How much do you remember of your day?
Likely it went by in a blur, with a lot of unremarkable experiences filling the minutes and hours. Possibly boredom (or stress) felt more boundless than success!
Can we change the course of a year when our days are so beige, so same-same?
Days make up a week, a week makes up a month, months become a year, years become a life. And yet it’s moments that make up the sum total. This is the key to leadership (and life) success: when we master moments, we master everything.
A leadership framework for making moments matter
Let’s be real. Mastering every single moment sounds like a lot of hard work and attention. The reality is that our monkey mind is very scattered, in constant need of taming. Mindfulness can help. So can JOURNALING MOMENTS.
This is the cornerstone habit for shifting the direction of your leadership ship.
I just concluded a twelve month program with a group of senior leaders. As we reviewed and mapped out the events of the program, it occurred to me that we often forget the components when we reflect on the whole. Our memories are affected deeply by our current emotional state and are not really indicative of the reality of the whole experience.
Chip and Dan Heath explore this concept in their book The Power of Moments. The peak moments colour the average of the experiences as a whole. So the idea is to create more significant peak milestone moments. We can do this explicitly with design principles like stimulating the senses, surprise, and significance.
Is your leadership mindset set to 'present'?
But what if we paid more attention to moments in general?
I chose my theme word of the year as KINDNESS. I want this to the guiding beacon illuminating all my choices. I want to be kinder to myself (self sabotage and unhelpful internal narrative be gone!) and I want to be kinder to those around me. If I am to become a kinder person, and believe that of myself, my daily actions need to orient around this.
Belief is a by-product of repeated action and reflection.
And so here enters the cornerstone habit: THE DAILY MOMENTS JOURNAL.
I have a journal that allows me to record one moment per day. The prompt I use is, “How did I show or see kindness today?” Just one simple moment that demonstrates my commitment to KINDNESS this year. By the end of the year I will have 365 moments of kindness I can read through and recall. By reviewing them throughout the year, I can also build the awareness of focus of kindness happening around me too.
What is your theme word for the year? What prompt can you use to hone your focus? Get started today - in an old school hard copy journal, or on your phone.
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Related Articles:
End of Year Review and Planning Tool
How to get out of a life-numbing slump
Mid-year leadership reflection questions
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About the author, Canberra leadership expert Zoë Routh:
Canberra based leadership expert, Zoë Routh, shares a simple habit towards your leadership success.
Zoë Routh is one of Australia’s leading experts on people stuff - the stuff that gets in our way of producing results, and the stuff that lights us up. She works with the growers, makers, builders to make people stuff fun and practical.
Zoë is the author of four books: Composure - How centered leaders make the biggest impact, Moments - Leadership when it matters most, Loyalty - Stop unwanted staff turnover, boost engagement, and build lifelong advocates, and People Stuff - Beyond Personalities: An advanced handbook for leadership. People Stuff was awarded Book of the Year 2020 by the Smart WFM Australian Business Book Awards.
Zoë is also the producer of The Zoë Routh Leadership Podcast.