The Power of a Positive State of Mind and the Impact of reflection
During my dad’s yearly visit to Asia, he always tells me that it gives him a lot of pain to see that I’m so negative most of the time. It was funny to me as I always thought I was pretty optimistic, in fact, I’d given HIM the advice to stop being so negative. He seems to have embraced it, I on the other hand thought I was in pretty good shapre even though I’ve gotten the same message from him for a decade.
When I really sit down and think about it (and I actually have many times), I’ve spent a lot of time complaining about work, service at a restaurant, girls that don’t understand me, blah blah blah…
I have spent most of my life thinking about what’s going on right now with a little bit of planning for what I want to happen tomorrow, but not a lot of time crystalizing my thoughts about what happened yesterday and how I’m going to make today better.
Lately I’ve gotten caught up in growing our business TINYpulse and starting the Entrepreneur Organization (EO) Chapter in Vietnam. I’ve also spent a little bit too much time leading an over the top social life. I’d like to think that my weight problems and poor health are just a temporary issue due to my focus on two great missions, but the reality is that it has been a roller coaster of a problem dating back to when I was 19 years old.
I used to play tennis at a high level, and teach it an an even higher one. So the science around nutrition and exercise isn’t new to me. As we have grown into a company of Agile practitioners, retrospectives were supposed to have become an important part of our DNA. I stress, supposed to have…
I’ve been told many times by smart people that I am admirably self aware. But GLA was a rude awakening to the gaps in my awareness.
At the end of the first day of the Global Leadership Academy (GLA), we were asked to do two things:
- Get together with a group of 6 of our peers and reflect on the day. This turned out to be a critical experience at the academy
- Start each morning with a 5:50am wake up call and do a 10/10/10 followed by a 45 minute work out. A 10/10/10 consists of:
- Write down your purpose for the day ahead
- Spend 10 minutes writing about things you are grateful for
- Read 10 minutes of positive literature
- Reflect and journal for 10 minutes.
Someone asked Warren for some guidelines around what to journal about and he said
“Think of it as a gift that you can pass down to your children one day. Years and years of knowledge, reflection and learning.”
Most of us were thinking a journal was a place to “vent” out our frustrations, but he looked at it as another way getting himself into a positive state of mind.
Would you want your children reading about how much you hate your co-worker each day, or how you were reflecting on your relationship with her and coming up with ways to make it better?
After 4 days of this best practice in Washington DC, on day 5 I found myself with no 5:50am wake up call and no pressing schedule following it. So I hit snooze on my alarm. Then I reset my alarm for 1 hour later. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I just laid in bed thinking about excuses to not get up and found more negative thoughts creeping into my mind. So I started to reflect back on GLA and all the powerful moments she shared with me. I thought of the leaders I went through 16 hour days with, my new friends, and the people who served us. I thought about how many times I shed a tear and felt unworthy. This overwhelming feeling of guilt flooded over me and I started hating myself for laying in that bed. Then I remembered something Warren said to us,
“Sometimes you just have to forgive yourself.”
And that’s what I did. I forgave myself for feeling lazy (for the past 30 years), I got up out of bed, I did my 10/10/10 followed by a workout. And my day felt great.
That simple act was a half step forward to a Positive State of Mind
