[00:01] Katie: Welcome to the Focus B show, where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host. Katie.
[00:34] Katie: Welcome to another episode of the Focus B show. I am very excited to be here today with Chet. Hirani. Chet is a peak performance coach similar to me and works with businesses to help them to optimize business performance and growth. And here we have an informal conversation and chat around the links between personal and professional performance. Hi, Chet. Great to see you today. How's everything?
[01:04] Chet: You're in it's doing phenomenal. You know what? Today has been one of those days, but getting by. But overall, always great. Always great.
[01:15] Katie: Amazing. Well, it's so great that we're here together to talk about personal and professional performance because these are both things that we work on, and we feel that they're so tightly related. So it's going to be a really interesting conversation. I'm looking forward to it.
[01:28] Chet: Absolutely. Same here. Same here.
[01:31] Katie: What's the first thing that comes to your mind in terms of the link between our personal life and our professional life and why people separate them so much?
[01:40] Chet: Well, it's interesting you ask that because when you think about the two, everyone well, most people and even me as well, I put myself into that category as well, that they automatically think that it's two different things completely. Right. And it's like, well, hold on a minute. When you look back at things, they actually tie in so well because you learn from one another, and if you've got a fault in one, you got to learn how to fix that fault for the other. And then what you learn from a professional side of things, everything that we do, from professional, from who we are, from what we've become, that also has a direct link to our personal life as well, from who we are. Almost like the upbringing of how the cycle of us growing up from almost a child to pretty much when you go into education, if that's something that you've done or when you are going or you're starting a business, a lot of the factors, if you look back and sort of reflect on those things, you think, hold a minute. How did I manage to do this? And it's what you've learned throughout the time and who you've chosen to become is what then you've become from a professional side of things, and you just learn it's just a constant I refer it to as a game of tennis, right? You're batting the ball across over the net. Okay? So you got the professional side and you got the personal side. Now you're constantly batting the ball over. You can complete having a great rally, no issues happening. And then all of a sudden, from a professional side of things, a fault occurs, and you're like, whoa, how did that fault occur? And you're thinking, well, I need to fix that fault. Whether in from a tennis terms, whether it's a foot fault, a fault with your serve, something that you've done wrong in terms of your return or something, you got to figure that out in terms of how can you improve on that. And then as you figure out how you improve on that, the aim is to get the ball back over the net successfully and you're not sort of throwing a problem from one end to another. It's actually trying to make sure that you're keeping that rally going. And every time there's a fault, you figure it out from a professional side, from a professional side to a personal side, you figure those things out. And as you figure those things out, you throw that fault and you throw what you've learned across to say, right, I've learned this, let me now adapt it to this because anything could happen. So for me, strongly, strongly and over time, should I say, it's become inevitable that it's closely linked as well. And putting sort of perspective into place like this tennis example really does sort of emphasize and brings that sort of you can visualize a bit more right to say there's a ball going back and forth and I just need to have the longest rally ever. It's one of those things.
[04:31] Katie: Yes, I agree. And I also think that as we both work with business owners a lot, you can see the correlation between both areas because you can't have your own business without also working on how you manage your own boundaries and how you set up routines for yourself. And the more I work with different people that have their own business, the more I see how linked they are. And for a concrete example, for instance, people that take the time to exercise that's in your personal life, right, unless they're a professional athlete, but that totally impacts your work and productivity and that's just one example of a sort of keystone habit that improves performance. What comes to your mind when you think in terms of specific practices that you have seen? Because I love your analogy with the tennis, but I also think it's great for the listeners to have a clear sort of examples and practices that reflect in both sides.
[05:23] Chet: Well, I'll put it down to my own experience, in fact on that, because everyone goes through different stages in their lives, right? In terms of they're going through highs, they're going through lows from a personal perspective. But as you're going through a personal challenges, you're either working, you're either running your own business, you're doing so many other things outside of your personal life and then it's those things where you think, right? And here's another thing where a lot of people tend to say is don't bring work home, but sometimes everyone's bringing work home, no matter how you think about it. I'm not saying taking bringing a whole physical piece of paper and you're bringing it home. I've got friends who are teachers. Yes, they have to bring work home, they have to mark their kids work and all that, everything there. But what are they doing during that time? They're progressing right? They're performing better as time goes on. But then for another example outside of a teacher from my perspective when I've been at work and I've learned how to handle many, many different types of people from sort of different levels or even outside clients or anything like that. And then I come home. And then there's something there where the first thing I always say to myself is before I walk through that door and I put that key into the keyhole, before I open that door, I want to make sure that I'm leaving everything behind from work, but then appreciate everything that's behind that door. So it doesn't matter who it is, whether the cat's going to come running to you, whether the dog's going to come running to you, or whether your loved ones there or whether your children are there or whoever's there, appreciate the other side of the door. But as I appreciate the other side of the door, I'm putting away everything that I've learned from work, for example, when I was in the corporate life, but then I've learned so much from that, which I'm able to sort of adapt and appreciate everything else that's behind there. So that's a case of simple things where I always speak to a lot of clients on this as well, to say, embrace everything that comes towards you. So in terms of if it's a loved one rather than before, they ask you how was your day? Ask them how was their day? And when you're doing that, you're not worried about your stuff because you want to be there for them to listen and that's going to be like and you learn that even in a work life as well, when you're in meetings, you are listening to the other person, you want to get an outcome from it. So there's so many different things that I've picked up from there, think, you know, such a relation through it for personal. But then there's a different emotion side of it as well because when it's personal, you're more emotional in a more of a loving way, caring, kindness way, it's a different feeling. But then when you're from at work, yes, you're emotional, you're caring, you're feeling, but you're not going to be hugging everybody that you see in a meeting, right? Unless that's your work environment, I don't know. But then do you see when you're at home a completely different dynamic, completely and be able to sort of adjust those, but then also take those things away. And that's what I've learned and I really, really sort of remind myself and again, turning that into a habit, practicing those sort of things and making yourself going to be such a great one, it gives you a great feeling and the other side for me it makes.
[08:45] Katie: You a better person yes, that's an interesting point. I think looking at the emotional aspect is really interesting. I haven't thought of how differently we are involved emotionally. And I think that's also interesting in terms of emotions. And you said, don't bring work home. I think emotionally that could come home. That's very often the case. When the couple has had a good day or a bad day, they bring home the emotions. And that's also something that needs to be worked on, I think, sometimes.
[09:14] Chet: So true. So what about yourself? How has that sort of worked for you? Going back to the first sort of question, the link between the two, what's your sort of take on those?
[09:23] Katie: Yes, it's interesting. And I think you'll probably relate to this being in the world of self improvement and personal development, it's so hard to separate them because I feel everything I do is linked to my business when I'm meditating or exercising or journaling. Because you read about it so much in self improvement that although I'm doing it for my personal life, it's totally correlated with what I help my clients with or what I believe in or what I read about. I remember at one point actually I almost went off self development and self improvement because I felt it was omnipresent in my life. My husband would say I didn't have any topic of conversation that wasn't business or self improvement. I said Surely that's not true. And then I didn't find any except like mundane little things. All my main topics were either the INEA grand personality or mindfulness or productivity hacks or my business strategy. And so after a while I did feel this sort of almost too much like lack of boundaries and separation. In my case, what helped me is I decided to label work anything that was on a computer because I tend not to use my computer in my spare time and anything that was off my computer was fun. So even if I was reading a personal development book that counted as fun. If I was exercising, that was fun. If I was journaling about work in my notebook, that was still fun. And that was the way for me to distinguish, because I enjoy so much reading these books or journaling or whatever it is that it doesn't feel to me like work. And the only aspect of my work that can feel like that is being all day in front of a screen. So for me, that was the element that helped me separate them. But I don't know. How do you feel about the whole separation with self improvement? I mean, it's so tied with our own everyday lives, it's hard to sort of make a distinction.
[11:11] Chet: Really, it is. And, you know, I love the fact that when you said how you separate it from when it's work, it's only related when you're on a computer. Because so many people can say, well, you can do work outside of the computer, but then why can't we just switch that and turn that into fun and an activity? Right. Because it doesn't all have to be work. Work, okay? There is rest, there's play, but there's always something that we tend to forget, which is a constant reminder, is to have fun. You got to do it fun from a personal perspective, fun from a professional's perspective. Just like how you said, being a professional, you are working in front of your computer like we are, like we're doing now, right, in this podcast. But we're having fun by doing it, right? And then when you're reading a personal development book or listening to a podcast or something, it's fun. I do the same thing. So I know that it's the whole mindfulness side of things as well. Because I always make sure that I take time for myself. So I always block in my calendar. I have something called my time between the hours of 08:00 A.m. To 10:00 A.m.. Those 2 hours every single day, monday to Friday, okay, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, because that's exclusively my time, right? But then Monday to Friday, those 2 hours that I have, I can do absolutely anything that I want to do in those 2 hours. And I will never let it be work related. So that could mean I can have a lion if I wanted to, right? Because I'm flexibly enough to be able to do that. I know a lot of people can't, but I'm able to do things like that. I know that there's a routine that I need to get up and do my workout. So an hour out of those 2 hours, I will do my workout. Guaranteed I will do that because that's not going to help me get my day started. If I want to do it before if I wake up before 08:00 and I wake up maybe six or 07:00, I'll get my workout done during those times. Then I'll know straight away I have 2 hours to absolutely do nothing. I can just sit there, just stare at these white walls or whatever I want to do, okay, but what am I doing? I'm having fun during those times. So it's personal development. I'll go out on my bike. I'll do go for a walk. I'll do something related that is not in front of a screen at all. I will not do that. That's why you'll never probably see a post or anywhere on social media in the UK time that's going to come out from me after 10:00 A.m.. I refuse to do that because that's what keeps me checked. Because I know at 10:00 a.m. Right. My my brain's clicked in the gear it's now allowed me to get into. That what we call a peak state of mind that at 10:00 A.m. I'm going to go and crush the rest of the day on my business. And what does that do at the end of it's going to make me feel so much satisfied, so good about myself? And this message also goes out to not just entrepreneurs or people who are running their own businesses, right? This can happen to people who are now we're moving back into going to the offices, like on a hybrid work environment. Sort of take that time out and block booking your calendars a little bit for yourself. Even during lunchtimes, for example, make sure you go out for a walk if you can. Don't sit in front of your screen. Because I fell into that trap in the corp world. I used to have my lunch at my screen, and I used to work while I'm doing my lunch. Yes, I know people can say, well, it's easier said than done, right? But you know what? If you just do it, you've done it. It's a case of just getting into that routine, getting into the habit, and then figuring out when you come back after that hour, hour and a half lunch break that you have, then question yourself how good you feel. Are you feeling lethargic? Are you feeling tired? Because the chances are you're not. You're more energized. And then at the end of the day, when your day finishes, you're going to feel like, wow, I was more productive than I was because I just took that little time for myself. And it is that it's such an important factor on both sides of the spectrum, should I say what do you say on that one? Would you agree to that?
[15:14] Katie: 100%. I love the boundaries that you have for the morning. That's fantastic. And generally I feel that people either need to do that mornings or evenings or both. And this is obviously something that you probably come across a lot with your clients. I know I do with mine that work sort of slowly goes into the evening and then at 06:00 p.m. And 07:00 p.m., and unless they have to, they struggle to switch off. And that's one of the first steps that really helps them to regain energy and feel more motivated is to really have a sort of clear boundary. And I like what you said also about the lunch breaks because that's so true. I think a lot of people on autopilot are maybe because their colleagues around do this, or because it's faster or because they feel too busy that they'll just eat at the same time as they work, but that's not productive for their digestive system or for their work.
[16:01] Chet: Exactly.
[16:01] Katie: And you feel so much better. That's what you said. And the quality of the work is so much better. So ironically, I think people do this to save time, but in fact, they're probably losing time in terms of the results they output, if that makes sense.
[16:16] Chet: So true. Yeah, I mean, it is. We think that we are utilizing that time for a good cause of the work. But then where does it all start from? Where's the foundation? The foundation is you, right? It's your own health and wellness. That's where it all starts from. It doesn't matter what you do, in my opinion, it starts from your own health and wellness. If you're able to be alert and do things in that, then go ahead and do it. Yes. I always also talk about the fact that you do things that work for you. But if we're in an environment, in an office environment and you're entitled to that break, use that break. Because if you're not able to complete your work in the hours that you're allocated, then there's something wrong. Either there's too much work or there's the fact that one of the things is too much work. Or the other thing is that you haven't prioritized your work correctly. As hard as it to admit for people, prioritizing your work is a key factor. Right? And if you can't prioritize your work in those core hours that you can do, then okay, something's wrong, guys. And that goes with everyone. That's why you then, as you said, you produce better quality work as time goes on. You don't have to cram in hundreds of items and then think, right, I've ticked them all off. I feel good about myself. You can review back and say, so what was the quality? Because when you send that off to somebody and think this is not as quite as good as we expected, it what you're used to. Maybe you just crammed everything in or you've not, or something else in you has not interrupted you sort of within your mind that you're not able to produce that quality that you know you can produce. Because going back to the quality side of things, we've all got it in us, right? We've got so much more. Every person has so much more in them to take themselves to the next level. Right? You work on that with your clients. I work on that on my clients. From a performance perspective, I cannot sing this loud enough or shout this from the rooftops. Right. There is so much more potential in everyone. It's hidden. But there is something there that there's so many ways to get that out of you. And then once you're able to get that out of you, then come and speak to us and think, wow. Right? Because I see it in me. I have bags of energy because I know that I believe in so many that everyone is out there that capable of doing so much more. I still think that I can do so much more. You think you can do so much more, but as you're able to sort of see that level going up, that's another thing. How great is that feeling? It's just one of those I'm thinking about it now with a huge smile on my face thinking if I'm able to speak to every single person I speak to and get that extra bit out of them and then they come back and say, wow, right, job done. I'm happy it's done.
[19:06] Katie: For me, it's so rewarding. It's so rewarding and that feeling both with others, when you have that feeling that you've helped them achieve that, and within yourself, when you start seeing like, oh, wow, a few years ago I couldn't do this, or I was inconsistent in this habit, or I was afraid of doing this, and now I'm not. And having that feeling and also helping others to have it. And it's amazing how quickly people limit themselves. So it's such a wonderful feeling to say, that's not a limit, guys, you don't have to stop at the sky. The sky's not the limit. I read about this recently, that even the sky isn't the limit. If you think of people like Elon Musk and Mars or with Aiming for the moon. And there's a lot of limits that aren't actually really there. And for some reason, either society or upbringing or previous experience, people put and we all have them. And we both work on these, obviously, because coaches tend to work on these things because they help others do it, and they have all this self improvement knowledge and it's really amazing. And I think probably one of the most rewarding things in life is to start to feel that you're working, aligned towards your potential.
[20:16] Chet: So true. Absolutely. I mean, there's something that I always reference back to is that remember when you were a child? You're a child with no fear. You're completely relentless. You think that you can do anything and everything. And usually the hot topics are you want to be either a fireman or a woman. You want to be a doctor, you want to be a policeman or a woman. Right? Those are the top three things that come to mind at the moment. But as a child, you have got no clue what's required to achieve those. Or an astronaut, that's another one, right? Okay. You have no idea of what it is to achieve those. But the feeling of wanting to achieve it when you're a child is unheard of. It's like the most amazing feeling, right? Because they will say to you, I want to become an astronaut. My stepdaughter says to me, she wants to become an astronaut, right? And I said, Right, what are we going to do to get you to become an astronaut? She saw it. I want to do this. This is how I want to be. And I could sense that, feel that in her as a child. Now, think about having that same feeling as an adult, because as we get older, we start limiting ourselves, just like you just said, right? Okay. We start doubting ourselves. I can't do this, I can't do that. But imagine having that feeling as an adult, when you were as a child, as an adult, how refreshing and great would that feel? That you're able to achieve absolutely anything and that's what it helps. And that's the thing overcoming those limits as time goes.
[21:59] Katie: Yes.
[22:00] Chet: As a child, from an adult, your upbringings, everything changes, you become more experienced, you start understanding what's required to do what, but they're still not stopping you from doing it.
[22:11] Katie: I know. It's amazing the sort of development that we go through and we lose our sort of imagination and belief along the way in both ourselves and what's possible. And I think it's really inspiring to think of it like you just said, in terms of what would my inner child or me as a child, what would I have said to this? Would I have thought it was possible? And to look, like you said, children around how they have this belief and this imagination capacity. That's really nice. I want us to briefly go back to the personal and professional performance link. What do you think are some of the top habits? I mean, I'm sure we agree on these a lot, but what do you think are some of the top ones are basically when people start incorporating them in their personal life, impact their professional life? If we do the correlation that way.
[22:59] Chet: That'S an interesting one. So the impacts, are you saying the impacts the do's and don'ts? Is that what you're trying to say?
[23:05] Katie: More the do's than the don'ts, but yes.
[23:07] Chet: Okay, the first of all with the do's if from a professional life, for example, when you're in sort of and this is where I've learned a lot from it as well, so when you're in meetings, for example, what's the first thing that you're doing? You're listening in meetings. Right? Then the whole point of that meeting, and I strongly believe this a meeting has to be done with an outcome and a result. Okay, you can't have a meeting for the sake of having a meeting. Right? But then that listening factor, when you bring it home, you also want to listen. You need to learn how you've been able to listen there with detail. You should be able to do the same thing at home as well because very rarely we get caught up in the fact we get distracted with things at home. And I get that and I speak about this because with my wife, she's a professional as well, but then I notice things about listening techniques and even my stepdaughters, I would say I've probably got far more better listening technique than they have. Okay, that's what I would say. But that's because I've realized over time, and now I'm sort of ingraining that and teaching them to say, look, if you're able to listen at school, if you're able to listen at work and somebody's speaking to you at home, whether it's family members or anything, remember, that how you're able to listen to them, because there's a lot more distractions. Because the TV could be on, your phone could be going off, or you're in the middle of something. But then the ultimate thing is that I found, especially from a married couple perspective as well, is that always find the right time when to speak. Yes, because I fell into that trap. I always used to start speaking at the wrong time.
[24:52] Katie: Yes, right.
[24:53] Chet: Every time. And I'm thinking that, Hold on a minute. If you're able to speak to me, I can listen and do something at the same time. It's great. I could do that sort of stuff. Right. And I'll get it and I'll respond back but then every time I'm speaking I get no response and I'm thinking are you not listening to me? But then that's my fault. Because I've chosen the wrong time to actually speak to them, because maybe they're not able to do the same that I can do. So I need to be mindful of that too. So I've taken that habit very much alike to say, look. And even just before I'm about to say something, I'll now start thinking, is this the right time to say it? And most of the time I'm probably going to start saying at the wrong time so I'll stop myself but I'm still going through that learning process because there are many times where I've actually said something when it's been at the wrong time as well I'm thinking I already said that, why did nobody listen to me?
[25:47] Katie: It's easily done to have a sort of off timing in terms of listening. I like the fact of bring home the listening that you have in your work and school and bringing it home and choosing a right moment to listen. That's sort of the borders or the link between professional and personal in terms of personal towards professional, like I've already mentioned, exercising and journaling but are there some that you feel that if we practice in our personal life then have a really strong impact on our professional life?
[26:15] Chet: Yeah, I would say. I mean, there's quite a few on the list I can think of from a personal to a professional. One thing that I always think will be great is that incorporate things about yourself. Because at work, we forget about ourselves. Whereas in a personal life, we always think about ourselves. If we're going to work out, do something doesn't have to be working out. It can be anything. It could be reading a book. It could be something but having fun. Try and incorporate those elements, if you can, into your professional life. So it could be during your lunch breaks, as we said, going for a walk, listening to an audio reading, personal development something which is completely different to what you are there to do, right? Incorporate that in there as well because what does that do? That starts making you think. More, okay, you become more refreshed. You're not the same thing continuously. Like I'm in a work environment and I'm only going to think about those sort of areas. No, you don't need to. There's so many other things that you can do or even make a phone call to a friend that you haven't spoken to for some time during your lunch break, which is completely irrelevant about work. That can help too, because we're able to do that in our personal life, we should be able to do it. No one's going to say no to you during a lunch break or a break if you have to make a quick phone call, because that's going to help. Be a bit more refreshing as well for yourself. So I think those are probably one of the main things that I would sort of say try and incorporate those into it as well.
[27:48] Katie: I like that because I think we're too strict on ourselves and I know that even though I'm in the whole personal development field, it took a bit of accepting for me to go down the route of reading books during the day. And even now I don't do it very often, very occasionally I will, but I like this sort of allowing ourselves to step out a bit of the work environment for even ten minutes, 15 minutes, and to do something else and something refreshing. And also we're more likely then to be energized the whole day, especially if, like you said, it's a walk or even a bit of a workout. I tend to do my workouts at lunch, so that's also where I separate my working day. Obviously, I know it's not always convenient for everyone. I'm also thinking that given the current context, I think people used to have a lot more of this when they had breaks and spoke with their colleagues around the coffee machine and these sort of things, and they'd have maybe a chat about the weekend and people don't do it as much from home. So I think it's also okay when people are at home to take a break to cook or do their laundry or go for a walk because before they used to have chats around the coffee machine. So it's also nice to keep that.
[28:51] Chet: In mind, right, so true it is. Those coffee machine chats are actually it's either a gossip or it's something. But you know what? It's fun. Everyone has to have it, right? And it takes you away from your work, so don't beat yourself up about it.
[29:06] Katie: Exactly. I think it's so important to have those added sort of practices during the day. Well, we're already approaching half an hour talking together. Chess, it goes by so quickly. I think it's such an interesting topic in terms of personal and professional performance. From my perspective, I'd say that the main key takeaway is to really start looking at the link between them. And even though we might have some boundaries, like I said, about not working on my computer. Still keeping it quite flexible because overall, it's an overall performance. They're not really separated blocks. That would be my main insight. And also take away from this conversation what would be yours, Chair?
[29:48] Chet: Yeah, I'd agree with you on that front. They're very closely linked. But taking everything away from it, it's that remember to learn from both of them, right? It's not just one or the other here, because there's so many elements, there's a lot of value you can take from both sides. And, yes, at one point, as we said when we did the example of the tennis game, there can be a weakest link in one of them, but then you should be able to use the other side to help you fix that link as well. And then that's where you learn from it. It's the whole listening side of things, the mindful side, your own sort of wellness aspects of it. So, yeah, we definitely agree on that front, as well as understanding that they both work hand in hand.
[30:34] Katie: Yeah. Nice. Really nice. So nice talking to you today, Church. So much for the conversation.
[30:40] Chet: Awesome. Take care.
[30:41] Katie: Thanks.
[30:45] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzzing.