Ep 136: Staying Centered and Focused In Stressful, Chaotic Situations

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello friends . I hope you had an amazing week .

Today I want to talk to you about other people's energy , and this is coming up for me today because I'm coaching a couple of senior level private coaching clients on some issues they're experiencing on the day to day around their roles and the dynamics of their organization and , in general , just kind of how they feel every day at the end of their day or maybe

at the end of a difficult meeting . And I think we can probably all relate to this in some way . So I'm going to speak about it mostly through the lens of your corporate life . But you know , I mean all of us have life going on , especially admit life , and so I'm sure you can relate to .

Maybe right now your job's great and you're in your happy place or your business is doing well . But maybe there's other things going on with situations in your family , the health crisis of another or yourself , maybe issues going on with your children , maybe some type of drama unfolding for friends that you're trying to help them through .

And when you have things going on around you , it can be really difficult to stay centered , to stay on point and to not let the energy going on around you attach to you . Like I think some people are naturally better at staying the course and staying centered . Maybe they learn that through playing sports or through other lessons learned earlier in life .

But I think other people just struggle with this and I will say , like for me I did for much of my life .

It's only been really the past , you know , four or five years where I've been able to kind of stay on point , and that's good , because the past four or five years have been especially challenging , both corporate-wise and in my personal life , with some issues going on with my parents and things like that .

So I think staying centered for me has certainly become an acquired skill , and that's kind of why I wanted to talk about it today , because I think some people just think , oh , I'm not good at that or I don't know how to do it , and I'm here to tell you that this is something you can learn , and it's really valuable to learn , because we don't want to

leave the quality of our day or our week or our life in the hands of other people who are feeling their own things and experiencing their own things and probably not , in most cases , trying to you know , attach those things to you , but maybe by you being around them or interacting with them or trying to support them , they somehow do , and so I want to talk

today about how do you stay centered in that ? And first I want to just describe what does that mean to stay centered ? I'm defining it as meaning that you remain in control of your emotions , especially in stressful situations , right ?

So all of us who have a job or who are running a business can relate to this , and I think , especially at midlife , when we're probably at a more senior level and more probably have many more complicating factors going on in the rest of our life , right , it can be really hard at times to stay in control of your emotions and not be affected by the things

going on around you , right ? So I just want to talk about some ways that this can show up just to kind of try to make it real for you . And then I want to talk about you know what do you do about it and how can you stay on point ? So this is coming up because I'm actually coaching a couple of different clients on this .

They're both very senior level executives and one it just came out of the session a couple of days ago and it made me really think about how many times this has come up for me when I was coaching them . It just was so familiar . This person is a C-level executive in the tech industry and they've been at their company for a couple of years .

They've started to make some great traction . I've been coaching them for a couple of years we're about to head into year three and so I've been with them for this whole journey at this particular company , and it hasn't been easy . This company that they joined is post merger .

They knew when they took the job that they were in the middle of getting approval to purchase this company . So they knew there was the post merger time coming and , having been through that before , they knew what that probably was going to mean was a lot of organizational angst and challenges . You know , trying to bring two large companies together .

It's a fairly sizable company and this week we were talking about the progress that they'd made , not just in getting initiatives spun up and moving in what they think is the right direction , but also just their progress in learning to enjoy a new type of role that they have , which is more of an influencer role versus what I call a direct driver .

So I think it's in my opinion , having done both roles , it's much easier to have budget and an organization and direct responsibility for not only driving an organizational initiative but leading it all the way through .

I think that's very straightforward and full of challenges , of course , but it's much easier than being an influencer , where in most cases , influencers have leaner staff and their reach is felt further across the organization . So they're usually a thin staff .

But my client describes it as everywhere and nowhere , and I get it because I used to think of it that way too . But it's really not true .

Like when you're an influencer , you're not everywhere and nowhere , you're just everywhere and you're an ingredient in many , an important ingredient , a critical ingredient in many things , but you don't have the luxury of having the budget or staffing muscle to drive that out yourself .

You have to be an effective person who can drop in to meetings , have the instant credibility , have the presence of mind to process a lot of different opinions and listen to a lot of different data points and be able to connect the dots before other people do so . You can lead an organization in a specific way , right in a specific direction .

And this person has . They started out really devaluing . The influencer role just felt kind of dumb to them . It felt like not as fun , it felt not as important , it felt not as fulfilling as the roles they had that were more in their control , right .

What they've learned over the last couple of years is that there's tremendous value and they actually learned that they're quite good at being an influencer and they quite like having the breadth of purview and impact on the business . So they've learned to value that part of the business .

That took a bit of work for us to kind of recalibrate how they thought about that .

But what they're still struggling with is that because they're everywhere and in all of these different meetings they're interacting with so many different groups and people , most of the time who are struggling to solve a problem , so the energy of the rooms they're joining can be challenging , sometimes adversarial , right , either towards each other among the team members in

that room , or to her , the person who's the influencer trying to help right , who's dropping in from a different function and not everyone always welcomes you into the room when you're an influencer .

And we were talking about it , and she was talking about just the general post merger organizational malaise and the heaviness of the organization and how it's struggling , how it's constantly shedding jobs , how long-tenured employees are getting laid off and employees with the newly acquired company are not necessarily being laid off but they're waiting for different stage

gates , for their options or their retention bonuses to vest so that then they can leave . And this happens . If you've been through mergers and things like that , I know you can probably relate . So she was just like it's just at the end of a day .

She's like I feel exhausted from all of these different meetings and the different energies of these people and sometimes I just feel like I can't do it one more time , right ?

And so then we were talking about all the ways that that can show up in the rest of their life , like how it makes it difficult for them , when they come home from work , to really kind of be there for their partner , their children and also just having the energy to do all the other things they want to do with their life .

Even , like she described , recently taking a vacation and just not having the energy to really put the effort into it , even though you know for them it was a very long planned , exciting trip to Europe and she felt like she just sort of plotted through it and just went through the motions and didn't really even enjoy it because she was just so energetically

drained by the week she'd had before she left , right , and then the dread of what the week was going to be like when she came back . So I don't know if you can relate to this . I think it's not just our careers where it can show up .

It can definitely show up in any part of our life and happen in the reverse , like maybe we have a perfectly fine job and we've got lots of stuff going on in different parts of our life and sometimes we can bring all of that energy with us to work right .

So obviously it isn't great to feel like the way you feel is at all dependent on the people that you're interacting with and it really , I just want to say , doesn't have to be . Sometimes it doesn't feel that way .

Sometimes it feels like , whether it's your family or friends or even colleagues , where you're trying to support them or work on a business or personal initiative . It can be a situation where you just feel like attaching to someone else's negative state feels inevitable . It feels like what kind of a person would I be if I don't empathize ?

And then if I empathize , then I take on that energy , and I just want to say that it doesn't have to be that way , that there's a difference between empathizing and expressing support and trying to listen , to understand or to probe , to ask questions so that you understand someone else's perspective .

There's a difference between that and taking on someone else's energy . And so one of the things that I spend some time coaching this client and another another client had something very similar going on is that you need to learn how to put on what I call organizational blinders , like . When I think about this , there's a couple of metaphors that come up .

One of my favorites is I really like to use selective focus in situations in business , because I think there's so much going on in a business day , the people you interact with , the problems you encounter , like all of the stuff that I like to just say focus on what you need to do right now and let the rest of it blur Right .

So it's like the selective focus on a camera , where the camera has technology embedded in it that allow it to disproportionately focus on this one point in the visual and the rest of the image is a secondary .

It's slightly blurred so that the focus of the photograph is on this one object and there's another way to look at it and it's kind of in the animal world for horse racing .

They put special equipment on the horse I don't know what it's called , but you know sort of to block their vision so that they look straight ahead , right , and they're not distracted by what's going on in the stands or what's going on with the horse around them . They're just really focused on the race ahead of them .

And I think we all need to learn how to put the organizational blinders on or how to do organizational selective focus Very important to the quality of your day , especially at midlife , when most of us are in roles that are more demanding , maybe higher level , a lot more responsibility , like my clients , like in an influencer role , where they're literally dropped into

any and every meeting across the company , depending on need , in order to assess and steer and drive . When you have that kind of a role or you're in any sort of a leadership role , you can't afford to be distracted by a lot of noise . And that really is what it is .

It's other people's noise , it's organizational noise , and I'm not saying when I say that , I'm not saying it's not real , I'm not saying it's not something that needs to be addressed , I'm not saying that it's not valuable or important , but I'm just saying you have to be able to steer yourself purposefully in a way where you stay centered , no matter what noise is

going on around you . And I will say , like the first trick to doing this is just understanding the difference between you and the other energetic fields that are going on around you and I don't want to sound too woo , but we all have an energetic field . You need to learn the discipline of staying within yours .

Again , it doesn't mean that you're narcissistic . It doesn't mean that you don't care . It doesn't mean that you don't express empathy . It doesn't mean that you don't listen . It doesn't mean any of that .

It just means there's a difference between listening to understand , between asking probing questions , between interactions and letting someone else's malaise or negativity or negative energy attached to you . It's a choice , but we don't always see it as a choice . We think of it sometimes like my client was this week as inevitable .

It's like , well , I just can't be in this environment of all of these people , with all this negative energy and the breadth of people I interact with on a daily basis and not have it attached to me . And my response to that was yes , you can . This is a learned thing , right , and it starts , like everything starts in our life , with awareness .

So I think it starts in the morning , every morning , by deciding what energy you're taking into your day , by not just rolling out of bed , getting ready for your day and letting your brain take over and thinking of all the meetings in front of you and how hard they're going to be and the miserable people that are going to be at the meetings and how you wish

that you didn't have to go right . That is not starting out your day with intention . Starting out your day with intention is to not worry about the items on your agenda yet , but to instead just decide who you're going to be that day . What's the energy you want to take into your day .

What are the thoughts you need to be thinking in order to bring that calm , collected , cool , emotional state into your day ? So it starts with you , no matter what you're gonna be facing that day , because you've gotta go into your day with that kind of intention and purpose and focus .

And then , as soon as you walk through those doors or as soon as you get on your first Zoom call , you need to hang on to that energy . No matter what , no matter what anyone says , no matter what anyone does , no matter what happens , no matter what rumor you hear about , no matter what announcement is made , no matter what . You've gotta hang on to that .

That's where the selective focus and the strategic blinders organizational blinders come into play . It's very important , especially the higher up you go , because others are looking to you . Like in the case of my client , she doesn't have , in this particular company , a huge organization she leads .

It's rather small and lean , but her impact is felt throughout the organization , at many levels of the organization , in an almost every functional area , on a daily basis .

So what I talked to her about was because she was spending a lot of time talking about how much this company is struggling post merger and just the sheer volume of layoffs that are unwanted by the people getting laid off and or the people on the acquired side who are in some cases , leaving at different stage gates when their retention bonus is vest .

Right , and that happens right . And she's just talking about the lack of organizational focus and how difficult it is to be in her role as an influencer and trying to galvanize an organization around something that she doesn't really directly control .

Right , even if they buy in , she's gonna be pulled back out and she'll be in some other initiative two hours later and she leaves the team to bring her thoughts and idea to fruition .

It's a tough role to be in and out of different initiatives and not directly responsible for driving them , and it can be frustrating if you're a person who likes getting things done , because your way of getting things done is redefined when you're in an influencer role .

It's a beautiful thing and I think it's an important role to have within different companies and it's an important and gratifying role to be in . I've done both of those things . But when she was talking about the difficulty , it's very real .

I'm not gonna tell her that it's easy , but the only way to be able to not be affected by what's going on with everyone else , given how many people she interacts with , and the only way to be at her most effective in that influencer role is by the organizational blinders .

She simply can't take on other people's stuff , and so the advice that I gave her was obviously start your day with intention . Always , do not allow yourself to fall into the habit of checking your email first thing .

Looking at the day ahead of you , dreading it , your mind can kind of take over and start to play out all these like what ifs and I wish I didn't have to do that and all this stuff . And it's much better to start out with purpose and just decide what's your day gonna be ? What energy are you bringing into your day ?

What thoughts do you wanna have about the things that you have to drive that day ?

Not about the people who are gonna be in the room or the inevitable pushback you expect to get , but about what do you want the takeaway to be and how do you have to show up to be at your most powerful , at your best right , and then , once you have that energy and you're in your day , you walk through those doors .

You need to stay very aware and a lot of times , like when , in the moment of our corporate life or even in our personal life , it's really hard to catch the thoughts that we have and we've talked about on this podcast .

Everything starts with our brain , with what we're thinking , right , and that what we're thinking leads to how we feel , and how we feel leads to the things that we do or don't do , and then the things we do or don't do lead to the results that we get in our life or our career .

And so it's hard in the moment when you're in a meeting and it's a difficult meeting and you've got all these data points coming in and all this pushback going on around you and you're trying to influence and drive , it can be really hard to catch your thoughts because your brain's moving really fast .

But my advice and this is a very real thing that I practice as well is to practice some mindfulness techniques . In that moment You're probably not gonna be able to your mind's already working really fast to try to keep pace with everyone in the room , all the pushback , all the stuff , all the problems .

You need to kind of rein it in emotionally and just get in touch with how you're feeling , and one of the best ways to do that is when you feel yourself getting angstful , when you feel yourself getting frustrated , when you feel yourself feeling resignation , any emotion that's on the more negative side of the feeling spectrum .

You need to know that you wouldn't be feeling that if you weren't thinking something that was on the more negative side of the thought spectrum , because that emotion came directly from what you're thinking . You just couldn't catch the thought . It was moving too fast , right ?

So one of the best ways to get in touch with this if you feel yourself feeling angstful , take a second and it really does just take a second to do a quick check-in . Be silent for a minute .

You can't be the one doing all the talking anyway in the meeting , and one of the best ways to do this and this is gonna sound really woo-woo , but it's my favorite thing to do in a meeting is shift your energy from what's happening with all the people around you , just for a minute . Half a minute doesn't take long , and there's many ways to do this .

Some people do breathing techniques or whatever . My favorite thing to do is to shift your focus intentionally to the weight of your feet on the floor . It's not distracting , no one's gonna know you're doing it , but it's the best way for you to stop the freight train of your mind and to get in touch with what you're thinking .

Just for a second , shift your thoughts when you feel yourself getting angstful in a situation . Shift your thoughts to the weight of your feet on the floor . Just for a second , feel your feet in your shoes , feel your feet on the floor .

It's just a technique , a mindfulness technique that allows you to basically a brain hack , to grab back control so that you can stop the freight train of your thought and get it back to where it was when you got out of bed in the morning , when you decided what you wanted to do and be that day and the thoughts you were going to need to channel it .

Whether that thought is something like I've got this , I'm clear and steady , headed , whatever you want to say to yourself , to bring yourself back to center so that you can then reengage with the conversation in a way that's calm , cool , collected , centered , no matter what is going on . This works in a one-on-one with a director report .

This works in a large group meeting , where you're trying to stay calm and centered and focused in your points despite chaos happening around you . This helps also in a passionate discussion , heated discussion , with your significant other . This helps when you're dealing with a teenage kid at home . This helps , no matter what

. This is a way , a hack , to take back control of a runaway brain that's been affected by the things going on around you the energy , the things people are saying . It allows you to calm that noise and bring it back to center .

Bring it back to you because whenever we're feeling pushed off center , whenever we're feeling depleted or anything , it's because we're not staying in our energy . We're allowing our energy to be dispersed and hacked into by other people , and the way to avoid that is by just bringing it back to yourself and intention . So that is what I wanted to talk about today .

It is a great technique . I know it sounds a little woo , but mindfulness techniques work and the great thing about it is it shows you that your brain isn't really the one that's in charge . We can give our mind , we can seed control to our brain and let it just run on automatic pilot .

But for most of us , as we've talked about in many different episodes , in many different ways , letting our brain just respond automatically to things isn't probably going to end up in a place where we want it to end up .

Most of us have a brain that is going to default into more negative thought patterns , more thought patterns that I would just say don't serve us in some way , and the way to stop that is by recognizing when it's starting to happen .

And the best way to do that especially if you're in a situation where there's a lot going on or there's a lot coming at you , is by taking back control , and a mindfulness technique or hack is a great way to do that . Like I said , some people do breathing techniques . I love the feet on the floor because nobody knows you're doing it .

It doesn't take any time at all . You just recognize oh , I'm starting to feel kind of angstful or negative , or I feel like I just want to tell this person to do whatever , and it's like instead , just focus on your feet on the floor for really 15 seconds . It doesn't take long at all .

Feel the weight of your feet in your shoes , feel the weight of your feet on the floor and then go back to the thought that you wanted to think at the beginning of your day and channel that . Tell yourself that , give yourself a minute to try on that thought again and that's going to ground your energy . Pull it back in and then you can reengage .

No one's even going to know this happened . They're still going to be fighting with each other , probably , or whatever , like doing whatever they were doing . You can still stay calm and centered , though , right ? That's your choice and it's about you learning the mental trick to really stay on top of what's going on . I have to say the one last thing I'll say .

If you haven't watched it yet . I think you guys all know if you listen to this podcast , I'm a huge . I can't city she's fans .

I'm a huge NFL fan , have been for 35 years and there's a new Peyton Manning produced series on Netflix called Quarterback , and they feature , of course , patrick Mahomes , but actually I've fallen in love with the Vikings quarterback and his wife , like their little family , is adorable . I love them .

And what was interesting I bring this up only because Kurt Cousins is his name and he they may all do this , but they featured him doing it he , what do you call it ? Neurofeedback ?

It's a neuroscience based device and technique that he uses with his coaches his performance coaches to hack his brain , and it's all about helping him stay very calm in the middle of chaos and like , if you're a quarterback in the NFL Peyton Manning was talking about it in the setup to the series it's like , and you've got 300 pound linemen trying to kill you

every play , you have got to be calm , right , and so that was a fascinating thing , and so that's what I want to leave you with is , like these people who are at their peak , high performance people , are learning techniques to help them stay centered , you know , to help them stay in their energy , no matter what is going on around you .

So for Kurt Cousins , no matter how many 300 pound linemen are trying to kill him on any given play , he's focused on staying calm and leading his team down the field . Right , you can do the same thing in your day , whether it's with your family , whether it's with your business or whether it's in your corporate life .

It's a choice , and I would say it's a learned technique , and we can all learn this . It doesn't matter how far down the path you are . I started practicing this four or five years ago , and I wish I'd known this three decades ago . My whole life , I feel like , could have been different , you know .

So it's really , really important and , just to recap , always start your day in an intentional way . How do you want to show up ? You know , decide that , decide what you want to be thinking in order to make that possible . Right , what's that thought you want to hang on to ?

That's going to channel the feelings of confidence or calm or whatever you know authority that you want to project that day . And then , when you feel yourself in a situation and you're feeling angstful , take a minute and interrupt it . Interrupt that thought , because that's really what it is .

It's your brain taking over and responding to all the chaos going on around you Other people's energy , other people's words and reign it in Focus , on your feet , on the floor , just for a minute . Try it . It works every time , but it requires you to stay very aware of when those angstful emotions are rising in you .

That's when you know it's time to practice that , because you want to reground yourself . You want to take back , control your brain and stop letting your brain respond and start deciding , re-deciding how you want to show up and then channel that thought again .

You'll find yourself back in that emotion of calm , centered confidence , whatever it is you want to protect and move forward . So that is the best way to stay calm , cool and collected , no matter what's going on around you .

It's very important to have tools that keep you centered in your life , because you know life isn't easy , and just when we think it's under control , there's another new , delightful little challenge that comes our way , and so we want to have the tools in our arsenal to be able to set our agenda and be able to get through our life in a way where we're not

constantly having to buffer from feeling drained or bad or whatever on a daily basis , and it is 100% in your control . This is something you can learn and practice , and the mindfulness techniques that I shared on this episode are a great way to do it . Try it in your next situation , whether it's with your family or in a business situation .

I think you'll feel a lot better in the course of your day and a lot more in control of your emotional state and the quality of your life , and that is what I wish for you . So I hope you found this episode helpful , and with that , I'll leave you till next time . Make it a great

week . My friends , do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach . I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at thepurposefulcareercom backslash next level .

Don't forget the purposefulcareercom backslash next level . Together , we'll make your career and life everything you dream of . We'll see you there .