives.
Carrie Green says it could be one or a combination of fear of the unknown, logistic obstacles as in things we see in our path, and lack of motivation. “No matter the motivation, the decision first starts in our mind,” says Green. It is our self talk that stops us from doing things like volunteering when asked, for example:
This experiment isn't about the money. This experiment demonstrates the power of your mind. The fact that what is going on up in your head has such a huge impact on the actions that you take, on the decisions you make, and the things that you experience.
And it's not just in silly situation like this that people are missing out on opportunities. People are missing out on incredible opportunities all the time. Because of what is going on in their head. Because they are making bad decisions based on really bad frame of mind.
Those kinds of self-limiting thoughts like, “I can't do that,” “I'm not good enough,” “oh, I don't have the time or the money.” Or maybe it is that you thin, “I can't be bothered,” “I'll just do it tomorrow.” But then you never do it.
And so these wonderful ideas, these incredible potentials stay locked inside, and you never do anything with them.
Green has first hand knowledge of how that happens. She overcame her challenges in starting a business by learning the art of asking, and dedicating energy to researching and understanding how to run and improve the business. When she hit a brick wall and had to re-evaluate her priorities, she began to see how making different decisions was all in the mind.
In The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loher and Tony Schwartz say:
managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance and personal renewal.
The book's central thesis is that
to be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and spiritually aligned.
To make smart trade-offs we should start by defining our purpose, then distilling our truth, so we can identify the gap between the two. When it comes to learning to work with our energy, rest and recovery are an important aspects as sprinting and using all available personal resources. It's also important to be deliberate about the choices we make.
What we focus on, where we put our energy is what we feed -- if we spend our time obsessing over the problem part, we miss seeing the opportunities that come with the solution.
Watch the video of the talk.