Lead From Within: Tinkering
Tinkering signals both a curiosity and a willingness to seek answers.
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In the introduction to Lead From Within, I introduced the concept that personal health and wellness are key to the success of leaders in the field. Leaders who develop a personal wellness practice are better prepared to not only survive in their leadership roles but to thrive and help their team members do the same.
Today we’ll dive into Tinkering, or self-discovery through introspection and experimentation.
Tinkering - Becoming a Student of Yourself (this post)
Reflection - Give Yourself Space to Grow
Inspiration - Gasoline for the Energy Fire
Resilience - Train ourselves to endure challenges
Recovery - Recharge to Continue the Journey
The Daily Practice - Designing your personal daily practice
Reflecting on My Own Tinkering Practice
The first "chapter" of Lead From Within, which we'll cover today, is, in my opinion, the most important: the concept of Tinkering. We often use "tinkering" at work, a term that signifies both curiosity and a willingness to seek answers to questions.
Applied to oneself, I’ve used this method of self-experimentation and self-analysis to seek answers to some pretty challenging questions:
When do I feel like I’m truly engaged and in flow at work? At home?
What is preventing me from being in that state more often?
Does alcohol serve me? What would happen if I stopped? Will my friends notice? Will they care?
Thanks to being curious, and more importantly, present to truly take stock of the answers, I’ve been able to switch on (and off) parts of my life that are allowing me to realize more of the types of results I want.
I’ve included some sample (key) questions below, but I encourage you to come up with your own as well. I'll leave you with this - in the Headspace mindfulness app, founder Andy Puddicombe often gives the prompt “does this serve me?” If you take away nothing else, I would ask you to keep that question close as you find yourself in moments of awareness during your day-to-day.
Next week we’ll cover the second chapter related to Reflection (meditation, journaling, identifying habits and patterns).
Thanks for reading,
Paul
Move forward. Stay in the game
Tinkering - Becoming a Student of Yourself
“A commitment to lifelong learning is a natural expression of the practice of living consciously.” - Nathaniel Branden
Objectives
Introduce the idea of Becoming a Student of Yourself, and how tinkering via introspection and lifestyle trial and error can lead to major changes.
Introduce the concept of Fuel and Energy and run an Energy Audit.
Reflect on what fuels the Coachee towards greater energy and performance.
Key Questions
What are you doing when you are at your best? What does that feel like?
What are you doing, conversely, when you are at your worst?
Tell me about a time when you were tired or exhausted, NOT at the end of the day? What led up to that moment?
What does the ideal version of yourself look like? If you could observe their day-to-day life, what would they be doing or saying that you are not doing today?
How would you structure your day differently to find more time for self-care?
Stretch Assignments
At-home journaling exercise:
Reflect on what you would do with your newfound increases in energy and how would your life be different. Who outside of yourself would be positively impacted? What small changes can you make today to get started?
Read: 50 Ideas for Five Day Self-Experiments from Psychology Today