Working towards success and achieving emotional freedom within our professional lives is what many of us strive to achieve.
On a recent episode of Bond Appetit, Ronsley chatted with the self-proclaimed ‘accidental entrepreneur’ Paul Smith, about developing a successful business whilst keying into and managing the emotional aspects that come with the territory.
Here are some of the key points from his discussion:
How To Steer Away From Failure
Success and failure tend to go hand in hand. According to the natural order of business, you’re in either one camp or the other. So how can you pursue success and achieve sustainability?
One word – adapt. Be agile, almost mercurial in the way you manage oncoming challenges. Your brand’s ethos should remain, as it’s the crux of your business’ identity, but you shouldn’t fear leading your company in a different direction to stay relevant.
Train Your Brain
Paul willingly admits that he has imposter syndrome – a thought pattern that a lot of us can relate to. For him, it stems from his school boy days where he was taunted, mainly because of his towering height. This verbal bullying had instilled a sense that he didn’t deserve his successes, that he wasn’t good enough. In order to combat this in later life, he had to train his brain to think otherwise and stop those negative thought patterns from seeping into his business life.
Being present is a phrase that is often associated with yoga, but this technique is also great for positive thinking in business. It’s a method of fully appreciating the moment, staying focused on a task and alleviating external distractions. It allows you to process and take in the successful and challenging moments as they are happening, therefore you can recognise your worth and value moment by moment.
Labelling Boardroom Emotions
We’ve all been frustrated at work, something angers you and you find yourself harbouring on it for hours. So, how does inwardly concealing these emotions in the workplace effect important outcomes? According to Paul, if you have frustrations or a negative experience prior to a meeting, masking those emotions can bring your cognitive ability down by 70%. Taking that emotional baggage into a space where you have to make big choices can jeopardise your decision making. Not only do we have to implement mechanisms to better ourselves individually, to be the best version ourselves, but also we also should try to achieve it collectively.
Paul suggests jointly recognising these emotions by implementing a check-in system before a meeting. As a collective, you can then label what you are all feeling and address them. With all of you contributing, the decisions you will make may not be perfect, but they will be better informed and rational.
Our negative emotions can direct the decisions we make in life. In business, it can hinder our productivity and judgement and lead to possible damaging outcomes. By tuning into your emotional state periodically, and addressing any pain points, you can begin to move towards a healthy positive work environment.
Listen to my entire conversation with Paul Smith here.
https://mustamplify.com/bondappetit256/
Author: Ronsley Vaz
Ronsley is the founder & chief day dreamer at AMPLIFY. He is an author, speaker & serial entrepreneur.
He has a Masters’ degree in Software Engineering and an MBA in Psychology and Leadership. He is known as the creator of We Are Podcast – the first Podcasting Conference in the Southern Hemisphere, and the host of The Bond Appetit Podcast and Should I Start a Podcast. He has an audience of over 3 million in 133 countries.