Welcome to the new Manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim Nichol. Hello and welcome. I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well. If you listened to last week, you know that I was feeling a bit under the weather and I'm happy to share. I am feeling so much better. I took a lot of naps. I reduced my my schedule so I was able to have time for more rest so my body could recover. And one of the things that really stood out to me in that time was just noticing my brain
did not work so good. And it was a, you know, it was a common cold. So it wasn't anything, you know, devastating. It was, it was simply a cold, but truly I, I really noticed that it was so much more difficult to think. I didn't have as much energy. I just wasn't able to be as present and able to be creative and responsive and generative in my thinking.
And when I was facing decision points or, you know, puzzles to solve, and it really brought to mind how important it is to have the mind state that allows you to access all of your inherent creativity and perspective and all of these wonderful qualities that you're bringing into your role and that you're bringing
into the workplace. Because if you're not able to access them, then it's kind of like they're just, you know, books on the shelf that aren't, that aren't being read and aren't being used to enhance your experience. It makes everything so much harder. And as I was reflecting on this, there are three things that really came to mind, what I think about what makes it easier to bring the best of who you are into the workplace.
And also when you're learning something new and as a manager, especially as a new manager or as a manager who's trying to do things in a new way, there are three things that will make all of that more effective and happen more easily. So number one, time you want to choose to take the time to learn
the new thing. And this is important that you're being very deliberate here because your brain wants to do what it knows how to do. And especially if you're feeling under pressure to make things happen, to get things done, the internal, you know, dialogue will sound something like, but I don't have time and it will feel very true and very convincing. And so we put off the, you know, the deliberate time to learn a new skill or to learn a new perspective or to do things
differently. Because when we're feeling that urgency and that anxiety, it's so easy to continue to do things the way you have done them in the past or the way that that you know how to do already. And that is what can keep us stuck in a pattern of recurrent frustrations and not feeling like we're making a lot of progress.
It's funny too, because when we are in any kind of avoidance or resistance about the discomfort of taking the time to do or learn something new at what I noticed in my own brain is that my internal dialogue offered me two thoughts. One was I don't have time, so that's an easy one. When I feel like I don't have time, like off, I don't have time. There's no time for that, and I put it off. But the other thought, which was more interesting is the thought I have plenty of time.
Since I have so much time, I don't need to do that now. I have plenty of time. I can do that later. There's something more urgent or there's something more interesting or there's just something I would rather do instead. And that internal resistance. Resistance is so tricky. Like your brain is so clever and it can clever yourself into a pattern that no longer serves or into the avoidance of something that you know, OK, I really do need to take a step back and, you know, do the high level
thinking. I need to take a step back and do some strategic planning. I need to take a step back and learn this new skill, or take a step back to develop this relationship, or take a new perspective and learn a new approach. It's so tricky that when we have any kind of resistance, and very often it's around the discomfort of learning something new or the discomfort of feeling like it'll
take so long, What's the point? Your brain can very effectively give you lots of logical reasons for why to not do a thing. So it's important that if you choose to take the time, another way to think of it is you are choosing how to allocate your time and to be really clear with yourself that there will always be more things on the To Do List than are kind of humanly
possible to do in a day. You know, or like in, in, in life, there, there are literally more things to do than you ever could do. That's not a problem we're trying to solve. What we're actually trying to solve for is knowing that this is. So how will you choose to allocate your time and how will you need to grow your skill and maybe your willingness to be
uncomfortable? Either setting a boundary, being willing to disappoint someone, being willing to not be the hero and instead of trying to do all of it and save the day and save everybody else instead. Perhaps the skill it's time to to develop is the skill of. I am going to make a decision about how I allocate this time in a different way and I might need to communicate differently to other folks.
I might need to make peace in my own self and stop being hard on myself for who I think I'm letting down because I'm taking this time and it's so important that I choose to do this anyways. So that's number one when we're thinking about how to make it easier to learn and how do we make it easier to access that really creative, generative, resourceful part. Choosing to take time and being aware, being mindful of how are you making decisions about that.
The second thing that becomes really important is a feeling of safety. And the way I think about this when we have it internally #1 it's a sense of freedom from judgement. If you have any perfectionist tendencies, then you have an internal perspective where you're going to be very vigilant about judging yourself against some standard of perfection that may or may not actually be
possible to attain. But it might just be always this feeling of never good enough, never as perfect as you'd like it to be, or judging yourself in comparison to someone else who's a more advanced practitioner. You know, it's, it's kind of like when you're learning to play guitar for the first time and you compare yourself to Taylor Swift, who's been playing guitar, you know, for decades, since she was a kid. And you feel like, I can't do this. I'm just, I'm just not that good.
You might be comparing yourself in a way that doesn't make a lot of sense for the stage that you're at and actually just shuts you down. So if you don't feel safe, if you don't feel freedom from being judged internally, then it's going to make it harder to learn and to try new things.
Also, if you're in an environment where you're constantly being judged and criticized, that will create this internal hyper vigilance where you're thinking I need to be extra sure of every single thing that I do and say. It's that feeling when you're walking on egg shells because you don't feel safe with what you're doing. You're feeling super hyper vigilant and that's that fear of being judged, criticized, or just that sense like something
bad will happen. I feel like I'm always being watched and judged, so I don't feel safe. And that hyper vigilance can kind of obstruct or get in the way of that creative thinking, that generative thinking, that willingness to try things. When we feel more safe, we tend to feel more curious, we feel more open, more willing. We can take things less personally when we're feeling a bit more safe internally. And the safety one is an interesting one because there are the internal aspects.
So the voice you use to talk to yourself if it's one that's highly judgmental. And there's also the external aspects of safety. That's about the professional environment that you work in, that's about your relationship to your direct manager and your colleagues. That's related to the, you know, perhaps the even the bigger situation of your specific industry. Different industries go through different stages where it can be more unstable and more uncertainty can be happening.
And there might be a sense of is this organization going to weather the storm? And that can also undermine that feeling of safety and reduce your willingness to be curious, take a risk and try new things. So be aware of where your internal feeling of safety is and just start to, you know, key in like where's your hyper vigilance?
Is it super up or does it vary? Because if it's very high, that will get in the way of your ability to learn effectively and tap into all of that brilliance you have. The third thing that will help you is simplicity. So when we are feeling overwhelmed, overloaded, there's so much we can get lost in all of those different things that are on the To Do List or that are on the plate, or we can feel overwhelmed and overcome by the complexity or by the competing
timelines. When you start to feel that way and you start to get into the either the freeze, like kind of get paralyzed in the face of all of the different things, or you start to feel discouraged, like, oh, it's an impossible task. I'm totally overwhelmed by the complexity here. What will help you is to find the simplicity. How can we look at this in a way that reduces the overwhelm?
How can we find the simplicity this the, the simple doable perspective or approach or the thing you can do that can help get you unstuck, unfrozen and in motion? One practice that can be very helpful is to simply like organize something in your physical space. Because if you're feeling overwhelmed looking at the screen and all of the messages or projects or things that are happening in there, you want to start to activate your physical
body. It can help to both dis like dissipate the stress and the physical freeze that we feel when we get anxious and tense and our muscles all sort of tense up. And it can also just help organize, like by organizing your external world, it can help your internal world start to get a little bit more organized as
well, right? That feeling of accomplishment that you get when you, you know, just like put things where they need to be. Whether it's organizing files on the desk, putting cups into the kitchen, checking to make sure that the pens you have on your desk actually work, that you don't have any that have run out of ink and that are just taking up space. When we start to find the simplicity, it allows us to access a sense of capability, a
sense of forward momentum. It starts to bring a little more ease and a little more breath into the moment. And that can help you start to find that calm and relax into that perspective of, OK, what is it that's here before me? What, what is the approach I want to take? It can help make it easier for you to think through what your options are and how you want to approach this.
It's kind of like just by shifting it, you know, shifting things a little bit, you start to see something new and it can actually create this lovely sort of, you know, organizing perspective where instead of feeling overwhelmed, you're like, yeah, there's a lot. But I, I have a sense now of where I want to begin. And I have a sense of where things are in relationship to each other. I am clear about where I can start and what is it that I do not need to give my attention to in this moment.
And so these three things, having time by choosing it, creating that sense of safety on the inside and looking for the simplicity, how can you simplify things? All of that will help to shift you from a state of the overwhelm, the hyper vigilance and the continuing to grind through in a way that doesn't advance your learning, right? Kind of keeps you stuck in the same place.
It can help you to learn a new approach, tap into your own creativity, generativity, your own best thinking, your own best self, and it can help to get you unstuck and out of that overwhelm. So those are some ideas I wanted to share with you today as you go into your week. If this is something you want more of, like you want to learn more of this for yourself as a practice, then that's something we can work on in private coaching.
So go to my website to learn how to connect with me about that. And I've also started to get a lot more inquiries for team off sites and team building, which is actually very exciting. It's for the first time in like 4 years if you like. Everything is starting to activate again.
So if you have a team off site or you're looking for a team building experience and you want something that will help people to connect, to get grounded, to practice being mindful and to think about how do we want to work together, then reach out to me for that because that's something that I can offer to you. And if you're looking to learn in a more kind of community based experience, then come take my class that starts on September 17th. I'll put a link to the show notes.
I'll put a link to that in the show notes for you. And that is a seven week course. The focus there is on communication strategies. And what you'll get is in addition to the communication strategies, the way I've designed it is so that you have time to learn these things so that you have a safe place in which to learn them. So you're not learning them in front of all of your colleagues
and peers. In fact, you get to step away from that, into this virtual classroom and start to feel more safe, to learn, to ask questions and to let go of some of that hyper vigilance and that judgment. And I'll help to simplify things so it makes it easier for you to learn them, to do them, to gain the confidence as you apply these concepts and tools and strategies in your actual workplace. Basically, I'm telling you, I'm
here to help. And I love that you're listening to this show because this is an excellent resource for you. And if you want more, there are a few options for how that can work. All right, thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a great week, and I will talk to you next time. When you're more effective at work, you're happier in your life. And when you're happier in your life, you're more effective at work.
I can help. Go to my website, kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching consult. It can get better.