Anything in your world causing that feeling of unsettledness? I imagine many of you responding with, “How much time do you have, Ben?”

I recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of my first trip to the Garden Isle of Kauai. Kauai is the one place where I am guaranteed to experience a giant exhale the moment I step off the plane. With this trip’s exhale came the realization of three activities that were pulling me into a trance of avoidance around the feeling of unsettledness.

“Are there any common themes with people you coach?”

Reflecting on the clients I’ve had the privilege to work with over the last decade, several themes emerge. The biggest one? Every individual reached out because they were looking to make a shift, moving FROM one state TO another. The second theme? They often didn’t realize what shift they were in the middle of!

In the 1950s classic film All About Eve, Bette Davis speaks one of the great movie lines of all time: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” There is quite a bit of bumpiness in the world right now. As Korn Ferry’s Gary Burnison shared in his recent newsletter, “90 percent of leadership is ambiguous. Everywhere we look, there’s ambiguity and all its synonyms: uncertainty, obscurity, vagueness, doubt, puzzle, and enigma.” Bumpiness, indeed.

Over the past 30 days I’ve helped clients hone in on their Big Rocks for the year ahead. As part of that process clients often ask about my Big Rocks, which I’m happy to share – especially my biggest Big Rock for 2025: Lower my preoccupation with my thoughts and feelings.

When I was working 12+ hour days in my thirties I remember thinking, "If I can just make it to 50."

My True North is meaningful relationships, meaningful work, and meaningful experiences in that order, always. I'm profoundly grateful to be engaged in a vocation that brings all three of those together.

As we head into the home stretch of 2024, there's a good chance you are involved in planning for 2025. On the work front, it could be a formal process connected to developing your organization's annual plan. On the personal front, you may be reflecting on the year that's wrapping up and jotting down ideas for the year to come. Or maybe you're beating yourself up because you haven't had time to do any planning.

"There are five ideas on this list I'd love you to share with our team."

That's the feedback I heard from a client who asked me to develop a workshop for her team. Her comment inspired me to focus this month's newsletter on ten new ideas I've recently shared with clients. These are the gems that generate the "Hold on, Ben. Say that one more time. I need to write that one down!" reaction. I hope they do the same for you, too!

With the clock ticking down to September 30th and no clear path to completion, the block intensified. Then last Sunday happened. I woke up depleted with a headache.  I got the scorecard out. I wanted to lash out at everyone about everything. To bring a bit of lightness to the day I reminded myself of the first line from Rebecca Ferguson's song Superwoman, "I'm not wearing a cape, these are just regular clothes."

And just like that, it's almost August! Chances are some aspect of your 2024 plan is off track and you've thought, "How can I get back on track when I have 242 things clamoring for my attention?" If that's you, here are three suggestions to help.

Rick and I just did something big. Actually it was very big. We sold our home of 24 years.

It took just over three months from the moment we signed the listing agreement to the moment the last item was delivered to our new home. I realized that's roughly the same amount of time a team spends developing a strategic plan. And that led to three helpful lessons for this month's newsletter.

Like many of my clients, I suspect there's a good chance you're working on something big right now: it could be a major project at work, searching for your next career opportunity, or finding a new home in the next 22 days. (That last one is my 'something big' right now.)

We often avoid having tough or uncomfortable conversations, even though addressing issues head-on can prevent bigger problems down the road. Gay Hendricks calls this the "sweaty ten minute conversation you don't want to have." However, I've found that most communication challenges can actually be resolved through what I call a "Sweaty Five Minute Conversation" (SFMC).

The hiring process at many companies sucks isn't great. Anyone looking for a job right now has a handful of "they did WHAT?" stories that are perfect for TikTok.

According to a Wall Street Journal article, "Employers are slow-walking candidates, piling on new requirements ranging from years of experience to higher scores on technical tests, to running prospective hires through additional rounds of interviews."

Covid interrupted my routine, including cancelling the first trip of the new year that I was very excited about. The emotional hit from the interruption was actually more severe than the physical hit. After multiple days of feeling under the weather I quickly become unregulated, ungrounded, and NOT in flow. In short, it was tough to be fully present for any extended period of time. That ferocious optimism? It was replaced with an intense feeling of overwhelm.

Do you remember 2022's Words of the Year? Merriam Webster selected gaslighting, and Oxford University Press chose goblin mode. I had to refresh my memory on goblin mode, too. It's slang for "unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy behavior." Neither goblin mode or gaslighting were positive or aspirational!

Last month Rick and I celebrated our anniversary with a trip to Kauai. One evening he stepped out onto the lanai in our hotel room and asked, "Are you ready to head downstairs for our anniversary dinner?" Unfortunately I wasn't quite ready as I had fallen into the trance of self-criticism. What's worse, it was the kind of self-criticism that generated shame.

Curiosity is a strength we're born with. The world is new to us! We want to understand it, so we test the waters, question, experiment and learn. But it can easily take a backseat as we get older. That’s unfortunate, because curiosity is a great tool to help us come back into the present moment—where we can view a situation from multiple angles and perspectives, putting us in position to make more optimal decisions.

I recently completed a breakthrough offsite for a client whose leadership philosophy includes "trust, transparency, open communication, and collaboration." There's a good chance those four attributes appear in your organization's philosophy, too.

Here's my question: if you picked one of those four attributes to focus on upleveling, which one would you choose?

If you are:

• Seeking practices and inspiration to lead during this time of constant change

• Wrestling with a tough decision that will have a major impact on your team

• Wanting to focus everyone on ending the year with momentum

I have an awesome podcast to add to your queue!

Did you know that in addition to 1:1 executive coaching and Breakthrough Offsites, I also provide recovery coaching? It's a specialized form of coaching designed for people rearchitecting their life after hitting the wall due to addiction. Because of that coaching -- and openly sharing about my own recovery journey -- I often hear from friends, colleagues, and clients when they're concerned about someone in their life. As you might imagine, those calls are usually a mix of frustration and fear with a big amount of hopelessness.

Here's the reaction I love hearing when I share an idea with a client during a 1:1 jam session or during group coaching:

"Hold on, Ben. Say that one more time. I need to write that one down!"

I thought y'all might be interested in hearing the ideas that generate that response, too. Over the last month I've been noting those ideas, and I've curated this top 10 list.

"I'm kerfuffled."

That's the first thing a client shared at the top of a recent coaching call. As I probed more I learned she was unsettled -- unsettled about transitions happening on both the work and home front. My reply? "Me, too."

A client recently asked me to develop a series of 10 minute Ted Talk-like presentations to be shared over a six month period with several hundred leaders from throughout their organization. I love that assignment, and I really love the theme of the series: creating positive mindset shifts to better navigate sustained periods of change and uncertainty.

Earlier this month I facilitated a Breakthrough Offsite for 24 leaders in an organization undergoing profound change. In addition to change, the other key theme was new: new people in new roles in new team configurations.

All of that new presented an interesting challenge: how to help these leaders have meaningful interactions with their colleagues -- the kind of interactions that lead to "I'd love to grab more time and keep this conversation going."

It's easy for me to fall into the trance of doing. I now believe one of my earliest over indulgences was to the feedback that came from non-stop GSD. And that started long before my career began! It would be many decades before I learned that sometimes we have to practice "under-doing and under-achieving" to remind us of "the simple grace and humility of being human."  (Big thanks to Richard Rohr for that reminder.) I'm learning meaningful moments often happen when I've created space to simply be. That's why my intention for the year is to create space.

What was your most recent first-time experience? There's something incredibly magical about the first-time visit to a new place, the first-time watching an artist you love perform live, or the first-time navigating a new professional situation. Each first-time experience can inspire us, and that in turn can help us inspire others.

As I was wrapping up a jam session with a client located in Europe I asked, "Am I your last meeting of the day?" My client responded with an enthusiastic "Yes!" Then she held up her iPhone so I could see the calendar app. Her day had been completely full of back-to-back meetings. My heart sank.

There's a good chance you're in the process of making a decision, which is why I'm sharing the five questions I just ran through with my client. Before you review these questions, I'd like you to think about a decision you're making (or will be making). Take three minutes and jot down the questions you'll review to optimize the outcome of that decision. Use this list to supplement yours and get to a better decision, faster.

As a former marketing executive, I understand the hard work that goes into creating kick-ass events -- the kind of events that generate magic as you aim, arm, and inspire attendees to greatness. I also know what happens after attendees leave the bubble of your event and return to their bubble: they can easily fall into a trance of overwhelm.

As we work our way through the summer and prepare for the home stretch of the year, here's the question I'm asking in client jam sessions:

What do you need to do over the next 144 days to put a giant exclamation point on 2022?