Do Your Job - All of It
Showing Up Consistently in Life & Career
Image by Vitaly Garlev from Unsplash
Whatever your title or tasks, it is to your advantage to think like a CEO.
Why?
Because the truth is, we are all Leaders and Executives of one (ourselves), and often of far more people and processes than that. You are the CEO of the brand, life and enterprise that is you. Thinking like a CEO in life and career is about taking the reins and the Driver’s seat. It’s about your responsibility for your mindset and attitude, your thoughts, words and actions, and making your health and peace part of your day and the way you operate.
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Doing our entire job very much includes ongoing stewardship of our personal health and fulfillment. This means high-level habits are not confined to the workday. Disciplined use of time and ongoing investment in health, creative endeavor, learning, rest and play are what allows CEO’s of every variety to stay sharp and sustain performance for the long haul. Deliberate action, boundaries, and ongoing investment in fitness, self and rejuvenation are the ticket that allow CEOs to sustain performance and enjoy the ride.
In today’s world, our mental, physical and emotional wellness offers critical success metrics, whatever the detail of our job, title or situation. What does this mean for our day-to-day? It means if you’re not recharging, creating, and investing in YOU, your decision-making, composure, Executive presence, relationships, career and home life will suffer as you spin your wheels, swing between overwhelm and underwhelm, and push yourself possibly to exhaustion.
So regardless of title or tasks, do you job - all of it - by operating like the CEO of you that you are. Make fitness, creativity, and margin part of your work and work day, and turn to Self-Awareness, Elite Athlete Dialogue, and Intentional Time & Life Design to make it happen.
Own, Protect and Run Your Show
Photo from Getty Images via Unsplash+
This is not dress rehearsal. This is life — YOUR life, your workout, your career, your mission, your story, and this day, this hour, won’t come your way again. Success is about doing what matters most with purpose and clarity. If you don’t design and actively lead your life someone else absolutely will, so be intentional with your time, your focus, with who you are and how you are in the world. To begin, start here:
Schedule and attend to your personal non-negotiables, then to commitments to others.
Develop morning and wind-down routines that help you be who and how you seek to be.
Build margin into your days and weeks.
Schedule adventure large and small that pull you forward and mean something to you.
Be judicious and deliberate with commitments, then do what you say you’ll do.
Again, deliberate action, boundaries, and ongoing investment in health, learning, and rejuvenation are what allow CEOs to sustain performance and enjoy the ride. Ongoing care of our personal health and boundaries is critical our fast-moving world. What to do specifically:
Become Real-Deal Self-Aware: Self-awareness is a strategic asset that sharpens our leadership instincts and improves our decision-making as it strengthens enjoyment, purpose and resilience. Self-aware people are curious about their minds and emotions and how both work. They think about their thoughts and default thinking patterns. Being aware that you’re thinking and being able to assess the quality, accuracy and usefulness of that thinking (meta-cognition) is a game-changing powertool for leading self and others.
Use Elite Athlete Inner Dialogue: To lead your life and career from the Driver’s Seat, you really must master and direct your own inner chatter - the ongoing stream of thought and conversation in your mind. Our inner dialogue either pulls us forward or pushes us back - it either fuels or erodes us. Top athletes know this, and they know that self-talk is a make-or-break tool and great performance enhancer. Before an event starts, they’ve already won it in their minds. Don’t self-sabotage with all-or-nothing thinking, perfectionism (which is really just procrastination in disguise) or destructive chatter that bubbles up at the smallest misstep. Coach rather than criticize yourself by taking the view from the balcony, reframing, and using self-talk to dial in the positive mindset and ways of being that build you up and build grit.
Be Investment-Minded with your Time & Energy: CEOs who effectively do the ehtire job of leading themselves think of their time, health, and energy in terms of investment, stewardship and design by asking:
What’s meaningful? What’s working?
What’s paying off?
What’s draining?
What no longer serves or never did?
The fact is, when it come to some things you should be less casual.
About some things, you must be deliberate.
Time is the one asset we can’t replenish. Time isn’t something you find, and nobody simply has time - they MAKE TIME for what’s important. Taking action is the only way you’ll ever get to the people, relationships, goals, dreams, causes, and experiences that mean something to you, so focus, make time, and ACT - Take Action!
Being intentional with time and focus means owning your schedule instead of allowing it own you. How do we act as the owner of our schedules?
Prioritize, show up and attend to what actually matters
Schedule and prioritize your health, relationships, delight, and personal growth—before filling your calendar with obligations and other peoples’ agendas.
Design your mindset, routines and environment
Create space for yourself that brings peace and energizes. Declutter. Delegate.
Streamline and Lighten up.
Protect margin, putter and thinking time
Create margin by saying NO to invitations, people, pings and distractions that don’t align with or contribute to your positive long-term vision, health or flourishing.
Success and leading are about doing your job — your entire job (the professional and the personal) by showing up artfully, credibly, and consistently with health and pull intact via intentional habits, your attitude, ways of being and use of time.
Own, protect and run your show friends as you do your job - all of it. Let’s go.