In our final segment of Episode 02, The Frame Out, Alex will review everything discussed in our second episode and leave you with a few final challenges for your week. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions or if you want Alex to cover a specific topic!
In the construction industry, you face tight schedules, flaring tempers, and an endless list of other pressures. So stress must be an unavoidable part of the job, right?
Wrong. It is possible to work without stress! On today’s episode of No Bullshit, Alex will teach you exactly how to balance the everyday life pressures both on the job site and off the clock. It’s important to remember that life is a marathon, and your emotional well-being is critical to staying healthy and living it to the fullest.
Building on our last episode, you’ll hear how each color personality naturally responds to stress, so if you haven’t found out which category you fall into, click the link below to take the 4 Lenses Assessment before we get started.
What to look for in today’s episode:
In our final segment, The Frame Out, Alex will review everything discussed in our second episode and leave you with a few final challenges for your week.
Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts as well as the YouTube channel to watch full video episodes and be notified as soon as the next episode is live.
Helpful Links
Work without Stress by Derek Roger
Life Change Index Scale (Stress List Score)
[00:00:00] Alex: Welcome to the Frame Out where we really begin to show how do you implement these principles in your life so that you can really experience. The benefit of them, right? So, so here's what I need you to understand. Number one is you have to understand that, uh, this study was done that showed most of the people are asleep 70% of the day right now.
[00:00:27] Alex: Hear me out. Most people in construction, my friends, [00:00:30] we are asleep 80% of the day. I know. You're like, damnit Willis. No, cuz look at the bags on the eyes. I don't sleep well, but hear me out. Hear me out. But to understand that you have to understand the sleep continuum, right? So at the very, very bottom you have, uh, what they call deep sleep.
[00:00:43] Alex: Right. Then you have that rim or dreaming sleep, right? For some people, they sleep, walk. Right now I'm going to skip that next tier and move up to the very top, which is wide awake. Now, what is wide awake? Wide awake is paying attention to what's going on around you. The sounds, the [00:01:00] noises, the colors, the feels, the sensations, all of those things.
[00:01:03] Alex: You are wide awake in that moment Now. Between wide awake and sleepwalking, we have what Dr. Derek Rogers coined as waking sleep. Now this is where most people spend most of their day in waking sleep. Now, what's waking sleep? Well, here's what waking sleep is, my friends, I'm gonna just give you a word picture.
[00:01:23] Alex: When's the last time you had a stressful day at work? You drove all the way home only to get home and ask [00:01:30] yourself, how the hell did I get here? Did I take the expressway? Did I stop at that red light? Did I turn at that stop sign? Well, well understand. You were operating and functioning, but you were doing it in waking sleep right?
[00:01:41] Alex: Now. When's the last time you've been in a meeting and someone calls on you and they say, Hey, Jill, what do you think about it? You're like, well, uh oh. Well, well, I wanna hear what you guys then ladies think, well, what do you think about it? Right? Waking sleep, right? It's that area where we zone out. We're doing what we need to do daily, but we're zoned out mentally right now.
[00:01:59] Alex: Here's why this is [00:02:00] important. In construction, you are so good at what you do, my friends, and you've done it for so long, you can do it in your sleep. And so oftentimes because you've done this task over and over and over again, you get into that zone out mode of waking sleep. And the challenge is the majority of rumination happens when we're in that waking sleep mode.
[00:02:21] Alex: That's when we in that mode thinking, how the hell did they say that to me? Why I can't believe that email came through? I can't believe we're behind on a job like this. [00:02:30] So number one is you have to wake up. You have to wake up and find ways to wake up and get yourself out of that rumination state right when you wake up.
[00:02:39] Alex: You could begin to get out of that rumination, state, that negative mindset, and see what's going on around you and live in the present moment. Here's why that's important, my friends, you wanna wake up and stay awake as much as possible because understand truth be told, and I could have told you this from day one, stress does not exist.
[00:02:58] Alex: Truth be told my friends, [00:03:00] stress is something that we have made up. Stress if we're being honest, only lives really in two places. Stress lives in the past. A place that I cannot go back to and change all of my mistakes and stress lives in the future. A place that hasn't come yet. Well, what about the bills that are due?
[00:03:18] Alex: Well, what about this? I haven't even gotten there yet. When I come back to the present moment and I'm awake and wide awake in the present moment. There is no stress in that present moment, my friends, [00:03:30] right? So here's what I need you to do to frame this out for yourself. When you find yourself getting stressed, take a time out and ask yourself mentally, where am I right now?
[00:03:43] Alex: Am I in the past thinking about all of my mistakes and the things that I've done? Am I in the future thinking about all the what ifs and how am I gonna do this? And try your best to bring yourself back to the present moment. A good buddy of mine by the name of Trevor Moad, he called this The power [00:04:00] of neutral thinking.
[00:04:01] Alex: Well, what's neutral thinking, Alex? Neutral thinking is bringing yourself back to the present moment. Asking yourself, what do I need to do right now? And asking yourself, the next follow up question is, can I do it? From a football standpoint, it's not worrying about all the interceptions you've thrown in this game.
[00:04:18] Alex: It's not worrying about scoring enough touchdowns to come back and win. It's asking yourself, can I get in the huddle and call the next play right now? Yes. Okay, let's do that. When you begin to do that, you cut [00:04:30] out stress in your life by doing that. So number one is bring yourself back to the present moment.
[00:04:34] Alex: Don't focus on the past or the future. Focus on the present. The next thing is control your attention. Control your attention. You want to understand that there is only a few things that you can do to really control a lot of the situations in your life. Most of them you can't. So do what you can do and begin to control your attention only on those things, right?
[00:04:54] Alex: The next thing and the third thing is this. Detach you have to practice keeping things into [00:05:00] perspective. Understanding that, yep, life is challenging. You will have difficulties, but your job is to control what you can control and then detach. And then the fourth and final thing is this, which is the most difficult?
[00:05:12] Alex: Let go. I have to say, I've done all that I can do. I'm living in the present moment right now. I'm keeping things in the perspective. I've controlled my attention. I'm detaching and I'm going to let it go. Now, this is the most difficult of all of them. Because it takes practice similar to [00:05:30] lifting weight, similar to running routes, similar being great at anything you have to practice.
[00:05:34] Alex: Practicing letting go is going to be time consuming. At times it's gonna take up a lot of mental space because you'll find yourself being able to let it go for 10 seconds at a time in the beginning. But if you keep practicing, those 10 seconds will add up to 50 seconds, to three minutes, to three days to three months, and you'll find yourself really letting go.
[00:05:54] Alex: Right? So how do you do that? Well, The power of asking yourself questions helps, right? Number one, [00:06:00] apply the 5 55 rule, asking yourself, will this matter five weeks from now, five months from now, five years from now? Truth be told, if I ask you, what were you so stressed out about five years ago? Most of you won't even remember, right?
[00:06:13] Alex: So that helps you keep things in perspective. The next thing is contrast. Bringing things into contrast helps and say, Hey, listen. It could always be worse or say, Hey, listen, I got over this and because I got through that, I can get through this as well. Now, that helps you keep things in [00:06:30] perspective and it allows you to let things go right.
[00:06:33] Alex: By doing that, ultimately my friends, you can really begin to do a phenomenal job of managing pressure in such a way that it does not tilt over to stress. Right? There's this great quote by Nelson Mandela, for those who don't know who Nelson Mandela is. Nelson Mandela was uh, uh, the president of South Africa, right?
[00:06:51] Alex: Well, before he was the president. He was a political activist, and he felt that all people should be treated equally in fam, right? And so as a result of that, [00:07:00] the South African government imprisoned him, and he was in prison for 27 years for that idea that all people should be treated equally and fair.
[00:07:08] Alex: Right. Now, here's the deal. After serving 27 years, I guess the government realized it was a great idea. They said, you know what? That's a great idea. We're going to let you out. Right? So they let him outta prison, and I love the quote that he said as he left prison. He said, Hey, listen, as I left the gate, as I entered the gate toward the gate, that would give me my freedom.
[00:07:28] Alex: He said, I knew I had to [00:07:30] leave my bitterness and hatred behind, or else I'd still be in prison. Yeah, think about that. Yeah. Maybe he would've been physically free, but mentally it would've taken up a lot of mental space, even though he was physically free. Right? For a lot of us out there, my friends, we leave the job, but we take the stress home with us, so it's taken up a lot of mental space because we don't understand the power of practicing these principles and letting it go.
[00:07:59] Alex: Coming [00:08:00] back to it at a later date, right? Understanding that. So, so I need to give you a word picture. Here's what I need you to think about. Does anybody know how to catch a monkey in the jungle? I know you're like, where the hell did they get this guy from? Right? So, so, so understand. If you want to catch a monkey in the jungle, here's how you catch a monkey in the jungle.
[00:08:15] Alex: Hear me out. True story too. You can go on YouTube and check it out. A monkey's like salt and peanuts, right? So find some peanuts, uh, crunch 'em up. And you can dig a hole and you can put the peanuts in a vase that has a thin bottleneck and put the vase [00:08:30] with the peanuts in it, in the hole. Don't cover it back up.
[00:08:32] Alex: Just leave it open. Monkeys will smell the peanuts in the salt. Look down in the hole. They'll stick their hand in the vase in which is in the hole to grab the peanuts. But here's the deal, my friends, because the vase is so tight, it won't let the monkey's hand out with the bone up fit subpoena. Now the crazy part is this monkeys will stand there all damn night trying to get the peanuts out.
[00:08:53] Alex: They refuse to let go of the peanuts. And if you're a hunter and one monkey, you can just come sneak up on the monkey and the monkey [00:09:00] can see you coming, but still refuses to let go of the peanuts. Frantic, stressed out, but will not let go of the peanuts. But here's the deal. I said that to say this. Most of us, similar to those monkeys, we are dying over peanuts.
[00:09:14] Alex: We're stressing ourselves out over peanuts, right? Deadlines. Projects, being behind family, those type of things. What I'm challenging you to do on today's episode is to let go of the peanuts and pull your hand out of the jar. [00:09:30] You do this by controlling your attention, detaching, and really keeping things into perspective.
[00:09:37] Alex: By practicing those things, my friends, you can really begin to manage this thing of pressure, not allowing it to turn over into stress and ultimately be a phenomenal leader. So I wanna thank you for tuning in to No Bullshit with Alex Willis, the number one source for leadership development in the construction industry.
[00:09:54] Alex: Be sure to subscribe on YouTube and your favorite platform to be notified when [00:10:00] we have upcoming episodes. And I want you to leave us a comment, leave us a comment to let us know, uh, where you may have some challenges as well as what you think about the show. And understand this, we are here for you. So if you have some leadership challenges that you want us to cover on the show, please leave those comments and we'll make sure we cover those to help you be a phenomenal leader, both at work and at home.
[00:10:21] Alex: Until next time, I'll see you later my friends.[00:10:30]