The emotional rollercoaster that Unconventional Leaders go through daily can be a lot at times. I recently received a newsletter that highlighted the balancing act that occurs when you have so many things to consider all of the time. My thanks to Steven Bartlett for putting words to what so many of us are feeling.
I have been on Steven Bartlett’s 100 CEO’s email list for the longest time. Most times when that email comes into my inbox, I pop it open, look at the headlines and say to myself “I don’t have time for this.” Every once in a while, I forward it to a few of my clients and tell them which story I think would be of value to them.
Yesterday was different, I opened it late at night and had time to read it, and it was the best email I had read from a leader in a long, long time.
I could write a whole blog just about it…, and I am going to. For those that don’t know Steven, he is the host of Diary of a CEO, he is also founder, inventor, and CEO of a variety of companies. He is also an unconventional leader.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE NEWSLETTER and read it over yourself.
In particular he talks about having ADHD of the hyperfocus type and the immense amount of guilt he feels all of the time for not being able to give 100% to most things, because he does tune the world out when he is focused.
Here is an excerpt
“When I’m locked into something – a business opportunity, a podcast recording, a problem – the rest of my life just stops existing in my head. It sounds weird, but I have to be honest … that can mean…Melanie, the gym, my mum, eating, all of it. Gone. It’s like everything gets put on mute and I don’t even notice until someone unmutes it for me.“
“...I’ve been sitting with this question about why I feel like I’m always letting someone down for about two weeks now, and I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole on where guilt actually comes from. Bear with me on this because it genuinely changed how I think about everything…“
If you are an unconventional leader, it is worth the read. CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE NEWSLETTER
*Dyslexic note: for those that reading is a total energy draw down, use my new favorite tool Read Wise. https://readwise.io/ Read Wise and its partner Reader have great audio reading features, summary, the ability to highlight and add notes and note extraction. Click the image below to watch me walk through how to use Read Wise.
Now, back to our connection with guilt and our ability to see and do many things in conjunction with each other and the inability to do it all at 100% for each of those things. It adds up to 600%+ and that is junk math.
“So, when I’m on a plane feeling guilty about not being with Melanie, I don’t just feel like a bad partner. I suddenly feel like a bad CEO too. And a bad friend. And someone who’s let their body go. One bad feeling infects everything.”
This is guilt clustering. Where our guilty emotions ooze over into everything. It’s a primal thing.
Two important things I want to point out in this next quote.
I find it useful to name things. This is the most important point for me to share with you. We can feel things, we can know that we are having a feeling, we can journal about it, but until we NAME the feeling, it just stays floating around us and in us.
“I find it useful to name things so I can think about them clearly, so I’ve started calling this The Guilt Gap.
The Guilt Gap is the distance between what the people and commitments in your life actually need from you – and what you’ve convinced yourself they need from you.”
Where do you have a Guilt Gap?
Who do you need to talk with about it?
Want to learn more about Guilt Gaps and other things that unconventional, kind-hearted, leaders need to work through? Great. I am a coach and that is what I am here for.
Keep up the great work, you different thinkers.
JoyGenea
Transcription:
All right, this week, I really want to focus on the emotions that come with being an unconventional leader, and one of those emotions is guilt. I struggle with it at times. I know a lot of my clients struggle with it a lot of the time because, when you have a high performing brain and have a lot of ideas and a lot of things going on at once, it’s also really easy for things to fall off the plate or for you to know how something should be or could be 100%, and the reality is, as one person, and even as I hire more and more people to assist me and help, I’m still not reaching that hundred percent that I know is available, and I make myself wrong for that. and I’ve known that, and I struggle with it. I can see it in my journals all the time and so forth, but I really have to thank, um, the gentleman that does the interviewing, his name is Steven Bartletts for diary of a CEO, because this week he sent out his newsletter, and he changed the whole thing up, and he said, you know what, listen, I just want to have some Frank conversations about stuff that’s going on in my life and, and what I’m seeing, and that, that’s what I actually talk about in the blog. I’m gonna highly recommend you go over and check it out so that you can click on the link, so you can actually read his entire story and what he talks about, cause I, I’m not gonna summarize it. you can’t summarize it. it’s just, it’s really, really good, and it really speaks to that unconventional leader. this is a gentleman who’s running a very large multi, multi million dollar company and wanting to settle down and have a family and has just gotten a fiance, and he’s trying to balance all this, and he’s definitely questioning how do I do all of this, and in that questioning, he’s really got some incredible points for an unconventional leader. I wanna talk about two of them quickly, but I’m gonna recommend you go to the blog. it’s got a whole lot more information. this week’s article is worth checking out for sure. so one of the things he talks about, and I’m just gonna read what it says, it says, when I’m locked, he talks about the fact, so he has ADHD and it’s of the hyperfocus variety, meaning when he gets into something, he gets locked down and he is really in there, and the whole world goes away. he’s gonna forget to eat, he’s gonna forget to get up and move, he is just locked in and making it happen, and so one of the things he says, when I’m locked into something, a business opportunity, a podcast recording, a problem, the rest of my life just stops existing in my head. it sounds weird, but I have to be honest, that can mean his fiance, the gym, his mom, eating, all of it gone. it’s like everything gets put on mute. I don’t even notice until someone unmutes it for me. he talks about his friends pointing it out, and his fiance started pointing it out. he goes on to say, I’ve been sitting with this question about why I feel like I’m always letting someone down for about two weeks now, and ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole on where guilt actually comes from. bear with me on this, because it genuinely changed how I think about everything, and he, I’m not gonna, I don’t share it all, cause that’s his story, but you can go over and read about it. it’s very interesting. I also take a side note and talk about a dyslexic, a tool that I highly recommend for anyone dyslexic or anyone that doesn’t love reading, just in general. you don’t have to be dyslexic if reading is just a, I call it a battery drain that drains you and you avoid it. there’s a lot of great information you don’t need to avoid. I use a software called readwise. it’s wonderful, and I actually have a little video in the article. you can see how to use that if you want to, and how I take his article and drop it in there and then have it speak, and then how to highlight. so back to what Steven Bartlett is talking about, um, I wanna go, he talks about the math. it’s just not possible to give 100% to all of these things that he’s thinking about, that he’s doing, that he’s put into motion and is making happen. that’s the reality of it, but he thinks and holds himself accountable, ha ha, that’s the part, holding ourselves accountable to actually providing that hundred percent to all of those things, and that adds up to 600%, which is junk math. I mean, we all know that AI has definitely been teaching us about junk math. that’s junk math, and so he, here’s another great quote that I use. so when I’m on a plane feeling guilty about not being with his fiance, I don’t just feel like a bad partner. I suddenly feel like a bad CEO too, and a bad friend and someone who’s let their body go, excuse me, when bad feeling infects everything, and this is how bad feelings go, they do infect everything when you do start to feel guilty. I love, by the way, how I coughed from read it, the part about your body, that’s kind of humorous anyways. so this is called a guilt cluster, and it’s this, it’s where guilt oozes out and starts to cluster with, with and infect other things that it doesn’t even belong on, but that’s how guilt works. that’s how shame and blame, that’s how they work, and when they start, they just kind of go on a roll. so two important things I wanted to quote out, point out about the next quote that I have in there, and that is, I find it useful to name things so I can think about them clearly. I talk about this all the time with clients. it is one thing to feel uncomfortable. it’s another thing to be able to say, I’m feeling this and know that I’m feeling it. you journal about it, and you’re like, hmm. it’s another thing until we name it. for unconventional leaders in particular, until we name it and you can say, oh, that’s it, it floats in us, around us, it does that oozy thing until we can name it, and once we can name it, now, now we can manage it, work with it, know how to handle it, and that’s what he does. so he actually names this for himself, and he’s calling it the guilt gap, and the guilt gap is the distance between what the people and commitments in your life actually need from you and what your, and what you’ve convinced yourself they need from you. do you hear the difference in that? it’s what you perceive they need from you compared to what they actually need from you. so this is my challenge this week. this is what I’m encouraging you. I’m not gonna go any further. trust me, there’s a whole, I could unpack his email for a couple of weeks, and I might, so you’re gonna want to tune back in and see if I do and continue to learn from his sharing, cause it’s a very authentic, very real us. it work through a lot of things that are challenges. so this guilt gap, this is about clear as kind, unclear as unkind, having conversations about what expectations are within your relationships at work, within your relationships outside of work and in your personal life, with your friends, with your partner, with the groups and organizations you’re in. what are their expectations from you? are they realistic, and are you participating, or are you able to give at that level, and vice versa? is that what you want to be doing? cause remember, you’re only able to give 100%. that’s it. those are the total limits, and so you need to parse that out, and that is part of being a balanced, unconventional leader. that’s part of regaining the power and energy that guilt, shame, and blame take from us when we give it away freely by not naming it and by not understanding the how it’s playing out, and so often those assumptions are the greatest thing holding us down. so if you want to explore this more, that is exactly what I work in. I am an unconventional leadership coach, I’m an international neurodiversity coach, and I am a champion for dyslexic, ADHD, and autistic thinkers, dreamers, doers. I wanna see the world turn into an amazing, amazing place, and these are the people making that change happen. I’m JoyGenea, thanks for tuning in. check out the article, check out the links, and tune back in later on. Bye now.