If you can't switch off - switch on

Do you find it hard to switch off from business and work? - Well, maybe you're not built to switch off, maybe you're built to be on. This episode explains how to stay present and have peace of mind without switching off.

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00:00:00 — Introduction

00:01:09 — Reframing Switching Off

00:02:04 — The Racing Mind

00:03:01 — Being Present at Home

00:04:54 — You Are Not the Business

00:05:52 — The Cost of Pressure

00:08:37 — Fear and Ego

00:11:25 — Your Relationship With Work

00:12:34 — Permission to Rest

00:13:29 — Focus on What You Can Control

00:15:52 — The Impact of Presence

00:16:32 — Who Are You Behind the Titles?

00:17:13 — Closing Remarks

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The whole idea of switching off is trying to escape something. Like, what are we trying to escape? Trying to escape our own lives? Like we we say we want more time, yet at the same time we want to switch off. Like, what are you gonna do? Get yourself more time and be switched off? Switched off from life? What do you actually really mean when you say switched off? Welcome to the Grounded Man podcast by Deru. I am your host, John Douglas, and founder of Deru. This space is for hardworking men building businesses, carrying responsibility, and providing for their families who feel they should be freer. You see, the world has changed, and leading through hard work and long hours now limits a man's influence. The new way is mastering the inner game of leadership so you can carry it well, enjoy what you're building, and still feel free. Deru is leadership for the 21st century. This episode is going straight in for leaders and founders who find it hard to switch off, and that is having a big impact on their lives. And I want to reframe the whole switching off dynamic because it's a little bit obsolete, I think, in this world. Because we're entering a world now that's moving away from the pressure and the fear and the force of hard work and grinding it out, which is needed, but I think we needed a deeper dimension to it. And so instead of work and life, that balance, instead of that fighting each other and being a trade-off, we need to look at life and work as one thing. And so switching off then becomes a little bit obsolete. And so the real question is how do you become more present and switched on? And that's what this episode is all about. So if you can't switch off, what does this actually mean? How do you experience this? This might be when you're actually finished work, your laptop is closed, everyone's gone home, but you're still thinking about it. And you're not thinking about it in a constructive way, you're thinking about work in an unconstructive way, in a destructive way. A destructive way is when you're overthinking it. You're thinking about things you said earlier on today, it's racing through your mind, things you said, shouldn't have said, and you're overthinking the future. You're anticipating what might happen, what might not happen, and how are you going to position yourself and what are you going to do if it does or if it doesn't? And so this mind, your mind is always racing. It's racing, racing, racing. It's chaotic, it's busy. This affects your presence, your presence when you go home in the evening with your family. Because you might be there in body, but you're not really there in your mind and your and your spirit. And so they can feed off that. Remember, we're always the product of what we eat. We are what we eat. And when you're a leader, your energy feeds other people. And so, what are you feeding other people in that moment? And what do you want to be feeding them? Because if you're waking up stressed, going to work under pressure, reacting, snapping, and seeing everything as a problem, when it's actually maybe the most beautiful thing to experience is life itself, then the dynamic is a bit distorted. And you're not living true to yourself. Like what does being true to yourself means? Being true to yourself is probably waking up with peace of mind, actually owning your morning for yourself so that you get into a state of presence so that when you walk into work and maybe talking to your family in the morning time, you're doing it with that presence and with a being free in yourself to be that man, to do that thing, to show up this way. And then coming back home at the evening time and still having energy for your family, still being able to listen to them, to take in what they're saying, to understand them on a deeper level, so you can support them, make them feel safe, so that when they have problems to come to you in the future, rather than holding them in and not being able to share them and obviously that manifest into other more serious problems if unresolved. So that's where we want to be. That's what being true to ourselves in the moment is. And we're really switched on when we're present. And that's why I'm saying the whole idea of switching off, it's trying to escape something. Like, what are we trying to escape? Trying to escape our own lives? Like we say we want more time, yet at the same time we want to switch off. Like, what are you going to do? Get yourself more time and be switched off? Switched off from life. What do you actually really mean when you say switched off? You probably just mean that your mind is calmer, that you're thinking clearer, that you actually can enjoy the present moment. Enjoy work. Even if it's a challenge, enjoy it. Even when there's problems, enjoy it. And that's when you're not owned by anything. And the only way you can get there is by knowing who you are behind the scene. And so that's what the gap is. The gap is going from letting the outside dictate everything who you are and let that cause chaos in your mind, or bring order to your mind yourself by knowing who you are behind the role, behind the type, behind the titles. So this is separating you from the business. This is separating I am what I do to actually I do what I am. I'm gonna say that again. I am what I do to I do what I am, so that the business is an expression of you. So the business is you, but you're not the business because you're also a father, you're also um a leader in the community, you're also a friend, and ultimately you're a being, you're a human being. And so you can choose to be anything you want in any moment. And that's your power, that's your willpower, that's your freedom. And we're chasing this freedom for some time later when actually the freedom is right here, right now, in our choices that we make. And if we make a series of good choices for ourselves over and over again and commit to them and have the discipline to keep on that path, that's when we create outer freedom for ourselves in terms of the financial or the time or the health or the relationship or whatever that might look like. So, what's the cost of not being present? What's the cost of your relationships and not being present? Well, if you think about it in your team, if you're if you're the one and they your energy feel under pressure a lot and you're reacting, your team pick up on that. Do you think your team are inspired to take ownership when they see you like this? And what kind of problems does that take if your team aren't taking ownership? You start to tell yourself stories like everything comes back to me. Nobody else cares. And so you really start to question is that actually the truth? Is that actually the problem? Or is that just a symptom of some of the problems? A symptom of a deeper problem. Because I believe a lot of the things that we feel are problems are actually only symptoms, and they're symptoms because of the way we're showing up and influencing our environment. And sure there are people in our organization, in our teams, that probably shouldn't be there. We probably have let the standard slip and they shouldn't be there. I haven't had difficult conversations with them that I should have had. But again, why haven't I had them? Because I haven't been present and owning myself, and I feel like I am the business. And so when I feel like I am the business, there's an awful lot of pressure then for everyone to kind of come together and force outcomes to happen. Because it's like a machine instead of looking at it like a living thing, looking at yourself like a living thing. You're not looking at yourself like a living thing, you're looking at yourself like a machine. And that's where you focused on I am what I do, and I'm a doer, I'm a do-do-do. But you're not, you're a thinker. You think, you think life into ideas, you think life into other people, you motivate them, you energize them, you're there for them, you listen to them. But you're not if you're not present. You just become a manager of things, and you manage people instead of lead them. Managing people, you can manage a machine, you manage something that does something, but you lead something who is something. And you want people to step up and take ownership. Okay, we need to lead them better. And so the cost of this on the business is financial, the cost of this is headaches, the cost of this is I don't get to work on the things that I really want to work on and I know will grow the business, so I don't get enjoyment from the work that I'm doing. I'm stuck in the weeds. And then at home I'm bringing this energy back home, and then I'm not present with my family, they're not getting the best of me. I don't have as strong as relationships as I as I could have with them. It's not as fulfilling. My whole life in general is not as fulfilling because I'm not seeing myself and knowing myself behind my roles and titles. I think I am them, and I always have to be on because if I switch off, everything will fall to pieces. That's the underlying belief in here. So we need to clear the air on this. And so, what do we actually need to clear? Everything everything comes back to there's some root fears that we need to clear. What do we fear? What do we fear will happen if we do switch off? What do we fear will happen if we go away for a week? Will everything fall apart? Will people die? Will will I go bankrupt? Will I fail? Will people think I'm not leading well? Will people think I'm not a strong leader? Will people think I'm not a man of my word? Will people think I'm not a good father? Will people think I'm not a good husband? A lot of it is driven by our fear of what others might think. This is on a subconscious level, so you're not thinking this. Remember, there's two types of thinking. One is, sorry, there's two, there's two elements to your mind. One is thinking, and the other is in your emotion, in your body, and that's where the fear lives. And fear is the is the tool is a tool that your ego uses, and the ego is always driven to survive. The ego is always in survival mode, and it believes that as long as I maintain my identity, then I will survive. So, what do I need to do in order to in order to be the good father, be the good husband, be the good leader? And so it's always asking me to switch on and stay switched on and not be able to kind of let go of that. Because when you actually think about it, okay, they're taking they are things you're responsible for, but they're not you. You're something behind that. And so you need to lead your ego. You don't get rid of your ego, you don't shoot it down. You say, okay, that's helped me get to where I am, and it's helped me during moments where it's actually needed. Moments of imminent danger to survive, I need it. Fear is a great tool, but it's not a great tool if I want to change my environment, I want to enjoy it and thrive. It's not a great tool. What a better tool than that is your presence and good intention and just general goodness and love and respect for others. But you can't think that way when you're when your ego is using fear to survive, because survival is about you surviving, so you self-protect, you self-serve, you defend, and what you're really only protecting and serving and defending is the fear itself, which is a little bit like Theodore Roosevelt's quote that there's nothing to fear but fear itself. And so we need to clear some of this and tell her and realize what separate facts from story here. The fact is that if I go away or if I shut off for a few hours, nothing's really going to happen. My mind might tell me everything's falling apart, but actually it's not. So I need to clear this, and I need to separate who I am from the business, and so instead of it being like that fused, your identity is now separated. And so, what do you see it as? Now it's a relationship. There's a relationship between you and the business. You're not at you're not one fused together, like welded together. You separate that and say, okay, it's a relationship between two entities me and the business, me and my work. But to do that requires an openness to accept that. And if you spent five years, ten years, twenty years, thirty years in a business growing it, your identity is so tied to that, it's almost like it feels like it is you, and you have to accept that it's actually not, and that for the last 30 years I've let it be. I've let it be me, and now it's actually I have to realize it's not me. I need to separate myself from that. So you need to let your ego take this on the chin and say that hasn't been the truth, that's been my reality, but that's it's not the truth because I am I am I accepting that I am more than just a business, and I am more than just what I do, that I'm a human being and that I have value, and I can access that value through my presence. You have to give yourself permission to know that resting is part of life because you're a living thing, and living things have seasons, seasons for work, seasons for growth, seasons for rest, seasons for enjoyment, and so we have different seasons, and that can all happen in one day. And so you you have to give yourself that doesn't mean that you don't care just because you're not doing uh all you could, just because you're not giving you know 110% uh across every week, every day, that doesn't mean you don't care. It means you're actually protecting the thing that's created all this. Because what's created your business? It's you, you've created it. So therefore, the most important thing to create and to grow is yourself. And if you don't do that, well then the business has got to be limited. So this is why too much focus on the machine and the system and the outcomes and the deliverables and the targets, too much focus on that will actually limit you because you're not protecting the thing that's actually growing it to get there in the first place. So you have to give yourself permission to put your energy into what will grow things. And where do where does that mean? Put your energy into things you can control versus what you can't. Okay, so think of different spaces, space, time, and intention. Put your energy into what you can control, which is your own mind, uh, emotion, actions, attitudes, standards, decisions, and not into things you can't control, like other people, timing of events, um, outcomes. You can't control all those things. And then think of time. Time, put your energy into the present moment. What can I do right now today? Don't overthink the past or the future. Think of a tennis court. The present moment is like that net in the middle, and there's past and future every either side of that. And that's where our mind goes to a lot when it's not trained. That's where the ego wants to bring you. What have we, you know, look at the past, where have we failed, don't let it happen in the future. And it's always this over and back between the past and the future. And we need the the mid the present moment, which is right now, which is what you want more time for, is actually nearly non-existent in terms of what how much energy it gets from you. So we want to like think of that then the tennis net in the middle of the court widening so it takes up most of the court, and that's the present moment. So we can enter that with positivity and gratitude and joy. But you need to give yourself permission to enter the present moment. You need to allow yourself to be there by letting go of the past, the present, and the outcomes. And then lastly, is the intention. This is the most important thing. Where is my intention coming from? Because even if you want to grow the business and invest, what in the moment of decision, am I in a good positive state or am I in a fearful state? Am I making this decision because I need to invest in this? I need to have more people, because I need to, you know, do I need to provide better to clients, or else the clients will leave and then they'll have no business. Are your decisions being made out of a fear of failure, fear of not growing, or fear that you're going to miss out on something, fear of some kind of loss? Or are they made on a love of growth, uh, passion, positivity, possibility, potential? Is it in a good positive state? Where are you making those decisions from? That's where you can catch if you're living and operating the business from kind of fear or actually from a passion and purpose. So give yourself permission to put your energy into that passion and purpose again, into the present again, and into what you can control, which is yourself, and and let go of the rest. And what's the impact of this? Well, think about it. Think about it. If you put more energy into things you can control, into yourself, into posity, into presence, what's gonna happen? You're gonna wake up with it, you're gonna have peace of mind, you're gonna lead others better. Your team are gonna step up more, your problems are gonna reduce, your family are gonna feel it in the evening times. Remember, your family are never forget about you missing out on moments. Your your kids, your children, your wife will never get moments back that you've been absent. So don't be absent, be present. And so to leave you with this, I'm gonna get you to question yourself this week, just to reflect on this this week. Who am I behind the roles and the titles? Who am I behind the roles and the titles? Who is that man? If the business was taken away from me in the morning, who would I be? Who would I be choosing to be in the moment? That's who you always are. So, what do you choose to be in this moment going forward from now on? Is it presence or is it the pressure? Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for listening today. I really enjoy sharing this wisdom because it doesn't come from me, it comes through me from the work I do with men like you that I serve. So if the idea shared today resonated, be sure to like and follow the show. And if another man would value it, share this episode with him. Because the more men who hear this, the more of us can break free from pressure and enjoy what we're building. So let's enjoy the build together. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.