[00:00:00] Hi and welcome to Reflect Forward. I'm your host Kerry Siggins and I'm so glad you were here today. Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. Ugh, I sure did.
[00:00:20] It was lovely to take a little bit of time off, enjoy the family, enjoy some skiing. We have snow here in Colorado. Anyway, I hope yours was great too. All right, so let's jump into this week's episode, which is The Power of Owning Your Mindset.
[00:00:34] You know, I'm a big believer in owning your mindset. In fact, I wrote a book called The Ownership Mindset and I believe in it so much because owning my mindset transformed my life and it can transform yours too.
[00:00:47] And it's a really important topic because our mindset is something that we can control when there's not much that we can control around us, especially in the chaos of everything that's going on right now. And it's something that we can choose every day.
[00:01:00] I'm gonna say it's easy to choose to have a positive, proactive mindset. It's not easy to own your mindset but it's something that you can do. It's something that you can work on.
[00:01:10] I recently gave a keynote on The Power of Owning Your Mindset to all of the YPO management team. So 500 YPO employees flew into Dallas. The CEO of YPO, who's a good friend of mine, he asked me to come and talk about
[00:01:24] my book and talk about The Power of Owning Your Mindset, especially because he's tried to drive a lot of change within the organization and I know a thing or two about that, driving change through organizations.
[00:01:34] And it was a really powerful talk and I think a really important one because let's face it, we leaders, we have to lead through change. We have to role model what having a positive, proactive mindset looks like and we need
[00:01:45] to help our employees be able to embrace that too. So I was really glad to be able to give this keynote to YPO, YPO is a young president's organization if you're not familiar with it. I'm a big CEO networking group that has 35,000 CEOs across the globe in it.
[00:01:59] And anyway, it made me want to do a podcast on it because it's so important and so powerful. It can change your life. It changed my life. I did not own my mindset when I left Austin, Texas in 2006 when my life was a complete train wreck.
[00:02:16] I definitely had a victim mindset which limited my growth. It helped me back. It made me not believe in myself. It made me blame others. And when I came to Stone Age and I started to develop the ownership mindset, I was able to transform my life.
[00:02:29] And so I'm living proof that when you own your mindset, you can do amazing, amazing things with your life. So let's get into a couple of statistics and why this is so important in the workplace. So according to Gallup studies, employees with a positive mindset are 37% more engaged
[00:02:47] and 21% more productive. Gallup also wrote a book called Well-Being where it talks about the five areas of well-being, which is work, family, like social relationships, health and community. And I really liked this book because it talks about how important workplace well-being is.
[00:03:05] In fact, people who have high workplace well-being, which means that they're engaged in their work, they like their coworkers, they have a positive proactive mindset at work. They're twice as likely to be thriving in all areas of their life because let's
[00:03:18] face it, when you are visible at work, it's really hard to like your life outside of work. In fact, oftentimes things spiral in your personal life when you are unhappy at work. So work well-being is really, really important and that means that you're more engaged
[00:03:36] and you're more productive. And if you want to be more engaged and more productive, you have to think about your mindset. So it's a really compelling reason to develop a positive mindset. The Harvard Business Review also notes that individuals who have a positive mindset often
[00:03:50] achieve faster promotions and have greater success in their lives. So how can you enhance your mindset at work? I'm going to give you five strategies that I've used that I find very helpful in thinking
[00:04:03] about how am I showing up every day, how am I taking responsibility for my life, my career, and my mindset. So the first shift is I am responsible for my career. This is a really important mindset to have.
[00:04:16] If you think that somebody is going to tap you on the shoulder and help you advance your career, then you're going to be disappointed. You are in charge of your career trajectory and you need to seek growth opportunities.
[00:04:31] So when you have challenges, when you're maybe not progressing as fast as you would like, think about your mindset. Look at it as a stepping stone. This is a stepping stone. It's not an obstacle. It's a stepping stone for me to get to what I want.
[00:04:44] I'm going to learn from this challenge and it's going to make me better, and that's why I'm taking charge of my career. There are lots of jobs I applied for that I didn't get that I was bummed about, but that you know what? There's something that's better.
[00:04:56] This is going to be something that I can learn from. How do I use this as a growth opportunity? How do I use this as a stepping stone to get more of what I want? That is mindset.
[00:05:06] I suggest that individuals who actively manage their own careers are 47% more motivated. That's really important. So you can control this. So the mindset needs to be, I'm in charge of my career. I'm in charge of my motivation. I need to proactively seek growth opportunities.
[00:05:24] The next mindset strategy that I employ is developing resilience. There is no doubt that life sometimes punches you in the face and sometimes I get it. You want to stay down. Resiliency is bouncing back and not just bouncing back, but bouncing forward.
[00:05:38] So if you want to develop a resilient mindset, you have to craft strategies that help you manage stress and setbacks. So some things that I do, mindfulness, I cannot tell you how much meditating has improved my mindset by being able to quiet my mind, taking deep breaths.
[00:05:56] It helps me have perspective. It helps me calm myself down, helps me manage my emotions, which is really important if you want to be able to bounce back. I also set realistic expectations.
[00:06:06] I set big goals, but I also am like, okay, if I don't achieve this, what am I going to learn from it? I recently did not meet a goal that I had. I wanted to sell enough books to be able to make the Wall Street Journal bestseller.
[00:06:18] I missed it by 500 books or so. I was definitely disappointed, but I also have set realistic expectations. I know this is going to be really hard to do. And if I don't hit it, I'm not going to look at it as a failure.
[00:06:31] I'm going to use it as a way to learn about how to launch books. And so I had this goal, but I had expectations. Like it's going to be really hard to achieve. And if I don't achieve it, I'm not going to look at myself as a failure.
[00:06:44] So that's how I set those expectations around setting that big goal. I didn't make it, but hey, I gave it my best shot. I've sold a lot of books and it's making a big impact. And that's okay that I didn't hit that goal.
[00:06:57] I'm not going to let it take me down. I'm going to learn from it. And one other way to develop resilience, especially in the workplace, is thinking about your work-life integration. I don't believe in work-life balance. I would be the last person to say that I have that.
[00:07:10] I love to work. Really, it's about how do I integrate work into my life so that I can live my dreams and pursue the things that I love outside of work? And so I think a lot about that.
[00:07:20] I think about how does my work help me in my personal life? How does my personal life help me at work? And when things don't go the way that I want, or when I have to work more than what I want,
[00:07:31] or when I have to unplug because I'm close to burnout, which happens, how do I use this as a way to develop resiliency? This is a really powerful mindset. It's about saying, no matter what happens to me, I can handle it.
[00:07:45] I can bounce back from anything that life throws at me. I'm going to learn from it. That's how you develop resiliency and that is a way to develop a positive mindset. If you think, oh man, if I fail, I'm never going to overcome it.
[00:07:59] That mindset may hold you back, may limit your growth. Change that. I can learn from any obstacle, any setback I have and be a better person because of it. The third strategy that I use is managing my emotions. You have to be able to effectively manage your emotions,
[00:08:17] especially in high-cresure situations. So to do this, you need to understand what triggers me and why. When I am feeling emotional, what do I need to do to be able to calm myself down? Developing this awareness around your reactions will absolutely help you at work.
[00:08:34] It's really hard when people have emotional output, whether it's crying, whether it's getting upset, angry, all of those things, right? It makes people go, ooh, that's unpredictable. So managing your emotions is really important. I manage my emotions by one, having the resilient mindset of any challenge
[00:08:50] that's thrown at me, right? I'm going to be able to handle. I'm going to always stay cool, calm and collected. And if I don't feel like I can be cool, calm and collected, then I'm going to remove myself from the situation until I can.
[00:09:01] I'm gonna go for a walk outside. I'm going to breathe slowly for five minutes. I'm going to take a break and go home and sleep on it until the next day because I know that I am in charge of my emotions
[00:09:12] and I need to manage my emotions effectively. This is a really important way to be able to enhance your positive mindset. This whole idea of being cool, calm and collected, unflappable, it is a choice. I am definitely a passionate person
[00:09:29] and I have been known to let my passion overwhelm others and even me sometimes. And I don't want that. It's a choice. And so the mindset of cool, calm and collected, I am going to be unflappable. I'm going to handle this situation well.
[00:09:43] I'm going to handle myself well. It's a choice. It's part of my positive mindset. The fourth strategy that I employ is goal-setting and visualization. I've loved to set goals for myself, really big goals for myself. And then I try to visualize how I'm going to achieve them
[00:10:00] and I don't just visualize it. I imagine what it feels like to achieve it where it feels very real. This helps me maintain that positive mindset. Like I can do this. I can feel what it feels like to achieve this goal.
[00:10:16] Being able to set those goals and visualize it is important for you to be able to switch that mindset of like, ooh, I don't think I can achieve it. To yes, I can achieve it. My fifth strategy for enhancing my positive mindset is that I cultivate positive relationships.
[00:10:31] Building strong relationships is so important in your life and especially within your team. You can't just have a team that focuses on checking the box and getting things done. You want to have a high-performing, high-functioning team and that takes having strong, positive relationships.
[00:10:49] I try to get to know every single person on my team. I understand their perspectives. I have genuine concern for their well-beings and I know that that improves my own job satisfaction and it improves theirs too, which is this great cycle that we can build upon.
[00:11:05] So if I have the mindset of I'm going into this to build a positive relationship even if it's a hard conversation, I have so much more likely of a chance to actually have a positive outcome rather than like, this is gonna go so bad.
[00:11:19] This is going to ruin this relationship and handle it poorly. So when you go into anything saying building positive relationships is part of my mindset and that's the outcome that I want to achieve. You are more likely to develop that mindset and have that outcome happen.
[00:11:38] So those are some of my tips on cultivating that positive mindset to be proactive at work and it really can change your life. Taking ownership of everything that happens in your life, being resilient, managing your emotions, setting goals and visualizing it and always, always, always putting relationships
[00:11:57] as a priority will help you develop that mindset of I own it, I own it. Now of course not everybody owns it and not everybody has a positive mindset and the opposite of that is really the victim mentality and the victim mentality causes a lot of hardship
[00:12:13] in our lives and at work. And so if you're not sure that you have the victim mentality, you need to figure this out. And one way to do it is if you say yeah, but. So I would have met that deadline, but. I would have done this, but.
[00:12:28] I could have gotten that done, but this person did this. When you find yourself saying, but, you're deflecting, you're making excuses and you have a victim mentality. The victim mentality absolutely manifests itself as blaming others and feeling powerless. That is not a mindset that you want to cultivate.
[00:12:46] So counter that type of mindset with responsibility. I am responsible for everything that happens in my life. I am responsible for the quality of my relationships, for the effort I put into things, for how I show up in a situation, for how I respond or react,
[00:13:01] for owning the trajectory of my career. Responsibility is everything. Another really powerful way to get over the victim mentality is to focus on gratitude. Gratitude is a game changer. Expressing gratitude is a game changer, especially expressing gratitude for the hard things in life.
[00:13:20] I know I told this story before, but recently I was in a YPO for a meeting and we were talking about there was one day that you could do over what would it be? And my answer was none. Every single day, every single decision I've made
[00:13:32] has led me to where I am today. That doesn't mean that I don't feel remorse for poor decisions that I've made in life, but how can I regret those poor decisions because of what I learned from? And one of my fellow YPO said to me privately,
[00:13:46] you wouldn't pick the day that you overdosed as a day you would do over. And he said, absolutely not. I am the most grateful for that day. That was the inflection point in my life. That was the wake up call that I needed to change my life.
[00:13:58] How could I not have anything but gratitude for that day? When you have gratitude for not only the good things in your life, but the hard things that challenges the setbacks, you can see how it makes you more resilient. How the lessons that you learn
[00:14:15] helps you become a more capable human being. So don't be afraid of setbacks and find gratitude when you have them because man, they are life's biggest lessons. Another way to overcome a victim mentality is to seek feedback. Feedback is such a gift.
[00:14:33] There's always a way to own something in feedback. And no, it's not easy to hear but seek it. Ask people, hey, how do you perceive me? Do you perceive me as being a victim? Do you perceive me to have an own it mentality? Why? Why not?
[00:14:47] What can I do to improve? You can change your life if you embrace feedback. And then finally, setting goals that are achievable is really important. If you want something in your life, you have to go after it. Go after it. Even if you fall short,
[00:15:02] even if you fail, you will learn some beat from it. You never know what door is going to open, but if you do not try, it will never happen. Try, set a goal and go for it. Do not let yourself stay in the victim mentality of like,
[00:15:15] I'll never be able to make that happen. You will not have as much satisfaction in your life, even if you fail. You will not be empowered. You will not develop resiliency. You will not grow as a human being. That's the importance of overcoming your negative mindset.
[00:15:31] Okay, on to my question of the week. I love this question because I think that a lot of teams feel this. This came from a friend of mine on LinkedIn who said, hey, we are dealing with this kind of sense of false urgency within the company.
[00:15:45] Like we have to do all of these different things by a deadline, but it feels false. How do you protect your team from a sense of false urgency to be overwhelmed by it? I really appreciated this question and I can relate because I have certainly lived
[00:15:59] where it feels like everything is a fire drill. I'm certainly led when everything was a fire drill, which is simply not the case. When we have this false sense of urgency, it creates this need for unproductive busyness that doesn't lead towards real progress.
[00:16:14] And it can absolutely hurt team morale. It can burn people out. It can make people not perform. And it can also erode your credibility as a leader. Like why are we trying to achieve this? Why do we have to hit this deadline?
[00:16:27] Is there something that's real here or not? So here are a couple of things that you can do if you feel that there is false urgency on your team. First, recognize the signs. Is there always this sense of chaos and overwhelm and reactivity?
[00:16:45] Can your team only do real work when it's after hours because when they're working during the day, they're constantly putting out fires? Try to pinpoint the source of urgency, recognize those signs and figure out where those competing priorities are creating this franticness to get things done.
[00:17:00] That's the first thing, admit that there's a problem. The second time is prioritize. Take stuff off of the plate. We just went through an amazing strategic planning process. Oh my gosh, it was the best ever. My team knocked it out of the park.
[00:17:13] The board, our board of directors was like, this was by far the best presentation that the Stone Age EMT has done before. Fantastic job, so good. And we prioritized ruthlessly. We really boiled it down to working on the most important
[00:17:28] thing so that we are creating this false sense of urgency around doing too much. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. Separate the tasks that are actually urgent that really are on a time constraint or are gonna be holding something else up from happening and then let the rest go.
[00:17:45] Sometimes when you take things off, it can actually move things forward faster. So you want your team to work on work that really matters. It's really going to move the ball forward. So just be ruthless in your prioritization and say we're not doing that.
[00:17:59] That is not going to be what moves the ball forward. Have those honest conversations with yourself and with your team. And then finally, external request. This is the hardest thing, especially at Stone Age where we all want to be great teammates and help each other.
[00:18:13] When somebody comes in and says, hey I need help with this. If it's pulling you off or pulling one of your teammates off to go work on that, then it can create that false sense of urgency. So create a system that allows for people
[00:18:25] to put requests in for help and be able to prioritize which of those are genuinely urgent and which ones can wait. If your team is managing outside requests and can't get their jobs done, then you're going to have this false sense of urgency around everything that they're doing.
[00:18:41] So give them clear guidelines on what they can accommodate, what they shouldn't, how to be able to communicate, work with the managers of those people who are putting in those external requests so that everybody understands, this is a workload that we're trying to balance.
[00:18:54] And let's figure out realistic timelines and prioritization so that way my team can continue to work on the most important things while still helping where they can actually contribute and help. So those are my suggestions on how to manage this constant state of urgency
[00:19:10] that we always seem to be in at work. All right, well I hope you enjoyed that podcast. I'm doing a LinkedIn live event on January 12th at noon, Mountain Time. Meet the author program. I'm with John Saunders who is a fantastic interviewer
[00:19:27] and we're gonna talk about the ownership mindset, this particular topic and the book. And it's gonna be fantastic. There's going to be so many takeaways and nuggets from this. So if you are interested, go to my LinkedIn page, search Carrie Siggins,
[00:19:40] go to events, you'll be able to see it there or shoot me a message and I'm happy to send you the invite. But if you want to learn more about the ownership mindset and with actionable takeaways, please join in for that interview.
[00:19:51] I hope you have a fantastic day and I look forward to hosting you on next week's episode. Thanks so much.