#108

Welcome to Whisper #108.

Don't let your doing become your undoing

I’ve read that anywhere between 40%-95% of our behaviour is unconscious.

Let’s not debate the number but accept that we can be a little blind to our thoughts and behaviours for a relatively high percentage of our day.

Some of that unconscious activity will be helpful – imagine having to think about what push and pull means when facing a door!

I’m interested in the unconscious activity that’s not so helpful – particularly the stuff that we’ve been doing that leads us down a difficult track. What’s the stuff I’m doing, that over a period of time – short or long, becomes my undoing?

But how do you know? Because the clue is in the title – it’s unconscious!

How do I work out what’s helpful or not and over what time period?

If we accept that, in part, I can only influence that which I’m aware of, then step one is awareness. How can I stay relatively aware of the short, medium and long-term impact of my thoughts and behaviours?

Now if we did that for every thought and behaviour it would be exhausting and probably impossible.

So, what if you picked just one area of life? And you paid focused attention to the doing and, as importantly, the impact of the doing?

What impact is it having short, medium and long term AND does it matter?

Can you get away with the odd mistake, without it becoming part of your routine?

Is what you’re doing just a small temporary error in judgement you can avoid the next time?

Or is it ‘this one won’t matter’? Which is true as long as it’s just this one and doesn’t lead to the same rationale used for each time.

With awareness and attention, you then have more agency of step 3 – action.

Contrary to perhaps conventional belief the action should be easy to do, require zero motivation and have some sort of trigger that reminds you to do at the time.

Consistency trumps intensity so small, repeatable actions over time are likely to outlast huge intense actions at the beginning.

So, 3 steps – easy but not simple.

Step 1 - Awareness

Step 2 - Attention

Step 3 - Action

Click on the below links for a deeper dive on this topic:

BBC - How unconscious forces control our actions

The Atlantic - Your Brain Sees Things That You Don't

 
Quote of the week:
We didn’t come this far just to come this far - Matthew Reilly

Could you go further? Do you want to? Is it worth it? For who? For how long? Might one more turn unlock the padlock? If it were to take 104 attempts I wonder how many of us would stop at 100 or 101?

 
Question of the week:
Is what you’re doing worth what it’s doing to you?

Go on, ask yourself the question. Get granular. Get specific. And if the answer is yes, keep going. If it’s no then read again from the top of the page.

NEW RELEASE
Freedom Fridays Episode 74 Featuring Sharon Seivert

In this episode, Pete chats with author and experienced business consultant Sharon Seivert. They discuss some of the challenges facing leaders now and into the future. Sharon shares the elements of Balanced Leadership – Core | Vision | Mission | Interact with people | Structure | Synergy – based on her latest book and they explore how those elements might show up for every level of the leadership experience.

Sharon shares some key thoughts about how to resist using fear, facts and force to influence and instead how to leverage the Superpowers explored in her latest book.

Sharon generously shares plenty of reference material in the show notes.

              

               

 

That's all for this week. If you’ve been enjoying the Weekly Whispers please feel free to forward it to friends and anyone you think would benefit.

As always, email me at [email protected] to share your feedback or to let me know your thoughts.

Cheers

Pete