We Need to Get Back in the Gym... Mentally

Our muscles are getting weaker.

We haven’t been working them out the way we once were, and now we’re paying the price.

But it’s not our shoulders, our core or our calves that need strengthening. It’s our minds.

We as leaders need to re-activate our memberships to the gym of honest communication.

Each day, we are in a tireless battle between face time and screen time that is pulling us in several directions and occupying major real estate in our minds.

Our struggle over this increasingly-complicated subject has intensified these past months. But if we’re being perfectly transparent, we were in this mental battle long before March.

According to the U.S. Social Media Usage Report 2020, the average adult will spend 82 minutes per day on social networks this year, compared to 76 minutes both last year and in 2018. In 2015, the average was 66 minutes.

Trust has given way to rumor, clarity has given way to ambiguity and, above all, empathy has given way to indifference.

We as leaders need to return to sculpting these mental muscles, while motivating others to do the same.

The first month of our new workout plan must begin with reducing our screen time and getting away from quick adrenaline hits. Instead, we need to commit to engaging in more authentic dialogues based on transparency, vulnerability, love and trust. We have a duty to make sure our words are leaving those we lead in a better place.

How can we learn more efficiently? How can we empathize better? How can we become more efficient communicators?

More importantly, how can we help others do this?

These questions must guide our new exercise plan.

The solution to getting mentally stronger isn’t necessarily increasing the number of machines we’re using.

It might just be improving the quality of the reps we already perform.

P.S. If you are in search of a book recommendation, our team at The Daily Coach highly recommends Humility is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age by Edward D. Hess and Katherine Ludwig. The crucial mindset underlying NewSmart is humility — not self-effacement but an accurate self-appraisal: acknowledging you can’t have all the answers, remaining open to new ideas, and committing yourself to lifelong learning. Drawing on extensive multidisciplinary research, Hess and Ludwig emphasize that the key to success in this new era is not to be more like the machines but to excel at the best of what makes us human.

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