Glenn Mattson
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Glenn Mattson
Hey everybody. Glenn Mattson here with Building Blocks of Success. One of the things I want to share with you this session is really taking a look at how many of us are falling prey to having these little vampires around us consistently and constantly.
Glenn Mattson
What I mean by that is, I can't even tell you how many conversations I've had with my clients this year, about waking up in the middle of the night, not having the capacity to go to bed. I mean, you realize that we've trained well over 250,000 people, 15,000 entrepreneurs. We have lots of people here. We do a lot of executive development, entrepreneurial development, organizational development, leadership, management, etc. One of the sweet spots that we have is having the ability to coach founders, having the ability to coach and help them with their blind spots with entrepreneurs.
Glenn Mattson
It's interesting that new people in the business will have guilt about what they should have done during the day. It's interesting, you take people that are earning the kind of income where, what many people may earn an entire year, they pay in a year in taxes. With their success, you would think that they may sleep like babies at night, yet they still have guilt, they still have worry. It may not be around money. Maybe it's not around a sales call. Maybe it's not around people or strategy. But when we sit there and we have these conversations about really where we are and what we're doing, we’ve got to have the capacity to look back and think back and ask ourselves, are these thoughts that we're having helping us?
Glenn Mattson
Look, we have natural feelings. One natural feeling is sadness. Sadness is when you look over your shoulder and you look at something that happened in the past and you wish you could have done something different or better. That creates sadness. But when sadness turns into something different, if you want to be stoic about how to look at a sales call, stoicism, or looking at it from a purely adult standpoint saying, “Hey, what could I have done better? What should I have said? I didn't do this. How come I didn't say that?” You do analytics of it, that's actually how you can debrief yourself and figure out how to be better.
Glenn Mattson
That's not what I'm talking about right now. I'm talking about when those questions, the intent of those questions, change dramatically. The tone of your self-talk changes dramatically. What happens is, when you start thinking about things you could have done or should have done, you feel bad, and you start having these feelings in the back of your brain. But feeling bad's not an issue. If something doesn’t happen the way you wanted to, it's okay to feel bad, but you’ve got to ask yourself, what could you have done differently? What happened, so you could have been better? See, when we look at these self-talks that we have, self-talk is either going to help us or hurt us. So, when you're looking at your own self-talk, please, these are two things to ask yourself when you're talking to yourself. What's the intent? Is the intent to have a lesson or is the intent to beat you up? Anything that happens in the past, it's experience. Experience has already happened. You can't do anything about it. The only thing you do is learn from it and let it go. But when you take the past and you put it into the present, what starts to happen is it gets to be immobilizing.
Glenn Mattson
See, when we look at past feelings, we really have the ability, again, you can say, “You should have done this, you could have done this, why didn't you do that?” Those are okay. I got all that. It's the intent of why you're saying that is the problem. If the intent is learned, then when you learn your lessons, you're going to let it go. That's called experience. But when you start feeling about those things, shoulda, coulda, woulda, but your intent is to be negative, if your intent is to be malice, then what happens is, when you relive that episode, that sales call, the conversation that you had, whatever it may have been, when you relive it, and you say, I shoulda, coulda, woulda, but your intent is to be almost mean to yourself, to beat yourself up a little bit, that's when immobilization happens. That's when it's three o'clock in the afternoon and you're sitting at your desk just because you got that email from a client you thought was done. You thought you sold them. You thought it was all over. You were out there, spending your commission check for goodness sakes. Now, here you are, having an email that says, “Oh, by the way, we thought about it, we're going to go in a different direction. No reason to reach out.” You stare at your desk, “What, where'd that come from?” You get emotionally involved and all of a sudden, the shoulda, coulda, woulda, is with you for the nighttime, all that night, waking up tomorrow, and the next day, and it goes on and on and on.
Glenn Mattson
So, when you ask yourself questions about the past, and those questions immobilize you, that's called guilt. Guilt means you cannot learn a lesson from it, because when you learn a lesson, you can let it go. When you don't let it go, you keep reliving it over and over and over again. That's immobilization. So just make it super easy for yourselves right now. When you're doing self-talk, please, in the back of your brain, just ask yourself, and it's super easy man, “Am I trying to beat myself up or am I trying to help myself?” If you're trying to help yourself, look for your lesson and let it go. If you're trying to beat yourself up, how come? It’s not going to do you any good. See, when you feel like, hey, this is what's happening, I should have done this, I could have done this, well, if you don't learn from it, you can't let it go, and you can't have experience. So, the immobilization is, you would literally say over and over and over again, and by the way, part of your brain is convincing yourself it's okay to beat yourself up.
So, when we don't learn from the past and we relive it over and over and over again, that's part of your brain saying, “Ooh, you should feel guilty if you cared.” Oh, give me a break. Of course you care, but you’ve got to learn from it and let it go so you don't make the mistake again.
Glenn Mattson
So, when you're sitting back there, you’ve got to make sure you have the capacity to separate immobilization from a lesson. You always ask yourself every sales call, always ask yourself every staff meeting, always ask yourself every day as you go home, what could I have done better today? There's nothing wrong with that. Whenever you get the answer, you’ve got to let it go because you can't relive it. That's kind of crazy because it's already happened. You can't do anything about it, it's the past, yet, we still relive it.
Glenn Mattson
What about the other side of the fence? What about those, and by the way, I grew up in a household where guilt was an amazing controlling technique, “Don't you feel guilty? You made us worry so much!” Right? It's a great way to keep you in line. It's a great way to say, hey, this is what you should be doing or not doing. So, it's like a little parental thing in the back of your head. But the problem is, it becomes a critical parent. The critical parent takes out the bat, takes out the whip, takes out the foam finger. That's not going to give you experience and, or lessons.
Glenn Mattson
Let's talk about the other side of the fence. By the way, again, I want to make sure everyone understands, economic situations have nothing to do with this. I have clients that have 19 billion in assets. I have clients that have only a million in assets, right? But these individuals all have the same feelings. We have to learn how to not let the past situations that didn't go the way we wanted create guilt. You’ve got to learn from it and let it go. Now what about the other side of the fence where guilt has already happened, guys, it's already happened. It's already done people. There's nothing you can do about it. But what about the future? Now what's in front of you is anxiety. That's a natural feeling that's a good thing. I want you to have anxiety. You never should walk around the office, you know, like an orangutan with your arms up in the air, flailing around saying, “I’m feeling anxious.” That’s ridiculous. Anxiety is a good thing. All it means is your Spidey senses are saying something isn’t right in the cookie jar. That's what it's telling you.
Glenn Mattson
The question is what do you do with it? So, when you start having this anxiety, there are only two things that you can do. Either that anxiety motivates you or that anxiety immobilizes you. So, when we look at anxiety, that can turn into worry or fear. So, fear about what's going to happen, worry about what's going to happen, it hasn't even happened yet, and you're starting to make some assumptions of what could happen. I'm worried about this, I'm worried about that. Now, the average person would say, “Well, I'm worried about that.” So therefore, they would put a plan together to solve it. That's called motivation.
Glenn Mattson
Other people, when they see something happening and they get worried, they get immobilized, which means they don't do a darn thing to change what's happening. Then it actually occurs, like watching a car accident in the middle of the street, right? When there's an icy road and you start seeing someone slam on their brakes, and you go, “Oh boy, that's not a good idea.” You just start seeing them slide. Next thing you know, they do the 360 and everything's in slow motion as you're waiting for the car crash to happen. Well, being worried and getting immobilized is the same darn thing. You know what's going to happen, you're worried about the outcome, but you don't do anything in the present moment to change it. So why would you be shocked when what you are worried about happens?
Glenn Mattson
And don't you fall into a darn I-ism. An I-ism is a fancy term for when you have a self-limiting belief, you don't do anything in the present moment to change it. So, what it does is, it reinforces your negative belief. For instance, my daughter says, “Dad, I'm not good at Spanish.” So, she has a test coming up. One would hope that she would study more, but no. Because I'm not good in Spanish. She doesn't study as much as maybe she should because she's not good in Spanish. So, when it's time to take the task, guess what the results come out as? Not great. Then what does she say to me? “Dad, I told you I wasn't good at Spanish.” Don't do that. I'm not good at prospecting, and all of a sudden you don't do great at prospecting. You then turn around and say, “See, I told you I wasn't great at prospecting.” That's an I-ism.
Glenn Mattson
When you worry, it's okay. Worrying is normal. It's what you do with worry, that's the issue. It's what you do with fear, that's the issue. So, when you do have fear and anxiety, ask yourself, do I have a plan? Plans will help you take action. Action always breaks, paralysis. So, with guilt, what's my lesson? With worry, what’s my plan? With guilt, learn and let it go. With worry, plan and take action. Always remember, you have the ability to control what you think. Do not be a prisoner to your own mind and in your own scripts. Those scripts came from you. Those scripts can be changed by you. Those scripts can be upgraded by you. How many of us, when we were first born, it was told us, “Don't talk to strangers”? Well, that makes sense when you're four and six and eight, but when you turn 25, 27, 50, and you're in sales and you have to go to networking meetings and other things, that's the worst advice you'd ever hear in your entire life. Don't talk to strangers. Everybody's a stranger. So, some of these scripts we have to have, must be upgraded.
Glenn Mattson
So, each night, I want to share a little tip with you that's very impactful and does a lot of change for my coaching clients. We do something called imprinting. Imprinting: what it basically means is, the last five minutes before you go to bed, you will imprint what you think about when you sleep. Unfortunately, most of us, in the last five minutes in bed, before we go to sleep, will debrief what we did, or we will start to plan what we have to do tomorrow. We do the old pre-brief and debrief. So, as we start to do that through our brain, then all of a sudden we turn around and we go to sleep, that's what's sticking in our head.
Glenn Mattson
So, here's what I prefer for you to do. Please do it for a week. Just try it for a week. Put a pad right next to your bed, and here are the six things I want you to ask yourself. First thing, it starts with this order. First thing I want you to ask yourself is, before you go to bed, sit in bed, sit up straight, ask yourself, “Man, what did I do well today?” And take stock. Now, don't beat yourself up. What did you do well today? Now, listen, let's hypothetically say that you have to make cold calls, and you're awful at making a cold call, hypothetically, but you did well on the opening. Now you hit your 32nd commercial and went hell into a hand basket, but you did well in your opening. You have to give yourself gratitude for what you did well during the day.
Glenn Mattson
Second one, what can I do better tomorrow than what I did today? Second question is, what can I be better at tomorrow than I did today? Third question. What do I need to do differently tomorrow than I did today? What do I need to do differently? Fourth. What do I have to do more of than I did today? What do I have to do more of? Five. What do I have to start doing that I haven't been doing? What do I have to start doing that I haven't been doing? And then last is, what do I have to stop doing that I have been doing? So, again, here are the six. It's well, better, different, more, start, stop. Every night, 1, 2, 3 bullets, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Think about it. Put the piece of paper down right on your nightstand and go to bed. You find yourself waking up in the middle of the night and you have anxiety about things you have to get done, flip that piece of paper over, write down what you have to do and tell yourself I will do it in the morning. Now, shut up and go back to bed.
Glenn Mattson
Your brain is only speaking to you because you allow it to happen. You are listening. So, the first phase is stop listening, and then that will help you eventually turn off the self-talk. So, as you move forward, try to keep your mind where your feet are. If you look behind you, it's only for lessons. If you look forward, it's only for planning and taking action. Don't get stuck and be handcuffed because of your futile emotional states.
Glenn Mattson
I hope this has helped you deal with some of the bigger issues that I have been noticing with a lot of clients during one-on-ones in many different areas of guilt and worry in many different facets. Having the ability to free yourself from those areas will impact your decision making, your relationships, and your ability to find peace.
We'll talk to you soon on the Building Blocks of Success.
Glenn Mattson
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
