Graymatter Sunday: 2023-12-03
Taking control of the wheel, deciding consciously, mastering change, and standing out.
Welcome to the Sunday edition of my newsletter - Ideas, mindsets, and technology to innovate your best self and unlock high performance. From mastering yourself to mastering a craft you love.
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🌟 I hope you find one nugget in this post to practice this coming week.
✍️ Share your comments at the bottom of this post.
Reflecting on the week of my personal experiences and spending time with coachees, I have summarized a few themes and resources to help you innovate your best self.
🚘 Taking Control of the Wheel and Letting Go to Unlock Your Full Potential
Our current and future selves often compete for control throughout a typical day. Imagine your future self behind the wheel, driving on a beautiful day toward your vision, when your current self (or past self) in the passenger seat leans over to grab the wheel to keep you from going in your new direction. A fight for control of the wheel ensues, and after a few exchanges of expletives, you end up off the road in a ditch. The trip to your next destination is temporarily derailed until you can repair yourself and get back on the road.
I have fallen into this trap because change is hard and sometimes you just want to travel down that comfortable road. But it’s often a road to nowhere or average at best. I also see this in coachees who desire a change in their job or performance when their current identity or inner critic's voice casts doubt on their dreams for a transformation. When this happens, you remain where you are today, with no progress toward your goal. The doubt creates uncertainty, and your progress is constrained.
One technique you can leverage is becoming more conscious to recognize the moment your current self takes control of the wheel. Your future self may talk to your current self, such as:
“You are more than welcome to take this drive, but I am the driver, and you are the passenger. You have logged many miles driving in the past to get us where we are today, and I truly appreciate that. Your eyesight is not as sharp as it once was, and I see things you don’t. We are going to a new destination you have never been to and I know the way to get there. Sit back and enjoy the ride, it’s going to be a trip for the ages.”
You may also create a physical cue as one coachee identified a solution of pinching themselves when the previous successful identity tries to take the wheel.
Here are a few other resources to help you create distance between your current and future self.
Fully embody your “created identity” and practice it through habits and rituals. Read more at: Know Your Identity and Future Self.
Transforming generally requires letting go and leaving some things behind to lighten the load to become the new you. For example, if your current self is not willing to be the passenger, you will need to pull over on the side of the road and kindly ask them to get out of the car! Or your trunk is full of baggage, slowing you down from reaching your destination in a timely manner. Read more at: Know What You Need to Leave Behind.
Create a safeguard through routines and rituals for your future self to decide automatically. Read more at: Decide Automatically.
Internal Family Systems is this idea that we have multiple distinct “parts.” Understanding your parts can bring a deeper understanding of who you are and compassion to the parts you may dislike or drive you to do things that conflict with your desired character. The primary goal is to become Self-led, where you emerge as the leader of your parts and leverage them to excel in your work, relationships, and life. Read more at: Introduction to Internal Family Systems.
⛰️ Stay behind the wheel and unload that luggage to accelerate your path up the mountain. Each day, you will log the miles toward your destination. Enjoy the journey!
🧠 Decide Consciously
Making good decisions throughout your career is the fundamental idea behind Strategy 7 - Decide Consciously in the Career Strategy Framework. I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember the decision-making 101 course throughout my many years of school.
How we make decisions dramatically influences our path, and that influences our outcomes, as explained by Shane Parrish in his new book, Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results.
This book is full of practical techniques for thinking clearly and making optimal decisions. It reinforces that sometimes we are in control, and other times we need safeguards to protect ourselves from ourselves. I highly recommend this book and will add my book notes to this site soon.
♻️ Embracing and Mastering Change
Change is the one thing we can count on, including things we can’t control and changes in ourselves. Those who know how to adapt and change survive. This is true for any species, including us humans. As I said, I don’t remember the “How to Change and Transform” course and must have missed that one during my schooling.
This week, I finished the book Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You by Brad Stulberg. I related to the core idea of allostasis, which describes a pattern of order, disorder, reorder - “we achieve stability through change.” This contrasts the conventional wisdom of homeostasis that describes a cycle of order, disorder, order for stability.
“Clinging to the illusion of permanence, hoping that we won’t be struck by change, that we’ll stay more or less the same, is misguided at best and leads to suffering at worst.” (page 4)
Some of my biggest challenges in life were not recognizing quickly enough that I needed to change and not knowing how to manage the change process to get to a state of reorder.
I recommend this book to anyone who wants to broaden their perspective on change and build muscle to adapt.
💥 Standing Out
I coach 100+ graduate students at a business school, and most focus on strengthening their resume and LinkedIn profile this time of year. Unlike the other students, one student’s topic this week was related to strategic direction and standing out. The student shared how a colleague applied to over 500+ job applications without a single response. The student reflected on their deep core interests, including what he did not like. The conversation continued while he talked about his target industry sector and why he saw himself focusing there. In short, it quickly became apparent that he had self-awareness of his strengths and weaknesses and that getting a job after graduation would depend on his creativity to express his individuality and not follow the crowd.
Most people follow the crowd with similar-looking LinkedIn profiles and resumes and fail to recognize the power of creating a unique brand to stand out. Landing an interview and job most often requires a human connection through a powerful network that can help you. Such as a person willing to advocate for you internally and open the door to have your resume reviewed by a human and grant you the interview floor.
A strategic job search must at least leverage:
knowing your best self to leverage your gifts, skills, and purpose.
a strategic lens to target a unique opportunity.
build a network of people in your target domain who can help.
sell your value and brand to stand out so potential hiring managers know your expertise.
In addition to the articles in this playbook, the Internet is full of resources to help you in these areas, and here are a few of my favorites books:
Dorie Clark's website for resources of articles, podcasts
👀 Thanks for reading, and I would love your help sharing my work with others!
📅 Book a complimentary coaching session if you seek a partner to help you through a transformation, strengthen performance in your current role, or reach an important goal.
I look forward to you sharing perspectives in the comments on what I missed in this post and your unique experiences that can help others.
- James