Shake off the Slump

0:02 - On this episode of Extra Shot of Leadership, we're going to talk about Positivity.

0:06 - And how does Positivity affect your leadership?

0:20 - Hi, Kim. How's it going?

0:21 - Hey, Pepper. Here I am, ready for episode episode number two.

0:25 - Me, too.

0:26 - I've been thinking about the question, and I'm ready to ready to roll.

0:30 - All right. What do we got? What's on your mind? What have you heard? What's been bubbling up?

0:34 - Well, it's how do you stay positive? So I'm really interested to hear what you have. Pepper, how do you stay positive?

0:40 - So this is a relevant conversation right now. I think with everything going on in the world, this is something that continues to come up with the people I interact with, too. There's a lot of questions around. How do you maintain your Positivity? Do you do that? Why is it important really hard at staying positive. I believe it is so important for us as leaders to maintain some level of Positivity in our work environment. I think our teams look to us for that Positivity. And for me, I will just say this does not come natural. This is not something that is innate. It is not my personality. So in episode one, I talked a little bit about self awareness and having some level of understanding about yourself. And I know about myself for many, many years that I tend to see the world from a lens of the glass is half empty. The majority of time when I'm faced with situations or I'm approaching other people, the world circumstances, I tend to just look at the negative. I focus on the negative. I replay the negative chorus over and over and over. And very early on in my leadership, I was really thinking about Gosh, who wants to be around somebody like this?

2:08 - Absolutely.

2:09 - And I also think I had opportunities of interacting with people who were somewhat negative. And I knew I didn't want to be around them. All right. I didn't want to spend time in that environment. And so knowing that it does not come naturally to me, I have to very specifically focus on what are the good things that are happening today, what are the good things that happened yesterday and look for those things and think on those things. What about you?

2:43 - Well, again, I really had to think about this one because for the most part, I think throughout my life have tried to stay positive. I had a really good positive learning lesson when I was probably in my late twenties, and it just served me well. But when this came up, I thought I wanted to think about what am I doing right now in this moment? What's the one thing that is keeping me positive? And I would say the thing that's a game changer for my 2020 is just my morning routine is different than it has been in the past. And so there's these things that I would do kind of haphazardly. I'm not a person that's by nature structured. I'm not one of those people that I get up, I brush my teeth, have my coffee put on my clothes. It's like whatever comes that day that I may be in my robe for two or 3 hours and I may brush my teeth at 07:00 A.m. And it may be 10:00 A.m.. And so I'm just not a creature of habit. But this year, I have been able to and because of covet, have had that opportunity to change things. So historically, I've traveled a minimum 50 weeks out of a year. And even when I'm on days off, I've been traveling for vacation to go somewhere to do something. But this year, with COVID, there was an opportunity where many people like us worked from home for a period of time. And in that period of time where I'm not heading out for a red eye or coming in for something late, I had the opportunity to set a morning routine.

4:18 - Excellent.

4:20 - Yes, I love it. I don't ever want to give it up. It adds so much positivity for my day. It gets me in the right realm and gets me ready to go face the day.

4:31 - It's funny you mentioned the morning routine because I am also not a creature of habits. I don't have my days mapped out in advance. And I'm also not a morning person. But I have learned I do enjoy at least a 20 to 30 minutes kind of carved out portion for my morning. And it was last week. I didn't sleep well. I didn't wake up well. I didn't have that 20 minutes. And I was running into work and I was starting my day and I was just off. I was off. I couldn't get started. I looked like I was disheveled or I was still asleep. It was a mess. And I was reflecting at the end of the day what happened. And for me, it was I missed that morning. 20 minutes at 30 minutes of quiet time, whatever I do in that moment. So I want to know, what do you do in your morning routine?

5:28 - Well, not being a morning person, I know that there's going to be my friends and family out there and be like, she does what? Yes, folks, I've been able to change my morning routine where I get up early. And so I'm getting up about 05:00 A.m. For one. And so I get up at 05:00 A.m. And I really thoroughly started to enjoy this time, this quiet time. And so the first thing I do, it takes a little bit of time to kind of get myself right. But then one of the first things I do is get on the treadmill. And while I'm on the treadmill, I listen to a motivational message. It may be a Christian programming, it may be something more of a leadership type message, but I do that. And I watch YouTube while I am on the treadmill, so it makes the treadmill go faster. It's that whole atomic habit thing. Do something you like to do or something you don't like to do. Yeah. Nice. Then I crawl off the treadmill, and then I start my Bible study, and I do a good 20 to 30 minutes of a Bible study where I do some reading. I do a devotional, and I do prayer. Right. And that gets my mind in the right space. The very last thing I do before I finish is just write something that I'm grateful for or something that's good, or write a message to myself on my devotional that helps put me in the right frame of mind. And then the next thing I do is I go and I have my shower, and I get after that. Before I start work, I do some positive affirmations, so I've memorized them. Now I just rattle them off. Some people call them incantations, some people call them affirmations. And so I either read those to myself off of a long list or I just repeat at least ten to 15 of them and then review my dreams and goals at my vision board. Stand before that for just a few minutes, and then I'm ready for the computer. Then I'm ready to turn it on. I'm ready to give to other people. I'm ready to receive other people. And it just sets my day right for Positivity, I feel powerful, and I feel like I've already accomplished. I'm like the army.

7:24 - Right.

7:25 - I've done a whole bunch of things before I've ever really started my day of work.

7:30 - So you have a very clear four or five things. I didn't count them all as you were talking. Four things you're going to do every single morning before you get to work. And that sets you up for your Positivity for the rest of the day.

7:44 - Absolutely. Treadmill, Bible study, affirmations, vision board. That's the routine.

7:49 - You got it down. You got the recipe.

7:51 - Yeah.

7:52 - I'm not as structured. I am definitely not as structured. I accept that of myself. I don't know that I could do those five things prior to the day starting. And it's just not my style. Right. I think for me, it's more of throughout the day, I am going to do something in the very early morning, and I'm going to do my devotional. I want to spend some time in reflection, thinking about how to bring my best self. It's kind of what I do when I start my day, get my shower, head over to work. And then for me, it really is a constant internal conversation of looking for the good things.

8:36 - Yes.

8:37 - Looking for the positive things. Thinking throughout the day. What is going well right now? The other thing for me is if I have a moment at any time in my day that I think, what is going well, I will immediately send a text off to a girlfriend to a friend of mine. And I will say, hey, what are the three things right now that you are grateful for?

9:00 - Oh, nice.

9:01 - And we'll go back and forth. Yeah. Just a very quick exchange. And that keeps me focused on what is going well in my life. And then I also have an opportunity to think about, hey, that's also going well for that person, too.

9:15 - Yes. It's just spreading. It spreading it out, which also makes you probably feel really, really good inside.

9:21 - I get the whole piece of you feel empowered, you feel some sense of control, and you're not just in this negative spiral, right. In this negative world where all you're seeing is everything that isn't going right or isn't going well.

9:41 - Yeah. So you say that, Pepper, that's not your nature. That's not your normal. You haven't always been that way, but you're doing those things now. So what or who has been influential to help you to do that?

9:55 - I had a relationship at one time in my life where the person that I was interacting with or spending time with, everything was bad, everything was negative. And because I can go to that place where everything is bad, everything stinks, nothing's growing well. And I didn't like myself. Over time, I found that I just didn't like who I was and how I was approaching life, looking in the mirror. It just wasn't a good person. It wasn't who I wanted to be. And so just thinking about that time, I never want to go back to that. And so I have to work at it every day. What about you? Do you have somebody or something that has created this focus for you of getting your morning routine down, staying positive, approaching the day?

10:51 - Well, absolutely. It's not just my brainchild. There's definitely been people in my life that have influenced several of those things and how I do those things. So from a spiritual perspective, my mother, my grandmothers, they're just women of faith that have just had a huge impact on my life in that realm that I would say has influenced my faith side of my life. But as for the routine that really came from in January, I started listening to this Terry Saville Foy. I started reading her books, watching her videos. And there's this one moment or this one video that she talks about the five things that successful people do before 08:00 A.m. And it just really hit me. I was like, well, I want to be successful.

11:39 - Yeah.

11:40 - Not that I wasn't, but who doesn't want to be successful?

11:43 - Even more successful, right.

11:44 - Even more successful. It's the whole go, give more, do more, be more. And so I really listened to that. And I bet I heard that message three, four or five times before I decided, go, you know what? I'm going to go try this. I'm going to try this tomorrow at 05:00 A.m., and I'm not doing those five things. I'm doing four of them. So I feel like I'm doing pretty good. I've made some progress.

12:05 - Yeah. You've customized it to what works for.

12:08 - You, what works for me, and what makes me feel good, what makes me feel positive, what makes me feel strong and powerful. And I got to tell you, I don't ever want to give this up. I don't ever see it changing for me because it's just been so good for me.

12:23 - So when you say you don't ever want to give it up, you don't want to change it for you, how does that help you in your leadership? What does that do for you when you are going to work and meeting with the people you work with?

12:38 - Well, I think it goes back to the conversation we had in episode one about seeing the good in people when they don't see it. And so when you get into that positive state, it just helps you to see what's going well and what's going right. So this takes me back to a conversation that you and I had many years ago. I was in a different role, more of a project manager. And I remember I went to observe something, and I came back and I came to your office and you're like, well, how did it go? And I proceeded to tell you everything that I saw that I could nitpick, that they could do better, not needed to do better, that they could do better. And you looked at me and it really just struck me when you said, did anything go well? And I was like, man, yeah, there was a lot of good. Why didn't I leave with that? And so there's moments like that that I can remember where you can start to look for all of the things that you need to fix. And that's just where my brain can go. I have that eye that my husband, he warns contractors, he's like, listen, good luck working with this woman, because when I walk into a room, my eye goes to what's not plumb, flush, straight level. It sees that. And I think you can train your brain to do that in leadership and see what's wrong, but you can also. Your brain is an amazing muscle, and you can train your brain to see what's going well. And if you're unable to see those things, what's going well, it's going to be really hard for you to be appreciative of your team and what they are doing well. You've got to be able to see it so that you can say it. Thank you for doing this or great job on this. You've got to, as a leader, be able to see those positive things. And I think that's what it does for me. It helps put me in that positive mind state where I can see what's going well with my team and with our business and where we're headed.

14:36 - This takes me back just listening to that story so many years ago. I remember I was invited to go, and much like you, I was invited to go and observe a training session. And there was so much effort put into the training session, months of development, coordination, getting the right people informed where to show up, just everything that goes on in a training program. And it was probably a day long class, a lot of moving parts to it. And I remember everything going on. I was fixated on one little thing, very minor thing, and I couldn't let it go. And the person who was coordinating this whole entire event, I remember afterwards they approached me and they said, hey, how did the day go? What did you think? Just having some conversation, and all I could focus on was that one little thing. And their response, it was not immediate, man, did you hear the Thunder?

15:46 - I do hear the Thunder. I'm like, wow.

15:51 - The response from that person, it was not immediate. They dropped the conversation. We went about our business. The day was over. Fast forward probably three months, four months later, and the person and I, we had another exchange conversation just in general. And they reminded me, they said, hey, do you remember what happened three months ago? Yeah, I remember and recalled all of that. And they said to me, out of everything that went on, all of the development, all of the materials, getting everybody coordinated, there wasn't one positive thing that you said about my work that was the exchange. Wow. And I sat there in my chair thinking, unbelievable, this person, they are so right. How could I not identify one thing? And in that moment for me, I just thought, gosh, as far as a leader is concerned, I've got to readjust my lens. I've got to refocus on what are all of the things, the positive things that are going on with my team, the stuff that I'm managing and being able to articulate that. So it's one thing to see it, right?

17:10 - Yeah.

17:10 - I think leaders need to be communicating it. They need to be saying it. They need to say, look at all of this good stuff, because as leaders, we're reframing other people's lens a little bit too. And how we do that is so important. And the fact that we do it.

17:27 - Just helping them to see the good that they're doing so that you're not always the one that's having to say, hey, you're doing a good job. They can see it in their own work and in their own lives. It's just so important. I know I have seen leaders from both sides of this fence where leaders that are just so negative, and I see it so painful for their people because it's just hard to thrive in that environment. It's hard to want to be around that leader. And you want to be a leader where your team comes to you with issues, with problems, with questions. And if they know that when they show up in your office, it's going to be a total negative Fest, it's just hard for them to want to come do that. I've just never heard of anybody that says, man, that person is so negative. I can't wait to go have a conversation with them.

18:09 - That's exactly right. That is exactly right. People say that all the time. It's like, gosh, I can't wait to hang out with that negative person because they bring me so much joy.

18:19 - Yeah, absolutely. And for me, I want to be able to inspire my friends, my family, my team members. And if I'm not someone that they want to be around, that's going to be really hard to inspire them, motivate them and get them excited about anything, because they just don't want to be in my presence.

18:37 - Yeah, they don't want to hang out.

18:39 - Yeah, they want to hang out. I want you to come and hang out so we can just chat super important.

18:44 - There's just so many questions that are firing off in my head right now. One of the things I have is, look, you've talked about 2020 for yourself and how you've recommitted to being positive. Have you just worked on this all of your life? What's your commitment? Overall, I understand you kind of shared what made it change this year. But has this just been a lifelong quest for you?

19:10 - I think absolutely. I would say a lifelong quest. It has not been an overnight success. It is something that like you, I deal with it and I work on it. And I am so appreciative of the people that have helped me. Just Ping me right with a little. Hi, Kim, have you thought about this? And I can remember, really one of the first conversations was I was in my twenties and someone I went over to their house really looking for some sympathy and some empathy. And I was looking for a hug and some Crystal light lemonade.

19:40 - Crystal light that takes me back.

19:43 - Yeah. This sweet lady always had crystallite lemonade in her refrigerator. That was cold. And you could always count on getting a good hug there. And I was just going through something in my life that was extremely negative, extremely painful. And I just needed some love. And boy, when I went over there, that's not what I got that day. And she just says, Kim, every day when you wake up, you have an opportunity and you can either choose to pull the covers up over your head and cry or get out of bed. You can choose to think about the happy side of this and the positive side and what you're going to do about it or lay there and dwell in it. There was one time, again, I think about I was in my forty s and I went on a trip with some friends with some girlfriends. And I was having a major moment during this girlfriend trip, and I don't want to be the sour Apple and the bunch. And so I was lucky to run with someone that was just the sweetest, most thoughtful, kind person that helped me literally. She gave me kind of a metaphor of unpacking my backpack, and she's just like, just dump the whole thing out. Just dump the whole thing out on the bed. Right. Instead of just taking out one little thing at a time, let's dump the whole thing out tonight. That was so helpful. So, yes, it has been kind of a lifelong quest, and I'm not going to give up. I feel that Positivity is what puts me in a place to do the things that I love to do. I love to help other people. And if I am not in that state, it's going to be really hard to make any type of positive impact on someone else and go help them with whatever they're going through.

21:14 - Two themes that I'm hearing. Number one, who you surround yourself is important.

21:19 - Absolutely.

21:20 - Who is around you, how they are seeing the world impacts could potentially maybe not always, but could potentially impact how you see the world. Right. Who you are keeping company with. And then the other theme for me as I'm listening to you is it doesn't come easy. You have to make a very specific decision to say, I am going to choose positive. I'm going to choose this mindset. I'm going to stay focused on it. And it is hard to make that decision. The environment that we are in, it is tough. People are struggling. I know I have struggled myself when I think about all of the stuff that we are dealing with day in and day out, just from a personal perspective, how do you just kind of power through? How do you get into the next gear in order to say, no, not going to do it, I'm going to stay focused. What do you do? Is there anything specific you do?

22:20 - I think as you were talking, I was like, there's that moment. And so have I always done this? No, there's been some form of it. There's been someone else that's been maybe a catalyst. But what I have learned over the last few years is that if you're in a state that you're not happy with or you don't like it, it's uncomfortable, you're offcenter, whatever that is. Just like now, so many people are hurting. They're going through painful times and they're suffering, they're grieving, they're struggling in that moment. There's got to be something that changes, right? If you can't get out of that state unless something changes. And so you can either expect someone else to do it for you or you can make that choice that you are going to do something. I truly believe that Positivity is a choice. And to be able to get into that realm if you're not there you have to do something different or nothing's going to change. And so here's something that I've learned to do and it is just change your state. And this just isn't me, this isn't my thought. But if you've ever studied Tony Robbins in his life, it's really an incredible story. And he does this something where he gets people to make a change and he gets them to change their state. It's not their state of where they are but a physical state. And so it can be something as simple as stand up or he gets in this running motion. And so it's almost like a runner that's getting ready to come off the block. So you plant your feet and then you run your arms back and forth real fast where you do that for a good 30 seconds, it will get your blood pressure pumping, your heart pumping. And after that there's a moment after that where you feel some different power. And in that moment just make a statement, say I am or I will or I'm thankful for it. Do something positive in that moment right there and it's just something to get you out of the wallering on the sofa or woe as me just it gets you into a very positive state. It could be something as simple as. Go for a walk. It could be something as simple as change the room that you're in and close your eyes and meditate on something. One thing that's positive, the comment about.

24:38 - Saying something positive, I would say in my younger years I'm in my mid forty s, in my thirty s and in my twenty s. And there was absolutely a part of me that thought positive affirmations, really, that just seems hokey. I just don't know that I need that or I really need to say that to myself. I did read a book in the last twelve months around the importance of positive affirmations and what it does in your brain and how restating those things a number of times or whatever it is, whatever I am powerful, whatever positive affirmation you want to do, how impactful that can be. And that really has changed my perspective on positive affirmations because I'm absolutely one of those people who no way, I just don't see any value in it and now find myself reaffirming what it is that I am good at or pushing myself to think about those positive things that I want to just reinforce over and over and over versus the negative. What I didn't do right, what I didn't do well, I find that to be very powerful.

26:00 - Absolutely. And I wish I could remember where I heard this or where I read this. I'm pretty sure I read it. But your brain responds to your own voice more than any other voice. And what you say your brain just that's where it magnetizes to it's, where it focuses on that's where it goes. And so if you keep saying negative things out of your mouth. That's where your life is headed versus if you keep repeating those positive things to your brain, that's where it starts to attract and that's where it starts to head towards.

26:31 - We've talked a little bit about the importance to leaders, the law of attraction. What are we attracting? Who are we attracted to in terms of negative versus positive? Changing your state? I'm just a person at this point. Devil's advocate. Listen, there's nothing to be positive for. Things right now are just rough. Life right now is coming fast and hard, and I am just in a slump. What would you say? What would you do? Is there anything you would recommend Besides changing your state? Is there anything else that you would say? Kim, here, I know that moment. I've experienced that moment in my life. What would you say?

27:18 - I empathize with it. I see it you and I hear it. And I don't want people to think that we're just naive to what's going on in the world. We absolutely see it. I see the negativity, I see the suffering and the grieving, but that is going to always be there. It may not be this, it may not be cobbt, but it's going to be something else, right? And so nothing will change if you don't change something, right? Something has to change. And so you can wait for somebody to kind of make a change or make you happy. That's going to be a long wait. It could be a long way and it could never come. But you have the power to choose and you have the power to do something different. You just have to make the decision to do it. I really can't simplify it any more than that. What would you say?

28:07 - I think for me, what is important is the recognition in myself that I'm in a slump versus I have leaders who contact me and they say, hey, look, my team is in a slump. Do you have any recommendations? So I think it's one thing for a leader to recognize that their team is in a slump. I think it's a different thing for an individual to recognize they are in a slump. And I agree with you around making that choice. Do I want to stay in a slump? Do I want to stay in this place or do I want to make anything different? And I think it's the two parts for me, right? It's the recognition and the reflection of it and then changing your state. I like the way that you said that. Making a choice to say, I'm going to look at this different. I'm going to move. I'm going to change. I don't like the way that I'm feeling. I don't like the way that I'm showing up. I don't like the impact that I'm leaving or having on other people around me, whether it's my friends, my family, my team, whoever it is I want to have a different view. I want people to see me differently.

29:15 - So Pepper, we've kind of hashed this out and kind of given our heartfelt. How do we see the world and how do we want to help people? But is there anything else for you, like on the back end, something else you would do differently or you want to consider adding, to even add more value or more momentum to your positive lifestyle that you have going now?

29:35 - One thing I am working on actively right now is putting my phone down. I find I spend a little too much time on my phone and it's around just nonsense. Honestly, between social media, between news articles, just everything that we are that I am not, we that I am faced with on a day to day basis I can find. I pick up my phone in 45 minutes, 60 minutes later. Where did I go? It's like I'm in a time Warp. I've allowed myself to go down these rabbit trails or these tangents and just following all of this information that really at the end of the day for me is not bringing any value and that is something I am actively working on. If I am going to pick up my phone, I'm going to be very thoughtful around what am I going to spend time looking at? And I'm one over the last, I don't know how long, maybe six months. When I wake up in the morning, I'll roll over and I'll check my phone and I'm typically looking at work and just seeing what's going on there. But then sometimes I find myself going into other things that just don't add value. Now I'm telling myself, okay look, we're going to start the day and we are not going to pick up that phone. We're not going to roll over and look at that first before you get out of bed. And I'm also going to be just more diligent in the time I spend on my off hours right at night. What am I reading? What am I spending time looking at? And can I put more books on there or can I spend more time just doing other things that are more positive? Honestly, I just find that with the phone I get carried away. That is something that I'm working on. I have to be much more disciplined about it and not pick it up.

31:36 - That's good. That's really good because this world is just conditioning our mind with negative thoughts. You listen to the news, watch the news. There may be a one or two minute clip about something positive, but the entire rest of it is all about what's bad and what's not going well. You get on social media, same thing and it can be political stuff and all kinds of just stuff. That is just the only word that I can see is it's just ugly sometimes and painful. And so that's where you've got to get your mind into a different realm. And so there may be people that say, I don't have anything, anybody positive in my life. I don't have positive friends. I don't have a good leader in my life. Those are the people that just surround yourself with good books, surround yourself with good media, surround yourself with good positive messages. You can find them. They're out there and surround yourself with that and see what that does for your brain. Because the world is definitely conditioning us to think differently. And it's not positive.

32:38 - It's not positive. You can very easily go down a negative trail, without a doubt, very quickly. And then all of a sudden for me, I just look back and I'm like, oh, my gosh, where have I been for the last two days? And I just reflect and I'm like, oh, man, that was kind of a bad day yesterday. All right, I am going to reframe my day. I'm going to restart my day, and I'm going to have my positive lens on again because I'm fighting kind of this internal natural negativity, that lens that I have.

33:11 - Yeah, it's the antidote.

33:13 - That's exactly right.

33:14 - The counterbalance, that type thing. You've got to have some type of counterbalance or antidote.

33:18 - And the other thing, and I think this has just been a conversation between you and I is I will find myself having conversations. And depending on who it is or what's happening, I will replay one thing in my head, and the thing that I replay over and over, and I'm trying to continue to do it is I will not let X whatever it is. Right. I will not let this steal my joy.

33:42 - Nice.

33:43 - I just focus on that today. I am joyful, and I will not allow this to steal my joy. I'm going to get past it. I'm going to think about something different. This isn't the end of the world. There's so many other things that I can be focusing on. And so that's the message that personally, I just try to replay throughout the day, depending on how I'm feeling.

34:03 - Yeah, that's good.

34:04 - It sounds simple and it sounds hokey, but that's what I do.

34:07 - You got to do something right. I think that's our message here is just do something. So if you were to recap this whole message for listeners, what would you say?

34:16 - So there's a couple of themes for me that stand out. I think number one is Know who You Are. Some of us are bent towards more positivity and we're more optimistic. It's just how we were built. We were made. I think there's others of us who might be have more of a tendency towards a negative spin. So number one, I think it's Know Who you Are. And from there, how do you launch from that? I do think the two major themes was you got to stick with it. You got to stick with it. You got to keep trying. Change it up, switch it up, do this one week or this the next. Really customize it to you and what fits you. Just like you said, right there is the five steps. You decided on four and working towards what works for you. So know who you are, customize it to you. And I think the last thing is being thoughtful around what you are putting yourself around people, media information. Who are you spending time with or what are you spending time with? And how is that potentially impacting your lens and your level of positivity? And again, I don't want to oversimplify the things that are going on.

35:37 - Sure.

35:38 - People are losing jobs, people are suffering with disease or family. Is this some sort of recipe that's the cure all for everything? Absolutely not. And I am not trying to oversimplify the very challenging, tough times that people are facing right now.

35:59 - For me, it is who do I want to be? I have to focus on who do I want to be? I want to be that person that is a Lighthouse for people that can help other people, because there are so many people that are grieving and are hurting. And I want to be that one person that gives them either a kind smile or a kind act or a kind word that is helpful for them. And so to be able to do that, I have to do something to keep myself in that realm. This morning routine for me, it's working for me. And I do there are so many times throughout a week that I just have a conversation with someone and they'll text me back and go, that was so helpful. I'm motivated, and I'm like, Excellent. Okay, one down, another one to go.

36:43 - Yeah, that's awesome.

36:44 - Yeah. And so that's just kind of what keeps me going is the encouragement from the other side.

36:50 - All right, well, I got to go. I totally enjoyed this conversation. I've been looking forward to this one and really trying to push myself to maintain some level of positivity. I know I'm not perfect, but I am going to try to be a little bit more disciplined when I wake up. Just listening to you is inspiring, and I appreciate you sharing that with me today.

37:14 - So what are you going to go do for the rest of the day?

37:16 - Well, this weekend I decided that I was going to try and make some pickles. Yeah, I know what? I've never made pickles before. I want to learn how to can. And this was one way for me to jump into this whole Canning process. I had a friend who he also made pickles, and I was like, you know what? Why not? I'm going to try and make some.

37:40 - Pickles, like the whole water bath pressure cooker pickles.

37:44 - Okay. So that's the reason why I'm trying this recipe, because it does not require the water bath. It's a three day process. So it sounds long, but it's not too intensive. It was something that I thought, you know what? I can handle this. And on the last day when you're actually jarring them, Canning them, they're hot. And so that is what makes the little lids pop. So I'm on day two right now. I am excited about these pickles. I think they are going to come out delicious. And I'm so happy to share that's awesome.

38:13 - Well, I hope you share some with me because I want to taste those pickles. Are they hot, sweet, spicy, dill?

38:18 - What? Yeah, they're sweet pickles. I am learning how to make these sweet, and I'm ready. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go for dill or like garlic or spicy. I'm like going to be at the pickle Canning business. Now.

38:34 - That's funny. I just do not picture you as the pickle lady. But this probably is coming at a really good time because the holidays are coming up. You can do that thing where you put the crafty fabric over it and put something like a ribbon around it's. A gift.

38:49 - Everybody listening. Sweet pickles for everybody.

38:52 - They're coming.

38:53 - Sweet pickles for everybody.

38:54 - This must be how you shake off the slump or something, because you're pretty jazzed about it.

38:59 - It really is. This is one way that I like to get my brain thinking in a little bit of a different way, creative just starting something from scratch I've never really done before. Absolutely. That's one of my goals. What about you? What do you do with the rest of the day?

39:15 - Well, I'm not making pickles. Houston, we have a problem over here in our household.

39:20 - Oh, boy. What's going on?

39:21 - Well, I placed my grocery order every week, and I've been doing the celery juice, so I order a lot of celery. I ordered 24 packages of celery, but there's obviously some glitch in the system because when I was choosing my celery, I went for organic. And then they said, well, we don't have those, right? You have to choose something else. So I did. So I chose another 24 packages of celery. Well, guess what? They're all here. All 48 packages of celery.

39:51 - Oh, boy.

39:52 - Yeah.

39:53 - And I don't even know where I would put 48 packages of celery.

39:56 - This is the problem. So this is the problem. So I have stuffed them in the refrigerator for right now, but I have got to go do something with them. I've got to fix something. I've got to give them away. I don't know what I'm going to do because my husband does his grocery shopping for the household. He likes to Cook up all the food, like on Saturday and Sunday. Yeah. And so he's going to go shopping and do his weekly shopping. And there's no place to put anything in the fridge. So I have got to go fix this problem. So listen, instead of pickles for everybody, it is celery juice for everyone in the neighborhood. We're having some dinner with some friends tonight and I think I'm going to make them some celery juice as a gift and take it to them. They're going to become threat crazy. But what are you going to do? I got to do something with it.

40:40 - Hey, it's celery juice. We already know it's power packed.

40:44 - That's right. So that's what I've got going in the next hour or so.

40:48 - All right. Those of you listening. Thanks so much for joining our conversation. We want to know what's on your mind and what you think. So can you be too positive right now and what do you do to stay positive? How does it impact your leadership? Remember, we want to hear from you. What are your leadership challenges? What are your leadership questions?

41:09 - We look forward to hearing from to connect with us. Go to our website at extrashotoadership.com and come back again for an Extra Shot of Leadership.