“After a storm comes a calm.” — Matthew Henry

Your Outcome: Quiet the buzz in your mind.  Achieve a “peaceful calm” state of mind that is relaxed, responsive, and ready.

Welcome to day 15 of 30 Days of Getting Results, a series of posts where I share with you a simple system for meaningful results from my book,Getting Results the Agile Way.  In day 14, we learned a key way to master time management by carving out time for what’s important.  Today, we learn how to quiet our mind and achieve a “peaceful calm”.  From this vantage point, you’ll see things with more clarity, you’ll feel “centered,” and you’ll think your best thoughts.  You’ll also find it easier to quiet your mental chatter, and just be in the moment.  You’ll direct your attention with skill.

A “Peaceful Calm” State of MindIf you aren’t sure what it’s like to feel a peaceful calm, the best way I can describe it is it’s like looking out over the Grand Canyon for the first time.  Your mind just takes it all in.  There are no worries about the past, the present, or the future.  Your mind is fully absorbed in the moment.

For that brief moment, your mind is captivated by the experience.  Your mind is empty, but fully alert, fully aware, and not distracted by any mental chatter or any of your head movies.  Instead of replaying scenes in your mind, you are the movie.

Relaxed, Ready, and ResourcefulWhile the world might be a jungle, fight-or-flight mode can limit our best thinking.  To think our best thoughts or create our best ideas, or solve our problems in the most resourceful way, we need to operate from a place that’s “centered” and serene.

When I think of “peaceful calm”, words that come to mind are: tranquil, centered, serene, and peaceful.  I also think of a series of “R” words including restful, resourceful, relaxed, responsive, and ready.

An empty mind is a powerful one.  It’s ready for action.  It’s relaxed, ready, and responsive.

When your mind is relaxed, you can take in information with less distortion.  You’re connected to your emotions, but rather than being overwhelmed or randomized, it’s more like using your emotions as input.  When your mind is ready, you are responsive.  You are able to easily see the situation and respond with skill instead of react out of fear or anxiety.  When your mind is resourceful, you are able to easily think the thoughts that serve you.  Your creative mind is ready to solve problems with you instead of work against you.

3 Ways to Achieve a Peaceful CalmHere are three actionable things you can do to achieve a peaceful calm state of mind:

1. Dump your brain.   Put it all down on paper.  Just dump it all out.  When it’s on paper, you can better decide what’s worth worrying about and what’s not.  Otherwise, you’ll stew in your own juices.  
2. Have a time and a place for things.   Schedule a time for things that you really need to make time for.  Simply by having a time for things or a place for things, you can free up your mind.  If you know that your carved out an hour for worrying about your problem, than whenever it pops up, remind yourself that, “Now, is not the time” and more importantly, you have a specific time and a specific place for it.  It’s when you don’t make time for things, that they will keep harassing you.   You can also create a block of time to consolidate things and deal with them in a batch.  One example is to schedule a worry break, where you can worry all you want, but only for a limited time.  This way, whenever something to worry about comes up, instead of just saying you’ll worry about it later, you actually have an appointment!
3. Change your focus. Direct your attention with skill.  Don’t just tell yourself to think about something else.  It doesn’t work.  Instead, ask yourself a different question.  You can change your focus by changing the question.  For example, if your immediate response in a situation is to start figuring out everything that’s wrong with the situation, you might ask yourself, “What’s right with this situation?”  If you find you get stuck in your head, ask yourself, “What did it feel like the first time I saw the Grand Canyon?”  To experience a “peaceful calm” state of mind, you want to focus more on feeling, sensing, and experiencing, than on your mental chatter or analysis.  It’s a balance and a blend of your senses and your mind, where your mind is empty of racing thoughts, mental chit chat, and worries about the past, present, or the future.  It’s relaxed, ready, and responsive.  Play around with the questions you ask yourself to find what works for you.  One thing that works very easily for me is simply to remind myself to, “remember the feeling.”  That’s a trigger for me to recall when my mind is in its best state.

One thing that I will point out is that if I don’t eat well and sleep well, that takes away from my “peaceful calm.”  I’ve also noticed that if I have too much caffeine that takes away from my “peaceful calm” too.  What happens is that my  mind has to keep analyzing and making sense of that feeling from the caffeine in my body — is it the caffeine or is there something to be worried about.  It’s a distracting loop.

Additional Ways to Center Yourself and Achieve a Peaceful CalmHere are some additional ways to help you achieve a peaceful state of calm:

1. Take away the threat.   If there’s one thing that can keep eating at you, it’s the threats in your life.   If you take away the threats, you solidify your foundation.  You either have to decide what to do about it, or let it go, or decide it’s not how you’re going to live.    One of the best ways to deal with a threat is to reframe it as a challenge and take the bull by the horns.  Another way is to assume the worst case scenario and deal with it.  For example, lets say your threat is losing your job.  Then assume you’ll lose it, and make the preparations – get staffing companies on your side, build your network, and create a winning resume.
2. Make a map of what’s important.  This simple step will add clarity for your mind and a place to focus your thoughts, when they might seem random or all over the board.  Map out your priorities and outcomes.  See Hot Spots – Map Out What’s Important.
3. Find your why.  By finding your why, you simplify your life down to a driving purpose.  It gives you a simple way to prioritize and evaluate what you will spend your time or your energy on.  See Discover Your Why.
4. Learn to pause.  By taking a brief pause, you can respond over react.  It will help you stay centered in more situations and respond more effectively.   See The Power of the Pause.
5. Reset your mental model.  Ask yourself, “Who do you want to be?” and “What experiences do you want to create?”  Do you want to be running around like a chicken with its head cut off or do you want to show some self-control, confidence, clarity, and deliberate action?  Simply by doing a reset, when you find yourself off-kilter, can help you center yourself with skill.
6. Focus on your breathing.  You’d think we do this well, given how much we breathe all the time.  Well, usually we don’t.    It’s easy to get stressed and then breathe high and shallow instead of deep and full.  If you want to center yourself, then focus on your breathing.  Key tip – don’t treat it weird or act like it’s a magic ritual.  Simply feel the flow of your breath in, down, and around, then back out.  Pause when it’s fully in, and simply notice what a full, deep breath feels like.  Simply enjoy your breath.  Then have another, it’s on the house.
7. Visualize with skill.   This is particularly effective if you tend to be very visual.  You can simply recall some of your favorite scenery or scenes from your life, where you felt a “peaceful calm.”  This will help you remember the feeling, and it will give your mind a quick way to focus on something that it already knows.
8. Remind yourself that things can always be worse.  They really can.  If you need examples, you can find them easily.  Somebody is always worse off.  If you adjust your frame of reference, this can help you keep things in your own life in better perspective.  One thing that sticks out for me here is a line from Navy Seals try outs that goes like this, “The only easy day was yesterday.”  And of course, yesterday, was an absolute nightmare … but by comparison, it’s a walk in the park.

Today’s Assignment

1. Get a good mental picture that you can use to get to your “peaceful calm”.  Remember a time when your mind was at it’s most relaxed, ready, and resourceful state.  Really get a good picture in your mind of this experience.  Notice what it feels like.  Walk your five senses one-by-one (site, hearing, touch, smell, taste):  What do you see? … What do you hear?  …What do you feel? … What do you smell? … What do you taste?”  For example, if your image is on the beach, you might sea the waves lap against the shore, you might hear the seagulls, you might feel the sand between your toes and the warm sun on your shoulders, you might smell the boardwalk, and you might taste the salt in the air.  Simply walking your senses will dramatically improve your ability to fully remember the feeling.  The more you practice the better you get.
2. Write down everything that’s buzzing around in your brain.  Whether it’s things that are bugging you or ideas that keep floating around.  Just empty it and keep emptying it until you’ve got it all down.  Breathe a sigh of relief.  You’re looking at your mind on paper.
3. Make a time and a place for things.   For the things that you really have to deal with, create an appointment with yourself, add it to your schedule, and whenever the issue comes up, reminder yourself that you have an appointment to “deal with it.

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“Things which matter most, should never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” – Goethe

Your Outcome: Make time for what’s important.  Spend more time in what really matters in YOUR life, and spend less time in what does not.  As one of my friend’s puts it, “time is all we have.”

Welcome to day 14 of 30 Days of Getting Results, a series of posts where I share with you the art and science of getting more effective results from my book, Getting Results the Agile Way .  In day 13, we learned how to triage our action items with skill to chop our backlogs or overflowing plates down to size.   Today, we learn a vital key to successful and effective time management.  We learn how to make time for what really matters in our life, a day at a time and a moment at a time.

A Lesson in Life for the Best of Your LifeOne of the most crucial lessons in life that many people learn the hard way is this:

You don’t have time, you make time.  If you don’t make time for what’s important, it doesn’t happen.

You’ll never get off the treadmill or stop treading water, unless you decide to.  And that’s what this series of posts is all about … helping you get results, enjoy the journey, and make the most of what you’ve got … with skill (versus just hoping for the best  or trying harder or wishful thinking.)

Put in the Big Rocks First
This is a story I first heard from Stephen Covey a long time back that really stuck out for me.  As the story goes, a teacher fills a jar with rocks until no more would fit.  He then asks the class, “Is the jar is full?”  The class says, “Yes.”  The teacher reaches under the table, pulls out some gravel, and adds the gravel to the jar.  The gravel fills the spaces between the rocks.  The teacher asks again, “Is the jar full?” Some nod their head.  The teacher then adds sand to the jar filling up the remaining spaces.  The teacher asks, “Is the jar full?”

The class is on to him now and says, “No.” “Good,” the teacher replies, and he proceeds to pour water into the jar until it’s filled to the brim. The teacher asks, “What’s the point of this illustration?”  One of the students replies that no matter how full your schedule is, you can always fit more things in.  ”No,” the teacher responds.  The point is this:

If you don’t make room for the big rocks, you’ll never fit them in.

Make Room for Your Big Rocks Today, Each DayThis is where The Rule of 3 helps.  Are you spending the right amount of time today on those three results or stories that you want to accomplish?  The default pattern is to try and fit them in with all your existing routines.  A more powerful approach is to make time for your three results today and optimize around that.

This might mean disrupting other habits and routines you have, but this is a good thing.  The more you get in the habit of making time for what’s important, the more you’ll get the results you want.   If you’re not getting the results you want you can start asking better questions.  For example, are you investing enough time?  Are you investing the right energy?  Maybe the approach is off.

Just maybe, a different thing happens.  Maybe you start accomplishing the results you *thought* you wanted, but you don’t like what you get.  The grass is NOT always greener.  Now you can step back and ask whether you’re choosing the right outcomes or stories for what YOU really want or really need in your life right now.

What are You Rushing Through For?Covey teaches us, be efficient with things, but effective with people.  Whenever I see somebody rushing through something or it feels like it’s a drive by dump or exchange, I have to ask:

““What are you rushing through for?”  …

Sometimes it’s because people are late.  Sometimes it’s because they are more focused on the goal, than the journey.  A lot of times, it’s because they simply didn’t  allow themselves to be here now, where this moment is the one that really counts.

It doesn’t mean being slow, unless slow makes sense for the situation.  In fact, I can’t help but to think of John Wooden’s saying, “Be quick – but don’t hurry!”  For me, it reminds me to be deliberate and mindful on how I pace myself.   I can be quick without haste or rushing through things, as if something else is always more important, somewhere else.

3 Ways to Carve Out Time for What’s ImportantTake the time to step back and reflect on where you spend your time on a regular basis.  Here are three ways to make time for what’s important:

1. Reset your day.   You can do a reset for your day by stepping back and asking yourself, “What three results do I want for today?”  For example, one of my outcomes today is, “Enjoy the nice day outside.”  I’m not going to let something else get in the way of missing our fleeting sunny Summer days.
2. Reset your schedule.     You can do a reset for the week by stepping back and asking yourself, “What three results do I want for this week?” … or “What three stories do I want to light up in my life or make happen for the week?”  You can then fit everything else around that.  You can also simply check whether you’ve made enough time in your schedule on a weekly basis for the things that really count, for you, in your life right now.  It’s not all-or-nothing, and there’s always a way to spend a little more time here, and a little less there, but you might have to get creative.  If you get stuck here, pair up with somebody and ask for their help … you might be surprised how this simple act gives you clarity on your calendar, and how another pair of eyes can really shine the light on ways to get more of what you want.
3. Invest in your Hot Spots.   However you define your Hot Spots (mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun), you can very deliberately map out what’s important in your life, and you can deliberately invest in your Hot Spots.  I found the single most important factor here is to make time on my weekly schedule for my Hot Spots.  If I’m not getting enough time in a bucket, then I schedule more time.  If I’m putting too much time into one bucket, and not another, then I adjust it.  Once I have enough time in the right buckets, then I make sure I’m investing my best energy and best mindset.  I never want to be in a scenario where I’m always rushing through, because I didn’t make time for it.

And, of course, you can always simply ask yourself, “What are you rushing through for?” and do a reset, at any moment, at any time.

Today’s Assignment

1. Make time TODAY for something you really want to spend more time in, that’s important for you.  Maybe it’s as simple as feeding the ducks.  Maybe it’s spending time with an old friend.  Maybe it’s spending more time learning about Getting Results the Agile Way      Who’s to judge?  You’re the judge.  Just remember, you’re the one that lives with the consequences of how you choose to spend your time … each moment, each day, every day.  Be the author of your life, and write your story forward.  No regrets, just choosing your own adventure from here forward.
2. Step back and ask the tough question, “What are you rushing through for?  If the answer is nothing, then just kick back and enjoy doing whatever you’re doing right here, right now.

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