Latest / From Stuck to Scaled: Growth Strategies for SMBs / Adaptive Leadership in the Age of AI
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to From Stuck to Scaled Growth Strategies for Small and Midsized Businesses. Your guide to navigating growth, transformation, and success in today's ever-changing business landscape. Each week, we'll dive into proven strategies, real-world case studies, and actionable insights designed to help small and mid-sized business owners scale smart, lead stronger, and grow faster. Let's get you unstuck and on the path to sustainable, scalable success. Now your host, Julio Gonzalez. speaker-1: Welcome back to From Sluck to Scale. In today's rapidly evolving landscape, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence, the need for adaptive leadership has never been more critical. As leaders, understanding how to leverage our personal skills and professional knowledge while embracing change is essential for not just survival, but for thriving in this new era. Our guest today is Pat Smith, a men's high performance coach dedicated to empowering driven men to achieve professional success without losing their authentic selves in the process. With a wealth of experience coaching everyone from Fortune 500 executives to professional athletes, Pat merges insights from corporate sales and advanced education under Dr. Joe Dispenza to offer a unique approach to mental performance and emotional mastery. We'll explore how leaders can harness their personal skills and adaptability. To navigate the rapidly changing landscape brought on by AI. Pat's expertise in conscious leadership will shed light on the importance of awareness, understanding patterns, and maintaining focus in a world full of distractions. Get ready for an insightful conversation that will equip you to think differently and thrive in the age of AI. Let's welcome Pat to the show. Welcome, Pat. speaker-0: Hey, thanks so much for having me in here. speaker-1: Tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself and your business. speaker-0: Yeah, real quick background story or just a little bit about myself. Originally from Northwest Indiana, moved to Charlotte, North Carolina when I was still working in the corporate world about five years ago. Left my full-time corporate job, well-paying corporate job in outside sales, late October or late 2022 to move into full-time coaching and which are what I've been doing now almost full-time for four years. And my primary is focus is to help men develop the mental and emotional skills associated with handling. work and life's demands and being able to show up as a better leader, not only for themselves, but of course at work and at speaker-1: That that is amazing. And it sounds like you've coached a lot of people, right? You've touched on, you know, Fortune five hundred executives, pro athletes. What's a common thread you see in these high performance that leads them to burnout? speaker-0: Well what I find oftentimes is feeling like they have to do so much with so little time and as a result they actually challenge almost hurt themselves or challenge themselves in the process by doing so much. And so what I find is their inability to slow down, which for many of them can seem very counterproductive, is actually one of the biggest areas for growth. And I like to use always I'm I'm always focused on analogies because they're easier to figure out. But I just mentioned you're not going to run your car at, you know, max RPMs all the time and expect for it just to keep on running fine. So you have to slow it down. Get the proper maintenance, give yourself time to refuel, do the tire rotations, all that good stuff, and then you can keep going. But if you don't have any of that and it's just just go, go, go all of the time, that works. And that's the problem. They've seen that it works, but they don't see that it doesn't work forever. And then when they get to that point, their car's in the shop for a really long time and it dismantles them, things at home, and it takes more time to rebuild than if they were just to take the periodic maintenance. of slowing down in the meantime. And it doesn't mean taking three weeks off at a time. It could be five minutes throughout the day just to reassess to get themselves back centered, going from meeting to meeting, from home to work, work to home, and all of those different areas. speaker-1: I I love that slowdown. in my in my last W two job, I had to start using this Cuban slogan or snor or whatever the t proper term is. the direct translation is mom, dress me slowly. I'm in a hurry. You know, so if you think of, you know, when you have kids and you're trying to hurry up and you know, stick an arm in here and you know, the faster the more you know you try to rush through it, you know, the harder it is. And and the same thing, you know. tends to happen in life. And that slowdown is is exactly what what that reminded me of. Cause sometimes you do need to take a step back, you know, and give yourself, you know, some breathing room to get things done. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. And I like to position it as well as they don't realize that they're really oftentimes operating at about 75% of how great they could actually be. And so I think of it as just a numbers game. You're operating and you want to get all of these things done at 75% of your capacity, and you wonder why time becomes so challenging. Now imagine if you had that same amount of time, but you're at a hundred percent, it would be easy to argue that you could get more done in less time. Right. Wow. What a what a revelation or breakthrough. But when you've been taught or conditioned yourself to be one way for a really long time, which is the work that I like to dive into when I work with one on one clients, is start to pull them threads on where do they learn that it has to be that way? And if that could be dismantled and we could create a mindset shift around five percent, and that five percent saves them ten, twenty, thirty hours a month or a year, what can you do back with that? Right. I want to be more present with my kids. There you go. Gift granted. speaker-1: And talk a little bit about the fallacy of multitasking, right? Because we all think we're we're doing five things at once and we're doing them all great. You know, that just compounds on top of that that time block. speaker-0: Yeah, well, you know, we've learned as in the studies show that for instance, multitasking is just task switching really, really fast to the point that you think you're multitasking. So and they also share that it takes a roughly around, I believe it's 22 to 23 minutes to re-establish focus. So again, you're at half focus for a million different things. If you can take one area to just be focused in one area for a little bit of time, which is challenging and all the distractions that we have going on, we have email notifications popping in. You know, I'm here in my home office and I have landscapers at the neighbors next to me cutting down trees. I've got that going on. So if you hear that in the background, that's what you know. Right. You've got you've got social media that when you're bored and you're waiting for your cloud to upload, you're like, Well, I'll wait for it. And then I start scrolling. And and at that point, you've done a million different things and you've never really gone anywhere. And so that's what I really want to hoc focus in on first and foremost. That's like the surface of it all. People think they have a time management or distraction problem. But somewhere along the way, oftentimes I ask them, what feeling are you trying to avoid by not just being able to take one thing at a time? And that to them can be a big eye-opener because for many, it's just I can't have boredom. Well, what happens if I'm bored? If I'm bored, I'm not productive. If I'm not productive, then that means that I'm not doing something right. But you've determined all that up here. And so it's really dismantling a lot of those layers in a way that could actually benefit them. And again, It takes them to slow down, to think through it, to write it out, to get, you know, get familiar with it, to then take the appropriate action. Otherwise, they oftentimes just build more habits and more behaviors around that same pattern. And it's what I would consider it's like building a new house on a shaky foundation. It can last, but then when the storm hits or life shit hits the fan, excuse my language, that's what ends up happening. It just it collapses. speaker-1: I I find that I have to consciously give myself permission to to slow down and and maybe, you know, not be as you know ha have have as much performance today, you know, as I did yesterday. And and that's okay, right? Because it isn't all about, you know, pushing forward. Sometimes you just have to let things, you know, cook a little bit. Sure and and you wait for that to happen. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. speaker-1: And now you you know, you throw AI into all of this, right? We keep hearing about, you know, job loss and you know, you can be so much more productive with with AI. so the pace of change has completely, you know, just double tripled in in speed. So how do you work with your clients on change, on AI? speaker-0: Well, I would say, you know, we want to keep this in the context of what we've been going on, right? AI and I believe the stat is every I don't know if it's every six months or whatever, AI's IQ is continuing to double. And right now it's per surpassed or is about to surpass the smartest person to ever live. And it's gonna keep going. And so the idea is that change is happening so rapid, which we're not gonna be able to slow down anytime soon. So if we reverse engineer that and ask ourselves, if we can't slow down the change, what can we do to help ourselves? Which is to be more receptive to be able to change, to be more adaptable. Now, if I'm running a million miles an hour, I'm constantly anxious, I'm constantly overwhelmed, internally that signal physiologically is saying that I'm being I'm running away from a lion, right? Or a tiger or whatever the animal is. In that moment, are you really willing to take in new information and try anything different? No. And so it's not so much about the information or the pace of change, it's about harn harnessing how can I bring myself down to be coherent enough in my brain and in my heart nervous system to be open to receptive to be willing to change. Because for most, it's so scary. Change. I have to, you've heard it. How many times have you heard people, you know, if you're doing business consulting or anything? Well, we've just always done it this way. And how's that working for you? So it's They have to be receptive to change, but change feels like this. It feels tense, it feels unnerving, it's uncertain. So if you can learn how to calm themselves to be to to be okay in the uncertainty, that allows for them to actually come up with the solutions and needed to be adaptable. So we train around how to understand when is your mind going there. And you know, we've in the Jodas previous corporate training stuff that I did with Joda Spenza. I mean, they do brain mapping scans where you can see someone's brainwave patterns. And if they're going way too fast and going so fast that they can't bring in or interpret any new information, that's not real helpful when everything is changing. And so we can teach through whether it's meditation, through understanding specific triggers, for how long that what we would consider our refractory period goes on. So when an emotionally heightened event goes on, how long we allow for that to deter us. or how we can understand it, process it and come back to baseline. And when we can teach that, that gives them an opportunity or a leg up in business, even with all of the rapid change within AI. speaker-1: So do you coach your clients to us any specific, you know, time blocking methods or or how do you help them break down you know, their their time so that they can focus? speaker-0: Well, I would say the first thing is like we can utilize, I don't I'm not so much on the strategy and the tactics of you need a time block here and you need to prioritize, but I will say, hey, let's take a look at what are the big rocks in your life that are most important. Throw those in your calendar. Then if you start saying yes to a bunch of stuff, you automatically already are you're asked to do a bunch of things, all different things, networking events, extra dinners with other friends. You have a filter on these are my priorities and I need to stick to it. So instead of time blocking, I just say put those big rocks in your life that you know that are most important to you. And you often have to just be boring and do those handful of things. Otherwise, you are pushing yourself back into that high RPM throttle, if we will. so that's one thing that I share. The other thing is when we do and teach about specifically around meditation, it's really training the body. To be okay with a level of uncertainty or a level of can I be okay in what is considered the unknown, if you will, or what's going on all around me? Because when I slow down, many people, their mind goes a million miles an hour. Rightfully so. They go a million miles an hour in their life. When they are pulled away from having some of that stimulation, their mind fabricates it. And so we can teach through meditation and other things as well. If you can learn to slow that down and give your body a taste of what's that what that is like, just like any muscle, over time, it says, I see Pat five minutes every morning. He intentionally says, This is how I'd like to be all day long. And eventually over time, it starts to take note and says, we can do that. We can, we can manufacture that type of feeling because it it's doing it for you anyway. So why not use it to your advantage? And so that's what I I work to share. And You know, ironically, I was on a conversation with a a client of mine a couple of days ago, and they let go of one s SVP and he was over three departments, and so now all those department heads are reporting to the COO. And he said, I'm more I've got more on my plate than I ever have. And, you know, he's he's of Jewish background, so I believe the Jewish holidays are coming up here and not too long, and he's got his son's bar mitzvah and all these things. And I said, What do you need most? And He said, I need focus. But he was remiss to be willing to do a couple exercises that would actually train his focus because that felt like going the opposite direction. And so what I reminded him was just like anything, there's a little bit of an investment up front. But if you can start to train your focus by five to 10%, similar to what I shared earlier in the conversation, and that begins to five to 15 minutes a day. saves you five hours a week to ten hours a week. It's like saying, hey man, I'd I'll give you five dollars for twenty five. okay. You know, it's like it's just those type of things. And so I really want to I really try to h I work to highlight that. And I don't ever force it on them. I just get them to come to the conclusion. And then if they're like, I see how that could work, then I will offer that solution. But what I've learned in coaching is if I'm solely directive towards a person, you should do this. You should do People need to come to that conclusion for themselves. Absolutely. I can help I can help provide that with open ended questions, with affirming the things that I see, with asking those reflective questions and of course those summaries as well. And in doing so, okay. So what would be a great way to do that? Now they're already bought in, this would be a great solution. This could be something you could try. But if they just wanted the information, they'd use Google. So that's what I see the difference in like a lot of the coaching that I do. compared to what I see a lot of other coaches, you know, even thinking fitness and nutrition and some of these more like kind of like not transactional but like very easy things. you need nutrition, here's a meal plan. Okay, but that person didn't change who they were and their behavior change. And they also didn't really come to you wanting to change and you just gave a quick fix, which it doesn't always work because you're you're just putting a band aid over what I consider a bullet hole in that realm. And so it's just it's just an interesting thing that It takes a little bit of dismantling stories on why individuals feel that they need to operate in that lane and why they can't slow down. But when they do come to that realization and you give them some of them tools, it's like boom, transformation ends up happening. speaker-1: As part of your coaching, do you end up I guess getting into, you know, your customers identity? yeah. Because when I'm working when I'm working with with business leaders and, you know, I'm doing more now in the mergers and acquisition space, one of the challenges that I'm finding is some of these entrepreneurs who have had their business for twenty, thirty years, they don't want to sell or they're afraid to sell because they don't know who they are. at this point, right? So when I sell my business, which is my identity, who am I? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So how how do you see, you know, some of that, how do you coach on speaker-0: Well, I one love to chat with you even more beyond this conversation about that, because that is the core of what my work is. And you asked about the time blocking and in the meditation. Those are great, but those are all up here. And as we know, the real transformation happens down below, the identity side of things. And so what I like to do is I like to go in and I take it through a process. I just was on a podcast yesterday and I was explaining it. It is three it what I consider the four R framework. Reveal, release. Rewire, then rebuild. I need to reveal and dig up all of the unconscious things that I believe about myself based off this one thing. So I you always again analogies, always using analogies. Think of like our mind or our identity like a garden. To reveal, I first need to analyze, take inventory on what things are not going to serve me moving forward. Okay, so we we really have to work through that. Then we need to release. So we need to once we have identified. How do we actually take individuals through the process to pulling those weeds out, pulling the dead roots, pulling the things that aren't going to serve them in whatever direction they're going? Then once all that's removed, then of course we have some fertile soil. Now we can rewire or rebuild plant seeds all on top of that. And in doing so, now they can realize, wow, I do have way more about me than I realized. But with all of this underneath, if I kept trying to add on top, This was going to keep overgrowing that and it wasn't gonna, right? Which is why many of the guys who ultra successful and I've worked with guys who run billion dollar companies and the one thing I hear them say is, well, I just I can't experience joy. Well, you've conditioned yourself not to be able to experience joy. I asked them, do you remember times when you were joyful? Yeah, I do. When I was da-da-da. Okay, so you can experience it. You just haven't let yourself experience it. So then we rewire on how how would that look? And then, you know, that's incerning new beliefs and understanding new patterns and how that would work. And then finally the rebuild process, garden analogy, that's the sun, that's the water, that's the plant food, that's the nurturing. How can I create that's where I would say more of those tactical things? How can I create my schedule? How can I create my environment? How can I create my support system? Rebuild the thing around me to help me keep embodying what I just rewired. So I don't go back to that old identity because really that old identity is tricky. It's like a fishing pole rod. It casts it out there and it just waits for you to slip up. And then guess what? You start thinking, maybe I should start another business, even though you left that other business because it was causing you so much stress. And then once you start going down that rabbit hole, it starts reeling in and thinking in the back of its mind, I gotcha. And so it's, you know, it's really funny in that way. But yes, that is that is the core of that. What I really like to dismantle, whether they are Transitioning from, you know, I was just talking with the guy who left his corporate job and now he's starting his business, whether it's entrepreneurs are doing things for potentially proving to other people why they're doing it, or they're transitioning from something new. If that identity isn't lost, it's gonna keep showing up in ways that it seems like a different problem, but that's got the same underlying tone. So when you can walk them through that in coaching sessions, and it's never Three weeks here, three weeks here, three weeks. It's so personalized because for many, actually, you spend a lot of time in the reveal and release. Cause if you've been doing something for 20 or 30 years, you have lots of patterns to uncover and to let go of and to understand and to actually feel. And many of those are stories, which I really like to get into the specific moments. When did you realize that you had lost yourself in pursuit of business success? What was that one moment when you were sitting With everything around you, your whole family at Christmas, and you have this amazing life, and you're not happy. And when they can get themselves to that moment and really live that, and actually not just intellect intellectualize the feeling, but feel that feeling, it gives themselves a little bit of like a somatic release in a way. And to me, that is where the true shift begins because I think of them like emotional anchors. This guy's trying to go forward and he's got 50 of these big 50, 60 emotional anchors on his back. He's running full speed that way and he's trudging along. But then when we release a lot of these cut out, he feels I feel lighter. Things feel easier. Things are starting to work. I'm not working as hard, but things are getting done. And that's the counterintuitive, weird approach that I take that I have seen time and time again work. But it's getting people to realize that that is what is actually needed, versus just adding more stuff. If it was all about working harder and new strategies. Why were they not where they want to be? Because they already worked sixty or eighty hours and they've tried everything under the sun. And so that's it it just can blow my mind sometimes. but when guys are actually ready, like we talked about earlier, committed to change and saying, I what's done is done, I'm drawing a line in the sand, I need something different, and they come to me, I mean, things can start to shift in a matter of weeks that I've seen. speaker-1: So you're listening to From Stuck to Scale, then we're speaking with Pat Smith around coaching really high performance individuals is what we're talking about. so Pat, you know, how do some of these, you know, unconscious patterns or repeating patterns show up for these individuals, be it in decision making, delegation, you know, 'cause I I've you know, my personal life I've seen, you know, some of those patterns show up in very negative ways, you know, as a business leader. So how do you see it in And how do you coach them through that? speaker-0: Well, one of the areas I'll just use an example. I've I've seen where there's times where and a leader they keep saying, well, no one's the right fit. No one's the right fit. Every time they get a new person in, they fire them, they get a new person, they fire them. And so I often have to be somewhat blunt and challenge them in the best way possible, especially if they're a leader. Who's I wouldn't say leading the leader, but who's challenging the leader? Hey, this happened 10 times in a row. What part of it are you actually playing in a role? Because they think that I they need to be up here and they need to have the same buy-in around my business as me. Well, that typically isn't gonna work because they don't have all the risk associated. So their buy-in is never as high as yours. So, but lowering their standards means maybe they have a story around if I lower my standards, then things aren't gonna get done. And so I really just get them similar. Hey, remind me of what happened. Write out the story of when you hired that person and how you fired them and why that happened four times over and where that's left you. Those specific moments, I don't even have to I take that back. I get to guide them in allowing for them to see that for themselves because when they write it out and do the three step, four step process, which is really write it out, read it out, read it out slower and read it out and breathe to give it the space, they will come to their own conclusion and the realization will be staring right in their face. And so when I coach them through it, it is guiding them through some of those processes. But again, I'm not saying, hey man, you're the problem. Well you should do the X, Y, and Z. I want them to see that for themselves so that they can come to that realization. And in doing so, it gives them an opportunity to try a different action. And when they do, they see, wow, I should have did that five hires ago. And so it's just, it's just that. And there's many other ways, of course, how it can come up, whether it is releasing control because they don't think anybody can do it as well as them, again, more of like a perfectionist thing, feeling like they can never slow down and a lot of times because they're tying their entire worth to their success, which to me that's that's like your life as a pup. You're basically handing your l strings over to life and you're and you're the puppet. Everything things happen. This is how you how you go. And instead, when you can learn to take that ownership back and notice all those areas you're doing it in, you feel so much more grounded in a way where, hey, wow, my business has a bad month. Yeah, that happens to every business that's ever been in history. Cool. Can you be okay with that and not let it derail you so much? And as a leader, if you're doing that so much, how available you are to your team or even to your family or for yourself or for the growth. And so it's teaching them in a way, how can I continue to dismantle some of these unconscious patterns so that they don't keep reoccurring? And again, it's really just getting them to get some of that stuff out on paper, reading it, getting them to breathe through it, getting them their nervous system to get acclimated and feel safe for long enough to come to a clear solution. Cause truthfully, we all know what we need to do. It's just There's so much cobwebs in front of us that we can't see it for ourselves. But when you can help them clear those out and give some some space, things to start to actually, you know, begin to actualize and become realizations. speaker-1: In your clients, do you see a lot of challenges around negative self talk that is maybe getting in the way of their performance and and their ability to be successful? speaker-0: Yeah, one hundred percent. And I'm I'm getting ready to do a workshop this afternoon with men's group. It's out of the gentleman who runs it's out of Weston, so he's not too far from you. And yeah, speaker-1: Talking about speaker-0: yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yep, good friend of mine. I'm in that group as well. you yeah, you already know him, Joel, great man. And we're doing this workshop and one of the things that we always share, negative self-talk. How many times a day am I focused on all the things that I don't have? all of the times where I'm not where I want to be. And in Miami, when you see all the comparison, it's pretty easy. Or Miami area, Fort Lauderdale, I'm sure as well. That being said, yes, every time I do that, I am stamping my mind and telling myself, I'm not good enough. I'm not where I need to be. And instead of me even wanting to talk that way, my mind, my reticular activating system is looking for more of that. Just like when you buy a brand new red sports car, they're all over the place. No, there's not more of them. You're just paying more attention to them. So I see this car. And before, instead of me just everything's neutral in life, right? We make the meaning assigned to it. When I see that red Ferrari or whatever it is that's your dream car or house or whatever it is for you, and you see that, instead of it just seeing for an amazing car, you see it as I'm not there yet. And then you see that and you see that and it piles up and it becomes what their mindset is. So they don't really want to have that self-talk. Most don't, of course, but we can work. Towards understanding what are the language patterns that I use and one of the exercises, and they could do it here while they're watching and pause, but I often say, just write out, I have a problem with blank. And how many times and how many variations do you see that or think about that throughout the day? And then if you cross that out, again, meanings, cross out problem and write in opportunity. I have a problem with time management. Well, I'm gonna look for all the ways where I suck at it. And then I'm gonna cross that out and put say I have an opportunity with time management. I'm gonna look for all the ways that I can make it work. It's as simple as that. The words are amazingly helpful. and so I think the self-talk is very challenging. However, when we can again step back just for a second, which is what we're gonna do in the group session later on today, step back, get them to write that out and see that. Automatically there's an emotional state shift. I have a problem with this, shame, upset, frustration. I have an opportunity. I'm starting to think clearly. I'm a bit more optimistic. How crazy could that be? So it's it's just really getting them involved in some of this. And the best part about some of that work and and some of the processes that I like to do in my coaching sessions is I know for guys, we love to take action. And I've been in therapy and I still am doing premarital counseling. I'm getting married next year. been together with my fiance, my amazing fiance for we've been together for nine years, engaged for six or seven. And while therapy is helpful, it's a lot of talking. That's okay. But for guys, we want to take action. We want something to do. And so you can give that to them in the session. And then the little homework or assignments in between is watch how much you keep using the word can't or don't or won't. I can't get that done. That doesn't work for me. You know, that won't ever work. That won't happen to me. That that doesn't happen in my life. And and just trade that out. And the easy part is you do this a lot. We use words a lot. Text, email, social media, conversations, conversations in our head, so much more. And yes, they feel small in stature, but I feel well they're mighty in impact, is what I often say. Because There's so many. It's just like, you know, the analogy of like taking an axe to a tree. It's like, yeah, one hit isn't going to do anything, but if you do it a hundred times a day, those trees are going to fall down and things are going to get dismantled. Like a your confidence, your ability to have vitality, your ability to have conviction when you're in a business meeting. Cause I keep telling myself that enough. And then I wonder why I feel imposter syndrome are so anxious going in. Well, I've told myself I'm not great at it a million times. So I've believed it to be true. And now I go into the meeting and I fall short and now I've reaffirmed that belief and now it's even stronger. And so just giving some of these little tactical things that are action oriented to me can go a really long way, specifically for men. speaker-1: Yeah, and for me I I learned 'cause I I went through a course, won't get into it, but you know, they had us write down our affirmations and yeah, every day write your affirmations out a hundred times or what and it's like yeah, total waste of time for me. And if it finally hit me that I need to verbally say whatever is going through my head because when I hear myself say something, it completely changes yeah, you know, my my perspective and you know, after the the recording I'll I'll give you a story. But you know, I I need to hear it because sometimes, you know, you say something and when you hear yourself say it, it's like, that was dumb. Why why am I even thinking these things? but for me it's very different to hear it than to just write it out. speaker-0: Well, and and it comes that that blends even into a lot of the understanding of how do we create learning. And if I just read a book and all of a sudden I read a book about becoming a millionaire and I was a millionaire, that doesn't work. I need to learn it one way, I need to then apply it, I need to apply it six hundred other ways, and now I start to have this model of understanding. I think of it as like a cluster. Okay, I read it, cool. I read an affirmation, cool, one one drop in the bucket. I wrote it. Okay, even better. You're getting your body in movement. I hear myself, which the body takes notes. Like when we speak, the the Aramaic word or definition for abracadabra, with my words I create. So as I speak, with I speak, I create. If I say that out loud, now I'm creating that cluster to be stronger. And then I say, Man, I am really making progress. And then go I schedule another meeting and close a deal, and I take a moment to settle that in. Now I've created that cluster to be stronger. And that's how I feel, that's why I feel a lot of affirmations run short. It's just, okay, read these 100 a day. Okay, but reading them and taking action on them, that's where I would say, no, and some of the spiritual stuff I do feel has its place. And I, but one of my mentors, he always mentioned, you have to mix the woo, woo-woo, with the do. Okay, I can believe in all the frequency and all that stuff because some of it is science-based. But I have to take the action. I don't just meditate a hundred hours a week and all of a sudden my life changes. You're gonna feel some shifts for sure at 100 hours a week. But you wanna pair it with something so that it can get your mind and body working in unison. So then now it becomes that unconscious program. And it's the same thing with tying our shoe. It's great to intellectually know how to tie your shoe, but when you get your body to do it and you do it enough times, I don't even remember last time I tied my shoe because it becomes so automatic. We can train that same thing in a lot of our other behaviors, then when life is going crazy, stuff hits the fan, kids are going crazy, your beer work is busy, if you know your default and that baseline is that strong, doesn't matter. But when your baseline is all over the place and you just intellectually know it, but don't have your body to do it unconsciously, that's when things begin to fall apart. speaker-1: And talk to me a little bit about distraction. you know, we we're you know, and we talked a little bit earlier, you know, you've got the phone chiming and you know, I'm watching emails popping up and my eyes, you know, going off the corner of my screen and stuff. You know, how do you how do you help them break through those distractions? You know, do some self regulation, you know, focus. 'cause if if If you can just at least turn off some of those distractions, I think that that would be, you know, fantastic. But, you know, there there's that internal self regulation portion that has to happen too. speaker-0: Yeah, well there's there yeah, it's two sided in that realm. And well, if I when I run some of the, you know, I do a 31 day challenge similar to Joel as well. And when we do those challenges, what I'm one thing I often ask them is our I I one of the challenges I say is your information diet. And what I mean by that is all the things you consume. So one of the first things I often say is, what's your first 30 minutes of your day look like? Emails, text notifications. Red badges all over the phone stimulating my mind like crazy. And now I wonder why my mind can't slow down. 30 minutes phone free in the morning. Now I give them a caveat because I break that rule. Full transparency. But the way I break that rule is every night before I go to bed, I always open it to the app, which is the meditation you that I typically use. So I do use my phone, but it's always on airplane mode, and I have no notifications that pop up on my on my lock screen. And the only badges that ever show up on my home screen are text messages and phone calls. And I am very OCD that there is very rarely any red b badges. So I use the 30 minutes because I use my phone in that way, but it's on airplane mode. There's no distractions. I'm using it with intention. Now, I'll highly recommend to do that if you're going to use it for something valuable. But if you're just giving yourself that level of stress or stimulation to start the day, you're already at a disadvantage and the the phone has got you hooked, just like that fishing line. It's like, all right, another morning, let's see if they catch on to it. got him. Now we got him all day long. Cause we've already started. We've trained our brain that this is where I need to be. So that's one. And the emotional regulation piece of that is just being okay with detaching yourself for 30 minutes to know what it's like to be 30 minutes of non stim like not stimulated. regulated even when you're awake. Okay. Yeah, it's easy when you're asleep, your your body regulates itself and you slow down naturally because hopefully you're not doing too much while you're sleeping and maybe you are waking up, but neither here nor there. But giving yourself at least 30 minutes, just a little block of the grand scheme of 24 hours to be regulated while you're awake, that to me is super helpful. And then in the moment, tactics. So I always say just come back to your breath. It is very difficult if you are truly Truly focused on your breathing, that it is hard to overthink something when you're paying attention, right? It's we just talked about multitasking. If I'm solely focused on my breath, I don't switch back and forth because I'm focused on my breath. And one of the easy ones that we talk about, and it's even been studied in with the Heart Math Institute, if you're familiar with Heart Math, but they talk about coherence. And so really it's about how does your HRV stay. In a regulated pattern for an extended period of time. And they've measured measured a specific breathing pattern that allows to send physiological signals to the heart to slow down. And when that slows down, because there's a mirror between your heart and mine, 18 inches, whenever this slows down, this slows down. So people say I overthink a lot. Okay, what does it feel like in your body? Heart's beating out of my chest. Okay, so let's not worry about the overthinking and let's just focus on the somatic part of it, which is a five-second inhale. in a five second exhale, but the two keys are breathing in through your nose and out through your nose, which s stimulates the sympathetic parasympathetic response. And then all of that air, you want it to push and be shunted, if you will, into your heart and chest area. Because what it does is It's giving that civ s physiological signal to the heart to say, Hey, it's okay to slow down. And if you do that for a minute, the I mean, the body doesn't want to live in fight or flight. It knows that it heals and recovers and operates better in this slow down mode. Now, we may have conditioned it to be addicted to that upper upregulated pattern. But we can condition it to slow down. And when that slows down, this slows down and I can actually clearly focus. But if I just breathing you know, chest up shallow breath that stimulates anxiety. I need to do more things and get more done, which means I need to open my email and while that's loading and Claude's sending that email, I need to be here. And and then, you know, my fiance who works, you know, down the hall in the other office and is screaming at me and the dogs jump. It's just endless. So can you train that? And when you can, I see that it really creates abilities for leaders, specifically men, to Create a competitive edge, not that everything needs to be to comp competition, but if we want to get to head, more information isn't the key. We have access to every single thing we can think of at our fingertips. So it's our uniqueness, it's how we operate, it's how we show up, it's how we can be adaptable. And the people that are more adaptable to me are the ones that can withstand their level of success for much longer than individuals that are operating in an old way in a new time. speaker-1: So Pat, if a leader is listening and they want to build more self-awareness, you know, what is one concrete starting point for them? speaker-0: Well, we talked about it a little bit earlier, but if we want to just do something that they can do on their own is just to monitor how they talk, monitor their language patterns. And so that's a broad okay, monitor my language patterns, but what am I looking for? So we want to give them some concrete examples. So we have four main distinctive patterns oftentimes. You have soft talk. So how often am I using, well, I'm kind of gonna get this done. I guess I'll do that. I'll probably, maybe today. One day I'll get to that. Hopefully, potentially. Just notice those because what's happening right then is you are automatically giving yourself an out. There's lots of ambiguity. I kind of want to work today. I kind of don't. What are you going to do? Well, it's up to me. And then then they wonder why their motivation wavers. Well, there's just no com conviction in that. So that's the first one. Soft talk. Kinda probably, maybe guess. One day, hopefully. Okay, you can monitor those. Negations. I can't get anything done. This doesn't work for me. It won't ever happen for my life. Right away, you're right. It's not going to work because you keep telling yourself it's not going to work. It's the famous Henry Ford code, I believe it is. Whether you say you can, whether you say you can't, both are obviously true. It just depends on which one you believe. So if I can't get it done, if it doesn't work, if it won't happen, your mind is going to continue to confirm or reaffirm more of that. So you have soft talk. Negations, then of course we have projections, challenging ones here. She made me feel that way. He did that to me. It it it upset me and frustrated me so bad. And in that moment, we are giving the agency and ownership on how we think and feel, which is ours to choose, to someone else. And the challenging part is when we do that, knowing just we talked about this in the conversation. I can't change you, Julio. You can't change me. So if I can't change you, but I gave you the ownership over how I think and feel, and you keep doing crazy stuff all all of your life, I'm at the mercy of that. And so we can change that. So instead of if I'm using she, they he she made me feel this way, he did this to me, it needs to be I. Because you're also playing a role in how you're allowing for it to impact you. And then the last one is what we would consider absolutes. So that's the fourth one, and that is. Things never go my way. This always happens to me. Every single day I get screwed in my business. Okay. And right away they are limiting themselves to only be able to see more of those areas. And so if we can monitor the soft talk, the negations, the projections, and of course the absolutes, we realize how much we limit ourselves just by our own doing. We are participating in our own suffering in a way. And so For guys, just watch that. Just notice that. If you want to if you're on a Zoom call, transcribe the Zoom call and look for them. You could plug it into AI if you don't have enough time. Tell me where I'm missing all four of these components and how often I use them. Start to change a little bit of those. Life's transformed. speaker-1: And since so much learning is forgotten, if they remember or if our listeners remember just one thing six months from now, I rem I remember I heard this podcast. What's that one thing that really needs to stick with them? speaker-0: Great question. It goes back to what we just shared. It's that your words and your language are highly powerful. And that those words and language eventually create a story that you start to live by. And that story becomes your mindset, and your mindset is involved in every single thing that you do, and it's going to dictate your life. So if you want to change your life, start to focus on your words and fart start to focus on your mind and where that goes. So if you can do those things, it's just a matter of time. before the physical reality catches up to the things that you begin to change internally and your external life begins to shift. speaker-1: And Pat, where can our listeners find you? speaker-0: so I'm most predominant and most frequent on Instagram and the tag is Pat Smith Wellness, all one word. And then I'm also on LinkedIn as well. And I have a couple of YouTubes that individuals can share as well. So I'll share all those obviously with you in the show notes as well. speaker-1: Awesome. Well, that is our show. special thanks to Pat for all the wonderful insights. I learned a lot today. I'm sure our listeners learned a lot. and it reinforced a lot that that I've heard over the years that we have to keep reminding ourselves, right? 'Cause I think that's another thing. You know, we we run so quick that we don't reinforce and you touched on that. so today was a great reinforcement for me. So thank you so much for that. And to our listeners, if you found value in today's conversation, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with your network. Let's continue to grow together on this journey from stuck to scale. Until next time, I'm encouraging you to lead with purpose and adaptability. Thanks again, Pat. speaker-0: Thanks. You've been listening to From Stuck to Scaled Growth Strategies for Small and Midsized Businesses, produced by Opticution LLC. For more information tools and resources, check out our website www.opticution.com slash podcast.