When standing at the edge of the grave of a loved one you realize all you have is the strength of the relationships of those who are standing with you. Wishing you owned a better car, or a better house does not enter your mind. Wishing you had spent more time at the office is not part of the thought process.
We leave the funeral thinking about life and enter the grieving process. A necessary process of acceptance and adjustment which is different for everyone. As we adjust to life without our loved one, we gradually face the flow of a new life with an adjusted perspective. The flow of life and the living returns. We hopefully move into that flow with an adjustment for the better.
Why is stress increasing?
In 6 years of teaching leadership courses to adults from many organisations I have seen a rising constant. That is STRESS
The challenge to get balance in life seems to be harder and harder to achieve.
As I sit with a group of adults on the first day of their 12-month leadership course I am impressed with their commitment. They usually have children at home. They often have just been promoted to there first leadership position. They are often promoted on their technical ability not on their capacity to manage.
However, these are the lucky ones who have been given the opportunity to learn some skills, gain some insight and gather some knowledge. They are also in my opinion quite brave. They have a great deal to cram into each day.
The challenge of managing stress
As we develop a relationship on the face to face days, the cohort relate to each other the challenge of managing the stress. The challenge of managing a family, work responsibilities and studying. The amount of support they receive from the workplace that supported their attendance at course varies.
These people are lucky because they hear from each other about managing many demands. They validate each other and determine a path through balancing health, fitness, a mortgage, rent, kids activities, KPI’s monthly targets and assessments.
As they discuss how they will fill their family and work buckets I tell them about standing at the edge of the grave.
I provoke them to think about what is important.
From time to time we need to stop and;
‘think about whatwe are thinking about’ Dr Joe Dispensa.
There are seasons when we need to work hard and jam more in to achieve a specific goal.
Before a Jiu Jitsu competition I need to train harder. Just the other day my wife and I discussed how she was going to manage her work and the requirements of her Te Reo (Maori Language) course. Her solution was to request reduced work hours to allow attendance at the weekly Wananga class. She determined she would study for the entire evening on the nights I was coaching Jiu Jitsu. On the nights I was not coaching we would have our meal together and give each other attention before she began her study time.
Managing stress
We must all juggle. It is important to ensure the work bucket and the life or family bucket are both filled.
Let’s take a moment to review the other end of the work equation by looking at an intense program of work adopted by a man called Nick Bare. He wrote a book called,
25 Hours a Day – Going One More to Get What You Want.
Nick Bare is the founder and president of Bare Performance Nutrition, a performance nutrition and supplement company. After graduating from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science majoring in nutrition,
Nick Bare served four years active duty as an infantry officer in the United States Army. He also completed the legendary US Army Ranger School in 141 days, about double the usual time a candidate normally takes. In his spare time while stationed in South Korea, Nick Bare worked on building Bare Performance Nutrition which he had started in college as a passion project. He ran the company from a one-room army barracks while he continued to work full-time in the Army. Today, Bare Performance Nutrition has a multiple seven-figure annual turnover.
“Embrace the suck” is a term that gets used a lot in the military. If you look around service life, there’s a lot to complain about. You can either spend your time complaining about what a raw deal you’ve been given, or you can say
“Yep that sucks. It is what it is.Let’s get to work and find our way forward.”
“I first heard the term’embrace the suck’ in 2009, when I was in the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in college. It struck a chord in my head. I knew it was a military term, but I adopted it on the spot. I’ve continued to use it in business, in life, in my personal stuff, while working out. I literally apply it to every aspect of my life. I promise, if you adopt it, too, it’ll have as amazing an impact on you as it did on me.” – Nick Bare
While in Korea and away from family and friends Nick bare decided to use his spare time to build his nutrition company. He used his time to learn all he could about the business he was trying to build. He watched YouTube videos listened to podcasts. His schedule was crazy. This was his typical day,
0400 Wake up, talk to US manufacturers, handle any customerservice requirements
0600 Morning meeting with company leadership
0630 Army PT (physical training)
0800 Film some YouTube videos in the on-base gym
0900 Report for work
1700 Workday concludes
1730 Film some more workout material for YouTube
1900 Dinner
1930 Do more YouTube filming and begin editing
2100 Watch online courses on digital marketing, branding andsocial media
2300 Hand-write thank-you cards to customers who placedorders that day
2400 Finish YouTube filming and editing, upload the releasefor the next day
0030 Sleep
Wow, that is a big day.
I am not sure how long you can sustain this, but I have had a periods in my life when I have adopted a crazy schedule to achieve my goals. It is possible and you can make massive changes. I love the Navy Seal saying,
‘When you think you are done you are only 60% done’
When training for a Jiu Jitsu competition my coach often runs what he calls the shark tank. You are in the middle on the mat and you fight 4-minute rounds with a 1 minute rest for 30 minutes. Each round you fight with a fresh partner. The times I have done this I have been amazed at how long you can keep going. It is a great deal longer than you think. You finish a round gasping for air with your muscles spent. The new opponent begins their attack and your body responds. It is grueling but a great way to see that you can go further than you think.
“The mind will take you where your body won’t. It’s a simple concept, but one few people truly understand, or put into practice. Those who harness the power of adversity, who seek out difficult experiences rather than retreating to lives of comfort, those are the people who will achieve what they want in life. Embrace the suck is a bit of a slogan, but it’s also a reminder that life is like weight training: our muscles grow stronger as an adaptation to the stress we put them under when we work out. Life is nothing if not a workout on a grand scale.” – Nick Bare
To all the people who have been on my leadership courses I salute you for going the extra mile and embracing the suck.
I hope to live a good full life. I have made mistakes, big mistakes and got back up. The endeavor is to learn reset and move forward. There are times when I think of my loved ones who have passed on.
The adjustment to the flow of life is there, it is present as is the endeavor to live with balance and to achieve. Sometimes we need to push hard to take the quality of all aspects of our life to another level.
Sometimes massive effort is needed to reset our lives to reduce the amount of stress we are facing. We need to look after the Life bucket and the work bucket. We need massive effort and recovery time.
Embrace the suck but look after the buckets
