Team-
Good morning from, Kona.
These thoughts today did not come easy. I’ve been thinking about my Sunday thoughts. Why I write them? How they appear to others? Although I’m not looking for responses, I’ve had many, and they’re very nice and complementary. Some of them would suggest the people reading them think I really have my stuff together. Reality is, these Sunday thoughts are more for me then anyone else. The guy writing them, is the guy I want to be, but they’re being written to the guy I actually am, usually after doing something I should have done differently. If I write about being a better boss, its typically because I failed at it the week before, if I write about being more consistent, its typically because I wasn’t the week before. Good news for me, and for anyone reading this and caring, is we’re all broken, and in many ways, the question is what do we all do about it to get less broken. For me, these Sunday thoughts help me get less broken by recognizing my shortcomings, writing about them, and then hopefully doing something to try to get less broken in the future. Hopefully that makes sense.
I had a mental breakdown on Wednesday. Never happened to me before and as I type this, I can’t actually believe I’m sharing it with you all. Driving in my car, and just broke down, started crying. It’s one thing to cry after something horrible has happened, or a commercial/movie got you the right way, it’s a another thing to start crying (especially as a guy) and having no idea what is happening. I told Kim about it, and we both chalked it down to stress, and lack of sleep (neither one of us are doctorsJ). I had 160 leads in January, I’ve had 35 so far in February (sounds good so far, right), my team captain is on a 30 day vacation, my LP 1 is taking a 12 week leave of absence, and I’m in Hawaii celebrating our presidents club trip. To say the we are having bandwidth issues is a small understatement, but how bad is it? Should I be grateful or scared? I told Roy about this whole thing, his response was “Hunter, I’ll pray you get less business and less leads, how about that”……The idea of it made me laugh. I was talking to Todd Scrima about it on Friday and we discussed the “love vs. fear” categories…which is a game/project we should all go through. How do we get things out of the fear box, and into the love box. Simple example: Cold calling: fear box-“this person wont want to talk to me”, love box “if I make this call, I might start a new and great relationship”. Fear box: “I can’t have this conversation with Brandon or he will quit”, love box “if I have this conversation with Brandon he’s going to know exactly what my expectations are of him”.
Real life for me: Fear box “Team Captain is gone for 30 days, and LP 1 is taking a 12 week leave of absence, my world might fall apart”, Love box “Team captain gets to spend the 30 days with her husband going on a trip of a life time and I helped her do it and My LP 1 needs to take time to figure some things out that will help her long term, and I’m grateful for everything she’s done to get our team this far. As important, the rest of my team are rock stars and have already stepped up beyond my wildest dreams to deliver to our clients, and to me”.
A few major take aways for me on this whole thing:
1. An occasional breakdown is a good thing if you learn from it.
2. Its selfish to not be grateful.
3. If my mindset is constantly about what will go wrong, and how chaotic my life is, I’m guaranteed to have things go wrong and live in chaos. If I choose to have the mindset of gratitude, I will think more clearly, and I will lead my team better, and we will work through our business.
4. If my mindset is of gratitude, I am guaranteed to be a better husband, father, and friend (#4 should really be #1).
Have a great week and thanks for readings.