One of the greatest gifts of my work is where it takes me and the people I meet. Together we make the world a little bit smaller, a responsibility I own whether crossing the big pond going east or west. I was recently coaching an executive in Pakistan who asked my age (three decades his senior), and then wanted to know, “How do you have so much energy each day in class? You lift all of us up.”
My programs are designed to be small and interactive—I never use PowerPoint unless giving a large audience, ballroom speech—and the work I do is part healthcare, part show business. The goal has never changed in the thirty years I have developed talent: I want to be the best my students have ever seen at the work I am paid to do. When I am, they win. If I am not, I fail. I own this and chase it.
The healthcare element of talent development emanates from caring, which I do not think you can fake when thirty eyeballs dissect your every move for three, four, or five days. Nor can you trick people in private coaching sessions. You are either all in or you are out. I am all in, all the time.
Standup teaching is part show business too, so no matter how an instructor feels on any given day, once the bell rings, it is showtime. A great teacher lives in the moment, for the moment, and executes. Some days this requires more professional grit and discipline than others. But every module, every hour, and every day matters.
I learned early that the more I teach a class, the more they will teach me. Together we both win. So, answering the question posed to me about how I can be up and on-form each day required a bit of reflective thought.
“Five things,” I told him. “Five things enable each of us to do our best.”
These are the five I shared, in order:
- Manage the Worry Circle.
- Make smart, self-aware time choices.
- Live with passion and make stuff happen.
- Be good to people.
- Get ample sleep, thinking gratitude thoughts.
Managing the Worry Circle means keeping our heads clear from unnecessary noise. Own the things your actions can control and jettison the rest. There is no room in an active brain for things it cannot control.
Smart time choices mean maximizing our waking hours by wasting as little time as possible and investing as much time as we can in activities that matter personally and professionally. Invested time always pays off. Efficient, productive people do this beautifully.
Passion matters. If you live with passion, it’s easy to work with it. When we lack passion in life, working with it becomes difficult.
Being good to others is more important today than ever before. Technology is partly to blame, as are selfish politicians. There are a lot of hurt people walking around out there. Lift people up, do not put them down.
Lastly, get enough rest. If you have trouble sleeping, think gratitude thoughts. You will drift off in a good place and wake up in the same. I have traveled the world and seen things no one needs to and know this to be true: We are more fortunate than billions. Never, ever forget it.
Life is wonderful. Pass it on.
Ocean Palmer