Becoming the CEO of your inner world

Getting caught up in our inner worlds of worst-case scenario planning leads to a profound sense of attention deficit in business life. In this gap we lose access to vital information in our environment. Whilst we are busy noodling the future picture, we are closed off to cues on alternative ways forward from our present moment experience. 

Grounded leaders and managers are more present, attentive, and connected. Exuding a sense of calm that people can feel when they are around you. Producing that trickle-down effect on productivity. A recent McKinsey Institute study supports the case of improved self-management. Showing that leader’s development of self-regulation increases followers’ ratings of their effectiveness and is associated with higher team financial performance. 

There has been an over reliance on cognitive analysis in business training. Yet as often happens in our business lives, relying only on our cognitive processes, only leads us to know what we already know. 

You have greater access to the consistently hard data of your own intuitive perception when you settle down in your body and your mind to access it.

In a heightened state of vigilance or anxiety our field of vision narrows and our ability to generate creative solutions or imagine new possibilities diminishes at astonishing levels.

How to become the CEO of our own inner worlds and improve our own self-management.

• Ask yourself as often as you can: are my feet and my head in the same room?
  How present am I to my surroundings in this moment?
• Look for somatic signals in your body to alert you to your state of mind, e.g tension in your shoulders, back etc.
• Name your state of mind and recognise that the powerful filters in our brain dictate how we perceive reality.
  We see things not as they are but as we are.
• Down-regulate your nervous system
  – By going for a walk/run, taking a few deep breaths (breathing in for 4 and out for 6 – the long exhale is where the magic happens) to get your body back to homeostasis.
  – The most potent nutrient to getting back to performance is social connection. Look for cues of safety, talk with a colleague, connect with a friend.
• Ask yourself, what is {client, customer, colleague} seeing that I cannot see, yet?
• Get present, get curious, let go of what you think you know to get access to new information. 
• Trust that no situation stays the same, underneath the surface chop of our habitual thinking, new perspectives are always bubbling up.
• The absence of anxious thinking gives way to vitality and alertness and aliveness that inspires those around you
• The threat of ‘lack’ is not a motivating force. See the Daniel Pink’s book Drive for more on this. The pursuit of autonomy, mastery and purpose are our motivators. Consider re-writing your end of year goals with this in mind.
• Remember a time when you were truly at your best. Did it feel like a fight? Or did it feel effortless and enjoyable?
  – Imagine what you can achieve in life when you are not experiencing it in the field of threat or scarcity?
• Focus on things that you can control, it’s where productivity lives.