How are you doing today? Great? Pretty well? Just okay?
What if we asked you how you’ve experienced today? It’s a lot harder to answer this question in one or two words – and, according to Russ Rausch, founding partner of Vision Pursue , the answer you give is both revealing and important to understanding something critical.
HOW YOUR MINDSET IMPACTS YOUR LEADERSHIP
Russ explained that when people were surveyed on how they experience a typical day, the average of over 2,000 responses revealed that about 80% of experiences were characterized by stress, annoyance, monotony, or consisted of “escape” activities like drinking, watching TV, or engaging in online distractions. What’s most illuminating about these responses is the mindset they reveal.
It turns out that our minds are actually biologically wired to produce thoughts and emotional patterns that create this negative life experience. Russ and his partners explain that humans have evolved to react this way in order to survive. We’re programmed to recognize the worst-case scenario, and the resulting emotions are designed to instruct us how to act in self-preservation. For example, if I’m not sure whether an object is a stick or a snake, my mind will most likely tell me it’s a snake so that I fear the snake, run, and preserve my life.
The problem is that if you show up at work (and home) feeling that life is stressful, annoying, and a means to an end from which you need to escape, you’re not going to lead anywhere near your best. The good news, according to Russ, is that your mind can actually be trained to respond differently to these automatic thoughts and emotions….
