I loved Toto’s blog about A Failure of Nerve & the 3Rs and how learning to “catch & release” is the key to high performance in work & life… and how they go so well together.
With a couple different BUILT TO LEAD groups this past week, we did something similar and called it the ABC Sesame Street practice.
“A” is for adversity.
“C” is what we CONCLUDE about the adversity. Our brains have a short-circuit in our limbic emotional center when adversity strikes, it’s like there’s a jumper wire that hot-wires an automatic conclusion in response to the adversity. Like “this is going to kill me”. Or like “here we go again, I really do suck.” Or like “there he goes again, I’m definitely going to kill him this time.”
The “D” is what’s pivotal. If I don’t DISPUTE my conclusion, I will make a DECISION to act on my conclusion. Which essentially is making a decision based on feelings — letting my emotional limbic center dictate my action. It’s what infants do naturally — and so naturally, those decisions seldom are thought through and seldom lead to high performance.
Like catch & release (or the 3Rs…Recognize/Release/Replace), the key is to DISPUTE the Conclusion by re-wiring a new “jumper wire” to ….
“B”, which is what I BELIEVE about the adversity, and then to CHOOSE my Conclusion and CHOOSE what Decision is appropriate only after filtering everything through my deepest held core beliefs.
Having a strong CORE is our chief want in life. Having someone who shall make us do what we can — i.e. to help us build it — is the wise choice.
Which takes courage NOT a failure of nerve.
BUILT TO LEAD 