The People Builder

Are you someone who's reflective and open to candid feedback or do you tend to have a lot of blind spots?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around going beyond COVID-19 and developing our Emotional Intelligence by talking about the critical competency of Accurate Self-Assessment.

I know myself in my own life, particularly in my military and in my corporate career, I found it challenging to listen to feedback. I very much resisted feedback and a lot of times that was because the feedback actually lined up with what I was thinking about myself anyway. And it's something that I didn't want to face up to.

You see, feedback, if it's taken and you do something with it, it means that you've got to move forward. It means that you have to put some stuff down and you have to, now that you've got rid of that baggage, lead those excuses behind and do something. I'm not sure whether you are someone that likes feedback and quite often people will say they do until you start giving them some. But getting feedback from situations around us and from other people is critically important if we're going to be emotionally intelligent.

We all have blind spots, things that we can't see or in some cases won't see that are holding us back from being who we need to be to get the results that we want to have. Whether that is in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic or at any part of our life. We can also become very competitive sometimes. This is also a roadblock to being able to navigate and be emotionally intelligent when we're over-competitive with others. Where we feel that if we get any feedback or if we stop and reflect, then we may not be where we think we are or want to be and everything is a competition with people.

We have that one-upmanship going all the time. I see that quite often when I'm looking at comments on social media or on people's blogs or whatever, where someone will be talking about something, but then someone will jump in on the comments and they will one up them by going, "Oh yeah, this happened to me." So instead of contributing to the conversation that was being had by the person who put the post up, they take it down another tangent.

And here's the problem with all this. We become unteachable and stagnant. I believe that you're either green and growing or you're ripe and rotting. So if we're going to be able to accurately assess our strengths and our limitations so that we can up-skill where we need to and leverage the strengths that we have, we need to get feedback. We need to seek help from others.

Now, the first thing we need to understand is that getting help from others is a strength, not a weakness. When we ask for help, when we ask for people's ideas, their perception, it tells them that we're interested in what they've got to say and it tells them that we are human, we are real, that we make mistakes just like they do and therefore they can help and be a part of our learning journey.

It's all about incremental growth. So, it's like a plant when it first enters the ground as a seed and it's in that good soil and it's watered and it seems to take a little bit of time, but then it pops up. But then we keep watering it, we keep having the sun on it, we keep nurturing it and it grows a little bit more and then it grows a little bit more and then it grows a little bit more. I'm not sure if you've heard of the story of the bamboo tree, but it takes forever, years to come up out of the ground and then it shoots up many, many, many feet in the air once it's done that.

So as we become okay with getting feedback, we can be secure in that and know that not everyone's out to get us. It's not a competition. We don't need to be better than anyone else. It's just about where we're at in our journey. We can then be a lot more collaborative and we can work with others and our relationships grow and it's a lot more fun. And the key to this is continuous improvement. As I said, we're not in a race, it's not a competition with others. And it's been said many times, and I agree with this, that all I want to do is be a little different to the version of me yesterday.

So whatever I learned from the feedback that was coming in from my results, from what was happening around me or from others means that I can just take another step towards the person that I want to be. The key to getting to that point is the competency of Emotional Intelligence called Accurate Self-Assessment. And what I want to do is just unpack this week, what this is and why it's so important.

Accurate Self-Assessment is knowing your strengths and your limitations. It's knowing what you're good at, what is your genius and what needs some work. When we are accurately assessing, we have a great start point. There's been many times in my life where I've pretended, that old saying of “fake it till you make it” is not something that I would recommend. It's about being accurate to go, "You know what? This is where I'm at and therefore I need to grow in this area", rather than go, "No, no, no. I'm further down the track than I really am", and then put yourself under a lot of pressure and expectation to be better sooner. So, let me just unpack some key principles around this that will help you to be more accurate in your assessment.

The first one I've talked a bit about already and that is asking is a strength. A lot of people feel that if they ask others for help or they ask others' opinion that they're going to get it. And if they ask people, then they're saying, "I'm less than, I need you", and it's not the case. It's a strength to go, "Hey, I'm teachable, I'm humble, I'm really, really good at this stuff, but I need some help here".

For me, I need a lot of help around things like getting these videos and podcasts up to you. I am okay at getting in front of the camera and I'm getting better with that all the time as I learn and I grow and get feedback and I ask for help from other people, but I've got a team of people behind me who put this all together and do the technical stuff and I ask for their help so that they can get this information out to you. So, that's the first thing.

The second area is to be open to insights. Be open to what you might discover if you are looking for feedback. If you are looking for signs, signals, clues, evidence to say, "Hey, this is what you're good at, this is what you could work on". So, being open to that needs a belief structure that says it's okay not to be perfect. It's okay not to seek approval from others. And next week, we're going to be talking about the competency of Personal Power. And that's where we really are going to work on those beliefs. However, right now I want you to understand that when you are open to seeing what might be holding you back, then those things will appear and they will illuminate for you the next part of your journey.

The third one is that it needs to be a defensive-free zone. So when we're looking for feedback from what's around us or from other people, we need to do it in a way that we're not concerned about what we're hearing. We're not needing to be defensive. A lot of times people go, "Yeah, I love asking for feedback. I love people giving me feedback.", until you give them some, and then as soon as you start giving them feedback, they go "Hang on" and they're defensive. So to do this, we need to operate from our logical brain. We need to realise that feedback is just collecting information rather than allowing it to be down in the emotional brain where we feel a certain way because they've said that about us.

The other thing is that we need to realise that what other people tell us is their perception of reality. So when I'm working with individuals or with organisations, teams, to teach them how to get feedback in a manner that's going to be good for you and for the people that you're asking, we go through a process where we ask for the feedback first and then we actually listen and we listen in a way that is non-defensive. It's, “Yeah, come on. Let me just get this information from you so that I can process it in my logical brain.“

The next point is that getting feedback is a forward-focused analysis. So, what we're doing is getting feedback that's going to help us on the journey ahead rather than getting feedback and then letting it take you back into past failures, past memories, past beliefs, and give you further evidence that you're exactly the person who you feel you are.

You can see my demeanor drop as I did that and I did it on purpose because we dropped down into the emotion of it, but feedback is for two reasons. One is so that we can celebrate the strengths and the wins and we can take learnings from those and use going forward. It's also to work out what we're not quite getting right. What could have some improvement, what not to do in the future, what to do more of so that we can then once again, as we're going forward, we can use those lessons.

And the last point that I want to get across to us is that it's all about being a lifetime learner. It's all about, as I said before, you're either green and growing or you're ripe and rotting. It's all about being a lifetime learner that says, “I am humble, I am teachable, I am not perfect, and that is never going to be the goal.” There are people that know stuff that I don't and there are things that I know that others don't and we and they may not need to know, but I'm going to learn consistently throughout my life.

And the key for that working for me is when I realised that I am best to be a just in time learner rather than a just in case learner. So it's not about just putting heaps of information in there, it's about what do I need to know right now for the next part of my journey.

So, there's some principles that'll help us to be more accurate in our assessment of our ability. See, people who are reflective and open to candid feedback, develop an inner awareness of their strengths and their limitations. So, they take on things that they are confident about and they get support and help within their limitations.

A great tool to help you to work out your strengths and your limitations is the Johari window. If you haven't heard of the Johari window, just Google it. And you'll see that it about the fact that there are things that we see about ourselves that others don't, but there's also things that others see that we don't, and they're our blind spots. And then there's also things down in the subconscious that come up at the most inopportune times usually that we might need a coach to bring up and to work on and hopefully I can be that for you and help you as we're going through this.

Accurate Self-Assessment is a critical competency of Self-Awareness. Self-Awareness is the first quadrant of Social and Emotional Intelligence. I'm really excited right now in this time of COVID-19 to have invested a lot of time in the studio and put together an online course that helps you to become more self-aware and work on these competencies that we're talking about and in a way that gives you exercises and activities so that you can then work on those, building those muscles of Emotional Intelligence rather than just get the information.

If you're interested in knowing about that, there's links here and just follow what we're doing. Emotional Intelligence is one of the critical keys of being able to navigate COVID-19 in a way where we can stay in the logical brain, where we can control our thoughts, where we can recognise when we are catastrophising or when we are thinking, saying or doing things that are not going to give us the results that we want.

So, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue our journey through the Self-Awareness quadrant of Emotional Intelligence by starting a conversation around what I believe the most critical component of Emotional Intelligence, and that is Personal Power. I'll see you then.

Knowing which emotions you are feeling in the moment and why is the first step in being able to express them appropriately. Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and this week, we want to start our journey in the competencies of Emotional Intelligence in the area of self-awareness by looking at the first competency, Emotional Self-Awareness

You see, many of us suffer from emotional blindness. It's like we’re walking on a wet floor with one of those signs that says that it's slippery. Someone's just mopped it or whatever it is, and we didn't see the sign. And being emotionally blind can create us to slip and fall. We have fluctuating feelings that like being on a roller coaster, we're up and we're down and inappropriate reactions to what we're feeling. After a period of time, that's pretty draining and we feel like we're running on empty. But it doesn't have to be that way.

When we develop our Emotional Self-Awareness, we can get clarity around which emotion we're feeling in that moment and what it's telling us. We can go into emotional flow where we feel it, we pass it through the logical brain, and we respond in a measured way. And that gives us a position of balanced empowerment where we're listening to our gut, we're listening to our heart, we're listening to the way that we feel and then we're processing it in a logical way. And to do that, we have to develop Emotional Self-Awareness.

Emotional Self-Awareness is recognising your emotions and the effects that they're having. The effects that they're having on your thinking, on your self-talk, on your behaviour. So, let's have a look at five key ideas that we need to understand around this before we get in, roll up our sleeves and develop some Emotional Self-Awareness.

Right here, right now, whether you're listening to this on the podcast, whether you're watching it on my YouTube channel, whether it's on my website, in my blog, right here, right now, you can come with me on this quick journey and develop a skill around your Emotional Self-Awareness.

So, the first thing is that we need to expand our emotional vocabulary. There are over 2000 words in the English dictionary alone that describe an emotion or emotions that we could be going through in any moment, and we use about six to 10. We’re either happy or we’re sad. We’re frustrated, we’re angry, we’re fearful, whatever it is for you.

So, the first thing we've got to do is recognise that before we can manage an emotion, we need to make sure we know which emotion we're going through. So, managing anger is different to managing confusion or frustration or disappointment. So, we need to expand our vocabulary around the emotions that we could be going through.

The third thing is we need to listen to our body. Our body will tell us in physical ways when we are experiencing certain emotions. It's like when I'm getting frustrated, I tense up. If I were to be getting angry, the back of my neck feels a little bit hot. If I'm feeling fearful or scared, I've got this empty, funny feeling in my stomach and you know that you have those physiological things happening in your body at the same time as well, depending on what the emotion is. So, we've got to learn to listen to our body. So, it's not just about making a guess, “I'm going through this emotion.” We can actually pinpoint and know which emotion we're going through.

The next thing is to recognise patterns. So if regularly we experience this emotion around this type of circumstance that creates that type of behaviour, that's a pattern, when those patterns can become ingrained in our neural pathways. So, we need to understand when those patterns are taking place. So, that'll give us a lot more information and data that we can play with and tweak and adjust to create a different behaviour.

And number five is we need to go deeper for clarity. So what I'm saying there, instead of just recognising the emotion and seeing it at a surface level, we need to be able to ask ourselves a series of questions that we'll go deeper into giving us clarity around why that makes me behave that way, why that makes you do the things that you do, why that creates that reaction. So, there's five key things that we need to understand when we are developing and building our Emotional Self-Awareness.

So, let's roll up our sleeves right now and I want to give you an exercise that you can do that will help you to go through those five principles we just talked about and become more emotionally aware. Social and Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of our own emotions and the emotions of others in the moment and then to use that information to manage yourself and manage your relationships.

So, step one is about being aware. So, one of the exercises that I take clients through, and we will have this also in the course that we're currently developing, is an exercise where you do a timeline. The key element of this exercise, the key outcome is to create a regular pattern where you stop in the moment at certain parts of your day and ask yourself, “What is the emotion I'm going through right now?”

Now, I don't know about you, but no one ever taught me to do that. So, step one is label the emotion. So if I just react or I, on the fly, just keep going with it without actually going, “Well, hang on a sec. What is the emotion I'm going through right now?”

Now, you'll remember from last week and probably the week before, it might've been, that I taught you how asking “what” questions will bring a logical answer. It'll light up the neocortex instead of getting into too much more of the emotion and going down into it. So, what is the emotion I'm going through right now? Now in this exercise for the moment, let's put aside worrying about or considering why I'm going through it. We just want to identify the emotion.

Now, the thing to understand here is we can be going through more than one emotion in any given moment. And paradoxically we could even be going through the negative and positive emotion around the same thing.

So, I might have a friend who has passed and they've been really, really sick and in pain and I might feel sad that I've lost my friend. I feel sad that they've left their wife or their children or whatever that situation is behind. But I also feel happy and joyful around the fact that they no longer in pain, that they've gone to a better place and they're no longer experiencing what they went through in the last stages of their life. So, you can be going through just like me, more than one emotion at any given time.

So to start us off, let's just consider one. So, what you can do is start when you first wake up in the morning. So when you wake up, instead of reaching for your phone, reach for a signal and go, “What is the emotion I'm going through right now?”

Then when you're having your breakfast, what's the emotion I'm going through right now? When you jump in your car, if you're still working away from home or if you do the commute from the kitchen to your office like me, what's the emotion that I'm going through? What's the emotion you're going through mid-morning, lunchtime, mid-afternoon? When you first get home, after dinner, when you're getting ready for bed.

So, using those particular milestones in your day, just stop. Ask yourself the question: What is the emotion I'm going through right now? When you do that, what I want you to do, if you want to go deeper on that, is if for example, you used an emotional, you came up with emotion like I feel good or I feel okay or I feel tired, which is more a physical state or I feel hungry. I want to challenge you to go a little bit deeper and go, “Okay, yeah, I'm feeling hunger pains, but how do I really feel? How does that make me feel?”

So, the first step is to recognise the emotion that you're going through in the moment. And that exercise will then help you to build that vocabulary and recognise in the moment the emotion you're going through so you can then regulate the correct one.

The second thing we can do when we're recognising emotion is, as I talked about before, is we can go, “Well, how do I know that I'm going through that emotion? How do I feel physically? What sort of self-talk is going on when I experienced that emotion?” And stopping and recognising those things and reconciling that will help you when you go through those emotions. So, why don't we want to do all that?

Well, here's the key. What I love to help people to do is instead of waiting until we get to an emotion which is really strong and it's ingrained in a pattern of behaviour that is unresourceful like anger, we want to be able to recognise the pattern of which emotions I normally go through on the way to anger. So, building your emotional vocabulary and your Emotional Self-Awareness will help you to be able to regulate the emotion in the moment.

Well, that's it for me for this week. Join us next week where we'll have a look at the second competency in the area of self-awareness, Accurate Self-Assessment. I'll see you then.

Do you have total clarity around the emotions that you're feeling in the moment and why or are you confused and not sure why you're feeling that way? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation about going beyond COVID-19 by going a little bit more in depth around the topic of Emotional Intelligence.

Right now, there are a lot of emotions that people are experiencing and they're experiencing those emotions in an uncertain environment. As we talked about last week, the way that the brain works without emotions is that it can trap our thinking down in the emotional brain, the limbic brain, and it can stop us from making good decisions up in the prefrontal cortex, in the logical brain.

When we're experiencing emotions and we're not sure which emotions we're experiencing, let alone why we're experiencing them, it can create a feeling of overwhelm. So, what I want to do today and continuing on next week is I want to go into this topic of Emotional Intelligence.

Just recently, I was blessed to be named the Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year, and I get to travel the world and work with people around developing their Emotional Intelligence. The reason why I'm so excited about that topic is for most of my life, I didn't even know what Emotional Intelligence was, let alone have the skills, the competencies that come in that area.

As I developed in my own life, in my own career, I saw the need to develop these skills. And right here, right now, being able to identify what's going on in the moment, take those thoughts captive, bring it back to logic so that we can make great decisions and remove ourselves and move forward from fear and anxiety into faith and certainty. I'm going to teach you about emotional self-awareness.

Here's some of the problems that we experience on a daily basis. The first thing is that we have blind spots. Have you ever been in a car and all of a sudden a motorbike or another vehicle just whooshed past you and you thought, "Where did that come from?" It came out of your blind spot. You weren't able to see it. And when that happens with emotions, it can give us that same fright and that same feeling of, "What's going on?”

And not knowing what's going on in the emotion in the moment is like navigating in the dark. It creates challenges of collision and conflict. It's all about not seeing the signs. It's not seeing the cues and emotions are signals to let us know that something's going on. By the way, emotions last for only a small period of time. What we make of that emotion, what we make it mean, what we do from that emotion is what carries it on and whether it creates resourceful or unresourceful behaviour, but it doesn't have to be that way.

When we develop our Emotional Intelligence, we see the signs and we understand them and we can make adjustments and it gives us a start point to know where to go. It's like having a roadmap to follow. It's like having our nav in our car and maps on our phone that says, "Go up here." "Turn left." "Go here." "Do that." So, it takes the emotional and puts it into the logical and allows us to navigate with confidence, whether it's through a pandemic or any part of our life. To do that, we need to develop our self-awareness competencies.

Now, self-awareness is the first quadrant of Emotional Intelligence and indeed the work I do is around Social and Emotional Intelligence. So, we've got self-awareness, we've got self-management, and then we've got social awareness and relationship management. So today, I just want to introduce us to the topic of self-awareness. Let's just talk about some key ideas and key principles around self-awareness before we get into how to build it.

So, the first thing to understand is the diagnosis is critical. Many years ago now, about seven, eight years ago now, I lost this thumb to a melanoma cancer. Before they could come up with that diagnosis, I had to get them to have a look and to go through a process and do a biopsy and all those things. And then I got to the realisation that if they didn't remove the cancer and sought out lymph nodes, those sort of things, I was going to die.

So, diagnosis was critical before they could bring the solution and it's the same with our emotions. We've got to be able to in the moment go, "Hey, what's going on right now in my emotions?"

The second thing to understand is it's good for you and it's good for others. Being emotionally aware, knowing our blind spots, being able to navigate our emotions in a healthy way is a little bit like the spoonful of Cod liver oil that my mum gave me as a child. Apparently, this stuff was great for gut health and I had to take this and let me tell you, it didn't taste really good.

And sometimes, the self-awareness feels like that. We know it's going to do us good, but it might not taste good because we’re going to have to realise things about ourselves that might be a little bit uncomfortable because it goes against the normal.

The third key thing is that we need to look for strengths. We need to look at, "Well, what am I already good at?" What is it that I can identify in my emotions and that I'm able to navigate through instead of just looking at it as an exercise of going, "Oh, let's find out what's wrong with me"? Because there's nothing wrong with you. Emotions are a good thing. Learning to navigate them is a skill, something that can be learned.

The fourth thing is we need to ask others for help sometimes. We need to be able to get other people's opinions because if you've ever heard of the Johari window, there's things that we know about ourselves and there's things that others know about us. And sometimes we don't know what they know. We don't see what they see or we choose not to see it. So, we get people involved in helping us with that.

And the fifth principle in anything that I teach and in particular in this area is awareness by itself is of no value. We need to press the start button, we need to use that information and we need to use whatever that signal is telling us to move forward in a logical, resourceful way. So when we teach and we work in the area of Social + Emotional Intelligence and in the self-awareness quadrant, we deal with three competencies: emotional self-awareness, accurate self-assessment and personal power. And those three competencies form a foundation of Emotional Intelligence.

So over the next few weeks, what I'm going to do is I'm going to step you through and give you some tips on how to build each of those competencies. And if you're serious about this and you want to be able to regulate your emotions in a healthy way, make sure you come on the journey.

My team and I are working really hard right now in this COVID-19 period to create something that is of great value to the marketplace. And what I do hasn't changed, but how I do it has. And I'm developing an Emotional Intelligence online master class series right now and the first part of that will be a complete course around developing the competencies of self-awareness.

So if that's something that you're interested in, make sure that you follow the journey and we'll tell you when that's ready. But right now, I just want to keep adding value and keep giving you these tips and I'd love to see your questions. I'd love to see you come back and tell me your insights, what was most valuable to you.

And I will take us on a logical sequential journey over the next few weeks and together we will get control of our emotional responses and we will be able to navigate beyond COVID-19. Going from feelings of fear to feelings of faith, going from uncertainty to clarity, and being able to in the moment recognise the emotion we're going through, allow that to happen and then regulate our response.

Well, that's it from me for this week. Join me again next week when we will go into the first competency, and that is emotional self-awareness where I will teach you how to know in the moment, how to recognise in the moment which emotion you're going through so that you can then regulate the correct emotion. I'll see you then.

Are you a glass half full or a glass half empty person? Do you tend to look at the brighter side of life or do you talk yourself into the worst case scenario?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around going beyond COVID-19 by controlling our emotions by developing our emotional intelligence.

We are emotional beings. We respond to things emotionally. We filter what's going on through our emotional brain. We talked about that last week where our brain has the limbic system and the logical brain and the neocortex. In particular, we talked about the prefrontal cortex, the executive command center in our brain where we make good, healthy, creative decisions and regulate our emotions. We talked about how lighting up and bringing focus to that area of the brain will help us to find creative solutions for whatever it is that we need to navigate during this unprecedented time of COVID-19.

So today, I want to give you another strategy that you can implement in whatever it is that you're wanting to navigate on that will help you to make better decisions and to come through and go beyond COVID-19.

Now, this is something that I do a lot of work in helping people to be more resilient and resilience is one of the 10 competencies in the self-management area of emotional intelligence. So, this process will able you to create more accurate thinking regarding something that's going on for you and that's going to develop your personal resilience. In particular, the area that I'm really wanting to help with here is our mental resilience because we are in a situation, an environment right now, where I'm seeing lots of people who, because they're locked away and they're in a different environment or whatever it is, they're separated socially from their friends, their loved ones. It's really, really important that we get on top of this and we protect our mind.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to give us some more tips and strategies to be able to do that. I also want to give you the opportunity to keep the conversation going with me. If you do need to connect and I can answer a question for you, then please do so. Asking for help is a strength and we need to be there for each other right now and I want to be there for you.

So, I've got a scenario going on. Let's say for example, that you're someone like me who's in business and because of the pandemic, lots of things are changing. Clients are operating out of fear instead of operating out of faith. So, they're making decisions that create a different scenario to my revenue, to the work that I'm doing. I'm not able to travel, I'm not able to do things the way I normally do them. So, that creates uncertainty and when unchecked can very quickly drop down into fear and anxiety and emotions that are going to keep me stuck and not allow me to move forward.

So, what I want to talk to us about today is putting everything in its right perspective. Now to do this, we need to be able to firstly avoid and limit the amount of consuming that we're doing that is negative. You can go on any social media, turn on any news program right now, and you can give yourself an unhealthy dose of negative as much as you can consume. And when you are consuming that, if you take whatever story that is and in your emotional memory, it links to something that you have doubt about, something that's strongly rooted in your emotions, then you can very quickly put yourself in that story and go, "Hey, that's going to happen to me".

So, what I want us to do is learn to put things in the right perspective. So, let me take you through a process that you can use.

So, the first thing is to ask yourself the question: What is the worst thing that can happen? So, take my scenario of clients leaving and looking for alternative ways of investing their money right now because of whatever they're allowing themselves to believe. So, here's the worst thing that could happen. The worst thing that could happen is that I go out of business. That's the worst thing that could happen. Now, we're going to be really careful here and it's vitally important that we look at things that we know to be true. The rest is guesswork.

The second thing that I want us to understand what that question is that it is a "what" question. "What is the worst thing that can happen?" So, it's asking our logical brain to come up with an answer rather than why is this happening, which we'll get down into the emotional brain.

So step one, question one: What is the worst thing that can happen? The next question we want to ask or what we want to do next is assess the probability of the worst case. How likely is that to happen? So, assessing and probability is once again a logical process. So for assessing that probability from our logical brain because we're lighting up that part of our brain, we're going to realise that it's not all that likely that it's going to happen, that I'm going to totally go out of business because I will look at it and go, "Well, Hey, Grant. You've got that going on. This is still continuing. You've pivoted here. You're doing a lot more online courses for people. You are working with companies and you have been for the last three or four weeks and you're doing calls on Zoom and all these things." So when I look at it logically, I can come up out of the emotion and go, "You know what? It's not 100% likely or it's not even 50% likely that's going to happen." So once again, I'm working on a logical process.

Then, and this is so vitally important, the next thing, part of the process is to ask another "what" question, and that is: What is one thing I can do to help stop the worst thing from happening? Now, there's two parts to that. Firstly, we're asking a "what" question. So, we're asking a logical question. The second thing is we're looking at one thing. One of the challenges when we are in a situation that we feel less than in control of than we would like to be is a thing called overwhelm. When we've got all these things going on in our brain and in our thoughts and in our self-talk, what we're doing here is not only are we coming up into the logical brain, we are focusing and narrowing in on one thing. So, we're removing the overwhelm. So, what's one thing that you can do to stop the worst thing from happening?

So me, in going through that process myself, I enabled myself to come up with one thing that I can do. The first thing was to make sure that I make contact with my clients. So, what's one thing that you can do now? What we want to do now is look at the other side of the equation. Flip the coin and go alternatively, and on top of that, what is the best thing that can happen? So, this is where we're allowing ourselves to be future thinking and once again, asking a "what" question. So, we're up in the logical brain.

What's the best thing that could happen? The best thing that could happen is that we ride this out and the world gets back to its new normal. In fact, by what I've created going through this process, by what you've shifted and pivoted to do, going through this process is actually more beneficial to what it is that you're doing in the world and to your business or whatever it is for you moving forward beyond COVID-19. Then we do the similar process again that we did on the other side of the equation and we go, "What's one thing that I can do to make the best thing happen?"

So once again, we're focusing in on one thing. This time though, we're on a different part of the equation. We're on the positive side.

Then once again, we can ask another "what" question, what is the most likely thing that will happen? What we will come up with in most cases when we are in the logical brain is somewhere between worst case and best case scenario. The reason we've been able to get there is that we've stayed in our logical brain and we've narrowed the focus. We've removed that overwhelm, we've shut off the noise, and that's allowed us to go from a consumer of all that to a creator of our next step.

So, the last question that we want to ask ourselves once we've gone through that process: What can I do to handle that most likely thing that's going to happen? So now, we're in solution mode. We're in creation mode still. We're in logical brain and go, "What's my next step?" What's something that I can do today that's going to move me towards being able to handle that situation?

So, it's all about putting it in perspective. It's all about being able to look at things, experience the emotion, but bring it back up into the logical brain, and that's called emotional intelligence. And I love the fact that I get to do this all around the world with people. Right now, I'm doing a lot of that online. So if you need some help with that, please reach out and I can help you to become more emotionally intelligent.

Well, that's it from me for another week. I really hope that this practical strategy will allow you to be more creative in your thinking, remove that overwhelm, and see your way through whatever it is that you're navigating right now. Next week, I want to continue the conversation by helping us to develop even more resilient mindsets. I'll see you then.

Do you find yourself feeling on top of things emotionally during this time of COVID-19 or do you find it difficult to regulate your emotional responses? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around going beyond COVID-19. One of the things that I'm finding in myself and in others, the many people I speak to is that there are two places that we can operate from. We talked about this last week.

The first place we can operate from is a position of fear where we're concerned and worried and anxious about what might happen in that unknown space, that place where we're not getting the certainty that we need. And then on the other hand, there's operating from a position of faith, faith in yourself, faith in the doctors, faith in the people leading you, faith in what it is that is true and logical and actually happening and faith in the fact that you will come out the other side, and in most cases, a lot better off in certain areas than you were before you went in. And these are two totally different places that we can come from.

Now within this as well, that creates a different kind of emotion, whether we're operating out of fear or whether we're operating out of faith. And learning how to regulate those emotional responses is the key to being able to stay on top, solution-focused, and go from being a consumer of all things that are creating anxiety and fear to a creator of what's going to take you through and beyond COVID-19.

Now, let me introduce you to my little friend here. It's called our brain and it's not actually my brain. Mine is there and it's working, but I want to give you a little bit of neuroscience 101 just to help us to understand how the brain works and how we can then adjust, tweak, change, what it is that we're currently doing to empower us to be more in control. So if we have a look at the brain and we pull it apart and we have one of the hemispheres of the brain, this is the left hemisphere and it is very similar and indeed identical and a lot of makeup to what's on the other side on the right.

And if we have a look at this here and I just get a little pointer to help me and we go into the bottom of the brain here, that's the brain stem and that connects to the spinal cord and messages are sent to and from the brain and that's connected to the nervous system and we don't need to go too deep into there right now. And then as we go deep into the center of the brain, right in the deep center of the brain is what's known as the limbic brain, and this is where a lot of the information around fear and aggression and anxiety comes from.

Now, I just want to keep this at a very basic level so it's easier for me to explain and for you to understand. And then the white section here is the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres of the brain together and allows information to pass, neuropathways to pass between both hemispheres of the brain.

And then on the outside of the brain, we got the neocortex and the neocortex is a thin layer of grey matter on the outside of the brain. And that in particular, when we're talking about the front of the brain, the prefrontal cortex is where a lot of the logical, creative decision-making happens and emotional regulation. Now, the brain is very powerful in the way that it operates and we can learn how to use the brain to either help us or hinder us. And a lot of times in our reaction to what's going on around us, we can use it and it hinders us.

So, what I want to do very quickly is just teach you a simple process for you to be able to come up out of the emotion of a situation and get back into the logical brain, get back into the part of the brain where you're going to be able to make a logical decision.

Now, our brain works in conjunction with our heart and our gut. There's information that passes backwards and forwards and some of it is very visceral and a lot of it's very emotional charged and in our brain, in the limbic system, we've got the hippocampus where our longterm and memory's stored and a lot of those memories, if they are stored there or placed there or experienced in a very emotionally charged way, they are deep, ingrained memories. And also in the limbic brain, we've got the amygdala and there's two of them, one on each hemisphere of the brain, and it's a little thermostat that's there to let us know when there's a danger.

So, what happens is all the data comes into the brain, all the sensory data comes into the brain via the thalamus and that's in the limbic brain. And what it does, it distributes that information to the limbic brain, the emotional brain, and to the cortex, the logical brain at the same time.

Now, the amygdala, it's job is to do a threat assessment. And in doing that threat assessment, if it determines based on an emotional memory on a past experience that there's something that we need to be concerned about, then what it does, it goes, "Warning. Warning. Danger, Will Robinson." And it actually cuts off all the slow logical thinking going to the neocortex. So, what ends up happening is we end up having an emotional reaction to what's going on rather than having a logical solution, a logical response. And that's just a little bit of neuroscience 101 to help you to understand.

So, how do we use that during this COVID-19 situation? So, here is a couple of little tips. So firstly, as I said, what we want to do is we want to recognise when we are going into the emotion of it, we're going down into that limbic brain and we want to be able to recognise that so that we can then shift it and get back to the prefrontal cortex and make a logical decision. And over the next few weeks, I'm going to introduce some other strategies to help you with this. But today, I just want us to get a grounding and an understanding around that.

So, here's the thing in our brain, if we can get our brain to light up for the neuropathways to work in a certain part of our brain, that's where the energy flows and that's where the focus will be. So, a little tip that's helped me and I help my clients work with is to be very clear on the language that we use. So, what does that mean? Now, you've all heard about count to 10. Just count to 10 and relax and you'll be able to give yourself that space and come up with a solution in that instead of reacting.

So, let's talk about the science behind that in relation to what I've just talked about. So, a situation happens and we need to give ourselves that space so we don't react in a negative, unhealthy way, whether it be for us and or for those around us. Counting not only gives us the space, counting is a logical process. So, the part of the brain that is operated in counting is the neocortex. So, we're setting up the brain to operate and light up in that area.

The second thing that we can do is make sure that in these situations we ask ourselves "what" questions rather than asking ourselves "why" questions. Why is this happening? Why do I have to stay at home? Why are my clients leaving me? Why? Why? Whatever those whys are, you can see, and I did it on purpose, you can see I actually went down into the emotion of that. So if we're asking ourselves "why" questions, then we are going to be lighting up the limbic brain, the emotional brain.

So, let's ask ourselves "what" questions and allow that to light up the logical part of our brain. And then the neocortex in particular, the prefrontal cortex, the executive command center of the brain can actually come up with a solution to whatever the challenge is for you. This is all called emotional intelligence, and I do a lot of work all around the world helping people to become more emotionally intelligent. That simple process that I just took you through there, when I take people through that, and I know it's happening for you right now, it lights up and they go, "Oh, okay, that's why it happens."

So, whenever you're feeling like you're going down into the emotion of it and you're not able to bring yourself to get a solution and you start to experience even stronger and stronger emotions as you go down into it, what you can do is check yourself and go, "Let's get back up into the logical brain." And as I said, over the next few weeks, I'm going to give you some more processes that will help you to do that. So, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week when together, we navigate this pandemic and we go beyond COVID-19 by becoming more emotionally intelligent. I'll see you then.

In this unprecedented time of uncertainty, are you a consumer of everything that's going on or are you a creator? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and this week, I want to start a conversation with you around your response to COVID-19. There's no doubt right around the world, we are all facing this pandemic in our own way. There are things that have happened in my life, in my business, in my family, which weren't there a few weeks ago, a month or so ago.

So as we've come out of talking about productivity and talking about our priority management, our environment management and our energy management, we're all finding that those three things have changed quite a bit. Things that we took for granted before are now priority. Our environment is one of lockdown of borders and boundaries and change. And our energy is being consumed, particularly our mental energy by fear, by frustration, by uncertainty.

So, what I want to do is I want to start having a chat over the next few weeks and be here to answer questions and for us to move from a mindset of fear to a mindset of faith, to move from being a consumer to being a creator. Now, I have no doubt in my mind, in my heart that we will get through this, that COVID-19, the Coronavirus is something that we are navigating and we will come out the other end and there'll be a lot of changes and there'll be a new normal and there'll be a lot of things that we used to do a certain way that we've found a new way to do.

So whilst on not in any way going to lessen what's happened and what continues to happen in people's lives and indeed the loss of life all around the world, what I'm going to do is help you to do what I've needed to do and that is to focus on what I can control and what I can control is what I allowed to go in and what I allowed to believe and what I allow myself to think about, to self-talk about, to dialogue with others about, and that's what I'm going to focus on. So, I haven't been given a spirit of fear. I've been given a spirit of faith, the spirit of a sound mind and so have you.

Using what I know around positive psychology, around neuroscience, and particularly in this instance around emotional intelligence, what I want to do over the next few weeks is help you to navigate being able to come out of the emotional brain and bring it back up into the logical brain so that instead of making fearful decisions, we're making faith-filled decisions.

So, what I'd love you to do is get involved in the conversation. I'd love you to throw some comments. I'd love you to send them in, if you like, to [email protected], some questions, follow me on Instagram @grantrherbert, follow me in Facebook, wherever it is that we connect and ask your questions 'cause I want to make sure that I do what I do as a leader in this field around the world to help you to navigate to the other side of COVID-19.

Last night, I worked with a client in India, a hundred of their top leaders, and we're all connected using a Zoom call. I normally get on an aeroplane and fly over there and work with them. However, that's not available right now. So, I had to pivot to doing that in a different way and was it unusual? Yes, for them in particular. They're interacting with me and they've got to turn their cameras on. And people aren't used to working from home and they're not used to using things like Zoom.

So, they're not understanding that we could see everything that you're doing and all those things that are happening. So, it's a transition period. But what I helped them to do is I help them to understand that it's time to pivot. It's time to not only focus on survival, but to focus on the growth that will come on the other side of COVID-19.

So, step one is to take control on our thinking, to take control on what we allow our self-talk, our inner dialogue to rehearse and to be able to take those thoughts captive, which are fear-based, and to be able to bring up the thoughts of, "Hey, we're going to get through this because these are the things in my life that I've already gotten through." You've got your own story and I've got mine and there are many things that I've navigated in my life. Things that were life-threatening that I've come out this side of and that I've flourished from and I've grown from, and I know you've got the same things.

So, what we want to do is we want to be able to exercise that voice, that voice, that wants to help us to understand that we can, that voice of personal power that says, "Hey, you've got everything within you and around you for you to get through this. You can do this.", rather than that small voice that wants to hold you back, that's fearful, that's worried, that catastrophises and looks at the worst case scenario.

Now, I'm not in any way thinking that anyone's perfect at this and that's not the goal. I mean, I still have doubts. I still have things that crop up, but what am I able to do by exercising the strategies I'm going to work with you on over the next few weeks is I'm able to take that captive quickly. I'm able to flip from being down in the emotion, get back up into the logic and find and create a solution moving forward.

See, every single one of us need to create a new normal. Every single one of us need to create things, whether it's in our business, whether you're still at school, whether it's in your family life, whatever it is, you need to create a new way of doing things. Like for most of us working from home, being on lockdown, whatever it is that's going to teach us new skills.

Stay with me over the coming weeks. I'll do what I can to encourage you, to give you strategies, to give you the benefit of my experience and working with thousands of people all around the world just like you. So, make sure that you subscribe. If you haven't done that yet, go to my website, grantherbert.com and there's an opportunity to join the conversation.

So every week, we will send to you a copy of my video, whatever it is for you, and you can come on this journey with me. I just want to be a part of your support team. I want to just be there to be your big voice when you need some encouragement, when you need some support and some accountability.

Well, that's it from for this week. Join me again next week where we will continue this conversation and I will help you to develop new strategies so that you can go from operating out of fear to operating out of faith, where you can go from being a consumer to being a creator. I look forward to taking you on the journey. I'll see you then.

Do you feel fully charged when you get home, ready to give of yourself into the things that you want to do and who you want to be outside your work, your career, or are you tired and lack energy by lunchtime? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to finish our conversation around productivity by talking to you about the third area that we can manage and that's our energy.

So, we've already talked about priority management, we've talked about our environment management and those two things working well will also help us to manage our energy. Energy is something that we need to maintain. We need to keep ourselves at a state where we're actually able to perform. If we're tired, if we're feeling emotionally drained, physically drained, spiritually drained, whatever it is for you, then we're obviously not going to be able to give our best self.

So whilst there are three things that I said that we can manage, I believe that energy is the one that trumps the other two. Because when we're at a high level of energy, when we feel good in ourselves energetically, we're able to make sure that we stay focused on our priorities and we keep our environment in a way that it needs to be. So, protecting our energy is extremely important.

So, what I want to do is just give you a few things that you can change, that you can do differently, perhaps right now, that will help you to keep that energy level where it needs to be during the day and so that you've got some energy when you get home. I know before I used to do these things, I would get home and I was spent, I'd given everything that I had, the tank was empty and now I want to be a husband and be a father. My highest priorities, I've got nothing left to give. And I know that that hindered me being able to give the best version of myself to my family. And it wasn't until I realised this that I made the change.

So, figure right there before you change any of these things. Because by the way, you're doing okay as you are right now, things aren't as bad as we sometimes feel. However, to go to that next level, there needs to be either a big enough reward or enough pain to get off the nail and do something about it.

So, how do we protect our energy? Number one is that we need to make ourself our number one priority. I talked about this before and I'm not talking about from a selfish point of view where I go, "Ha! Who cares about anyone else? It's just all about me." No, what I'm talking about is flipping our mindset around that and going, "Hey, for me to be the leader, for me to be who I need to be for others, I need to be physically, emotionally, and spiritually and mentally have enough energy to do that, to sustain that. That's one of the reasons why I'm a sustainable performance coach and not a high performance coach alone. It's all about how do I sustain that.

So by putting self care in place, it enables a longer working day or a more productive working day full of energy whereby I can get more done and go home on time where I can get more done and go home early, whatever it is for you. So, making yourself the number one priority is the first thing. There's some great books out there like for example, Leaders Eat Last. I know from my own experience in my military career and my own upbringing that I actually subscribed to that as well.

That as a leader, "No, let's feed everyone else first" and that this is not what we're talking about here. So we're not talking about put me first at the detriment of others, we're saying get myself in the best position to serve others. So, it's a balance of serving others with self taken care of, fit your mask before assisting other clients. So, that's the first one.

The second thing is, and it's a part of that, is sleep. Sleep is a big one. The next one is nutrition. The next one is hydration. All these things that are part of self-care. It's about protecting what we allow to go in here. It's about protecting who we come in contact with. There are people who give us energy and there are people that suck our energy. Now, they said all these things that we can do to help us to be who we need to be so that we can do what we need to do. We can keep that energy up.

Another one for me is exercise every morning. My priority is movement, motivation and meditation. So, getting the body moving keeps energy and that's not just in the morning. A lot of times today in our world of global mobility of working virtually all these things, we sit a lot and apparently sitting is the new smoking. It's not good for us. So we need to be able to keep our energy up by changing our environment and moving.

A great mentor of mine, Taki Moore taught me this hack, this tip called 50/10 sprints. And I know he gave attribution to where he got it from. I can't remember that right now, but he's the one that I learned it from. And what that's about is being focused in an activity for 50 minutes, which is about the time that the brain can stay focused on that activity with no distractions, no open doors, nothing like that.

And then to do a 10 and in that 10, it's all about moving. It's all about hydrating. It's all about doing something different. And that could be checking in on one of your team or it could be answering some phone messages, but change the environment, move, hydrate, go to the bathroom, whatever you need to do. So, 50/10 sprint. That's just one thing that I helped the clients understand that I work with can get more energy into their day.

Another one is to look at your week and let's say you work a five day week. Well, instead of it being a five day week, let's look at it being 10 half-days and then making sure that in the middle of the day we have a break, we eat, we go for a walk, whatever it is, so that we've got as much energy in the afternoon as we had in the morning.

Another thing that we can do is to make sure that we get what we need to get done are the biggest priorities first in the morning. We also need to make sure that if there's stuff that we need to do that's creative, do that in the morning when we've got the most energy. So, there's just a few things that we can do and when I work with clients with this, there are days and days of activities that we do to help to keep that energy up. I just wanted to get you today to realise that your energy affects your productivity.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we jump in and we look at more things around us and who we are that are going to help us to perform and be who it is we need to be in every area of our life. I'll see you then.

Do you get done what you need to get done every day in an environment that's conducive to getting a lot done or is everything everywhere and it holds you back? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around productivity by talking to you about the second thing that we can control and that's our environment.

Your environment has a great deal to do with your output. If we've continually got distractions going on, if we've got nothing in place, if we lack discipline in the boundaries that we set around getting stuff done, then we're obviously not going to be as productive as we could. So, the first place that I believe we need to work on is the environment of our mind. The brain is a powerful tool. It keeps us alive. It creates a system whereby we can get stuff done. However, it's not an infinite resource. We need to look after our brain. We need to protect our brain. We need to feed our brain with the right things that are going to enable it to do its best job. We can have the best performance car in the world, but if we put a low-grade fuel in it, if we drive around with several things, towing along behind it, if we put it in the wrong gear at the wrong time or we labour it by not coming back a gear to go up a hill or whatever, the fact that it's a high-performance car goes out the window, it can only give what it gives in the best environment.

It's the same thing with the fuel that we put in it. If it's a high-performance car, it needs a high performance fuel, so these things are exactly the same for us and our brain. If we're carrying stuff around that we don't need to carry, if there's extra weight in our mind, if we are doing more than what we should be doing in that one moment of time, if we're dehydrating it for not putting in the good fuel, then it's going to create an environment that leads to overwhelm when overwhelm is the curse of productivity. Because what it says is that, "Alright, I might as well get nothing done" or, "I'll go and do this comfort activity or whatever because I just can't see that I'm going to get all this stuff done." Last week, I talked about getting rid of the to do list. That's old school teaching from years ago and whilst having a to do list, having things written down is better than having nothing, it can actually create that overwhelm because it's a list that says, "Oh my Lord, I need to get all these things done today." So, we set ourselves up with an environment of overwhelm.

The second place that we need to check in on our environment is our physical environment. What do we have that is consuming our bandwidth? What do we have that's getting our attention? What do we have that buzzes and beeps and pops up on our screen or whatever it is? Who do we allow to just walk into our office? All those things create brain switching where it means that we could be focused, which by the way is the best environment for productivity. We could be focused on something and then distracted and now we've got to come back and refocus and that doesn't happen instantaneously. So, we're not able to manage time. We talked about the fact we can manage our priorities and the next thing is we said is that we need to work on our environment. So, let me walk you through a few things that I do. By the way, I don't do them perfectly because I'm a human. There are times when I need to remind myself as I'm doing this for you, that my environment is not conducive to maximum productivity.

So for me, making sure that my workplace is uncluttered. You see people that will say that an untidy desk is the sign of genius. Well, I don't know whether that's true or not, but what I do know is if my desk is untidy and has different things all over it that can get in my field of view, then it's going to create an environment where I'm thinking about when I'm going to get that done. When I work with my clients one on one or in small groups, the first thing I helped them to do around this area is to get themselves a boss, get themselves someone who helps them and drip feeds what they need to get done to them during the day, during the week, during the month, whatever it is. So instead of having like I see all the time, piles upon piles of the next lot of work that I'm going to get through, one piece of work, focus, get it done, give that piece of work on, get a new piece of work, get it done.

So, productivity is a process. So, setting up a process of how we get it done is obviously the best thing that we can do. So, get rid of the clutter, get a system just as we chunk our calendar so that we know what priority we're working on, we need to chunk our environment and have it so that everything's easily accessible when we need it and out of the way when it's not. I remember years ago in my military career, I was a trainer in the military and we used to get assessed to make sure that our level of training was up where it needed to be and that's a good thing. And I remember something that I learned way back then is exactly what I'm talking about now.

If we were, for example, using a whiteboard or back then a blackboard or we were using an overhead projector and some of you might not even know what that is. We needed to write what we want on the board, speak about it, use it, and then get rid of it. And if we didn't do that, we would get marked down because it was distracting. Because whilst we were talking about the next point or whatever it was, people were still focused on that. And that's exactly what we're doing in our environment. And the third area that we need to manage in our environment is our availability. We need to set boundaries around who, how, and when people can come into our space, capable people can encroach on our environment. A lot of times I see companies that have, we've got an open door policy and that's great in its core reasoning, but it's outworking is a major nightmare for effective productivity. "You can come into my door anytime you like, I'm available." Yeah, that's great. That's not what your people need. What your people need is certainty that they're going to be able to get their answers. So instead of being reactive, what I like to do with my team and I teach my clients to do the same, is to be proactive in setting up when and how my team can get me.

So for example, instead of someone just coming to the door and going, "Hey, you've got a second?" and me going, "Yes, fine, come on in and then sit down", which is, by the way, mistake number one. Then what I can do is let my team know that, "Hey, right now my door's closed and that means I'm focused on something." And then later on when my door's open, I've got that as a proactive schedule time that people know they can come and get their answers. So instead of every time they need an answer coming to me, they wait until that space and then they come and get all their answers. Because here's the thing, just like you, your people want to get the answer, get that fixed and move on. Here's the challenge. If as the leader, you are the only one that doesn't have that luxury, then you're not able to lead effectively.

So, what have we talked about today? We've talked about your environment. It's not about time management, it's about priority management. And as we now know, it's about environment management. We talked about the three areas of environment management that I've found work really well. One is to control and manage the environment of our mind. The second is our physical environment, and the third is the environment of availability. Put those three things together, start changing how you do things, and I guarantee you'll get more done in your day. Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we talk about the third element in productivity that we can manage and that's our energy. I'll see you then.

Do you continually get the things done that you want to get done or do you feel like you're always operating out of what other people want you to do?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to have a conversation with you around your priorities.

So, last week we kicked off this conversation by talking about the fact that there's no such thing as time management. We're not able to manage time, there's 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. And that's not up to me or to you to change. What we can change though are three key elements and that is our priority management, our environment management, and our energy management. So this week, I want to go a little bit deeper and talk about priority management.

So if I was to drop in right now and have a conversation with you and look at your calendar, would I have a clear picture and understanding of what your priorities are? A number of weeks ago when we were talking about setting boundaries around our priorities and what was most important to us and what our values were, we looked at the fact that what we invest our time in as well as our money and other things is a clear indicator of what's really important to us. And the reason why in productivity we need to get this priority thing right is that when we are working outside our priorities, not only aren't we going to be getting enough done, we're going to feel like an impostor. We're going to feel inauthentic, incongruent because we're not actually giving focus to those things that we say and we truly believe are most important to us.

So, what I want to do is just give you a few tips, a few hacks, a few things that I've learned to do from great mentors over the years that I've implemented in my own life to help me to get back and stay on track.

One of the things that I love to do is in my calendar, by the way, I now live by a calendar. If you don't, then it'd be a great place to start, a place to actually do a time and space exercise and work out where you are investing your time. A lot of people say, "I don't have enough time." Yes you do. It's just getting on top of and being in control of, being the orchestrator of where we use that time. In my calendar, one of the things that I've learned to do, and I love to do is to colour code. So if you will look in my calendar right now, you would see that there will be various colours in there. And those colours are royal blue. Anything to do with my family there. They're a green. Anything to do with my health and vitality. They're a blue, the same as my logo. If it's to do with what I'm doing right now, working in my Grant Herbert business. Orange, if I'm working in my People Builders company, because that's the corporate colour for People Builders. There's a particular shade of dark gray, that's anything to do with travel, anything to do with personal development. And then there's a shade of red, which is to do with the administrative tasks that I need to do, et cetera.

Why is this important? See, when I look at my calendar, I have a clear visual represent representation of whether or not I'm working in my values, in my priorities. Those ones that are true to me. So as an example, I do a lot of travel. So if I were to look at my calendar in a week, when I'm traveling overseas, then obviously there's not going to be as much of the royal blue because I'm not there. So, what I can then do is I can make sure that when I am home that I counter that by having more blue. So, it's a visual representation where I can look at it and go, "Grant, you need to change." Or, "Hey, things are on track." If it's in terms of my business, if there's no orange or blue in there, it means I'm not actually doing anything that's going to bring in work and bring in income in our business.If there's not enough green, then I'm going to fall off the perch and I'm not going to be able to do that stuff.

Colour coding and blocking out particular time in your calendar for your priorities is number one. And it's really helped me.

So, how do we do that? So the first thing, if we step right back to weeks and weeks ago, we have to know what our priorities are. Once we know what our priorities are, we need to commit to them. We need to go through the exercise of saying, "When I say yes to this, I'm saying no to that. And when I say no to that, I'm saying yes to this, which is my priorities." And if that's not familiar to you, you go back and have a look at that episode and that will help you. So, here's where the priorities come in with the calendar. So, the first thing that goes in my calendar every year, every month, every week, are the green, health and vitality and "me time" blocks because I understand that I need to be my number one priority so that I can serve all the other priorities in my life.

Next, I'd put in the royal blue, so every day in my calendar it starts with a block of green time followed by a block of blue time. Now when I'm home, that's having breakfast and quality time at the breakfast table with my wife and my kids. When I'm away, it's depending on the time zone, it's a Facebook live or it's an interaction over text or whatever it is that we have to use at that time. In the middle of my day, there's always a green section that says to have some lunch so that I replenish my energy ready for the afternoon and then same time every day, I have some "me time" at the end of the day so that I can reflect, I can refocus, I can recharge and there's also some more family time as well. So, I put all that in there first and then that tells me that my number one priority, that is me and my family, are covered.

When my health and my vitality and my interaction with the people - those who are most important to me - is covered and that then tells me that I have space available or bandwidth available to do and be with all the other people that I need to be in my life. And then I put those in there and as we get to the end of this topic in a few weeks time, I'll give you some more around how you can actually do that and you can chunk in time and you can create in your mind a sense that you have more time than you really think you do. Instead of feeling overwhelmed all the time and, "I don't have enough time, I can't get it all done."

So, that's the first thing is priority management. Now, that’s the first part of the equation. The second part of the equation is to be able to stick to that and be able to go when someone says, "Hey, I want to fill this time", you can say, "Sorry, that's already taken by my family" or whatever it is.

Obviously you don't need to tell people that, but sticking to your priorities is vitally important. I remember years ago, there used to be an ad on television and it was for lamb and here in Australia, I remember my childhood, we used to have a lamb roast every Sunday and it was fantastic. So, this young lady, on this television ad, got a phone call from a radio station and she was told that she had won dinner with none other than Tom Cruise -And back then, Tom Cruise was a big deal for young ladies-  and she comes straight up and says, "Oh, sorry. I can't make it. My mom's cooking a lamb roast."

And that's how we need to be with our priorities no matter what the other opportunities, the other shiny things, the other comfort activities, whatever they are that come up, we are able to filter them through our true priorities and say, "Hey, I'm sorry about that. My mom's cooking a lamb roast."

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we look at the second element of productivity, and that is environment management. I'll see you then.

Do you find that you get everything done that you want to get done in the week or do you feel like you're continually chasing your tail? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to start a conversation with you around productivity.

So, productivity comes in various forms. You may use that word regularly. It may be something that's totally unfamiliar to you. To start this conversation, I want to talk about what it's not before we look at what it is. See, there are some myths out there, things that have been taught to us over the years that do not service, and there's a couple of them that I want to talk to you about before we get into the topic of productivity.

The first thing is this elusive, mysterious myth called time management. See, it's not you or I that manage time. There's 24 hours in a day. We're not going to get any more than 168 hours in a week. We're not able to manage time. So, that's part of the problem. If we try to manage something that's not within our control, then we're never going to be able to achieve it.

Over the years have been many, many courses that I've done on time management where I've subscribed to the idea of this thing as well. But what I've found is that even though there's no such thing as time management, there are 3 key things that you and I can do to be able to get more done in the day, in the week, in the year, and we're going to talk about this over the next few weeks.

The second myth that I wanted to dispel is the myth around work-life balance. See, work-life balance is a myth. It assumes firstly that work and life are separate when work is just a part of life. It's one of the things that consumes your time. So, what we want to look for instead is our own perfect life balance. And that's something that's different for you than it could be for me because we have different priorities, different things we wanted to get done, we're at a different stage of life, a different stage of career, business, whatever it is.

So, let's come back now and have a conversation now that we know what it's not. Let's have a conversation about what productivity is. So, we've established that it's not about time management, it's not about work-life balance. And I said there are 3 elements to getting more things done.

3 things that we can actually manage when we make a decision to do so. The first of those is priority management. So, what is it that we allow to fill space in our day? What is it that we allow to take up bandwidth in our calendar? And there are many reasons why things are priority and things are not. Why things appear like they're a priority in the moment because they're a comfort activity or whatever and we're going to talk about that next week.

The second area that we can manage is our environment. What are we allowing in our environment to take our focus, to distract us, to give us things shiny or not to look at that are not involved in what it is that we need to achieve right now? What are we consuming on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a yearly basis? The average person apparently watches about 4 hours of television a day. So when we take that and we multiply that out over an entire year, that's 2 full months, 24/7 gone out of our life, out of our opportunity to be productive and get more done.

So, what is it that you're doing to consume your bandwidth? What are you allowing to distract you? And the third area that we can manage is our energy and how we manage our priorities and how we manage our environment has a lot to do with how much energy we have. I don't know about you, but there's a lot of times when I'll get home from working with clients or whatever it is that I'm doing. And there was times I didn't have enough energy to be who I needed to be when I got home. I'm spent, I'd given all my energy.

So, those are the 3 things that we're going to talk about this month. So, let's recap them. Priority management, environment management, and energy management. So, it's not about time management, it's not about work-life balance. It's not about to-do lists. In fact, one of the greatest things that I have ever been introduced to, to counter the to-do list is my to-don't list. What are the things that I'm not going to allow to consume my bandwidth, to get my attention, to sap my energy. So, that's it for me again this week. Join me next week when we continue this conversation around productivity by looking at our priority management. I'll see you then.