259 – It’s About Time You Made Time

John Over the last two decades, I’ve been on an insatiable quest to learn everything I can about leadership, and what makes the best leaders so good after running companies small and large over the last 20 years. Today, I speak on stages all across the world to audiences who are interested in that same question. My name’s John Laurito. I’m your host, and I invite you to join me on this journey as we explore this very topic and what makes the best leader so good. Welcome to tomorrow’s leader! 

John All right, welcome to today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader, where we dove deep into all things leader-related, related to leading yourself and leading others, I’m John Laurito, your host. And here we are. Take two because I was still midway through my podcast and I was not recording it. That’s right. Every so often, I forget to hit that big magic record button. But wow, it was good. I got to tell you it was one of the best episodes ever done, and nobody will ever get the year, so I’m going to do it now even better. How about that? OK, so today, now the title of this may not really make you anticipate what the topic is going to be. I got a feeling you’re going to think it’s time management or it’s all about prioritizing. 

John And that’s great, great topics and I have and will continue to cover topics like that. But today’s topic is a little bit different. And what came from how this came about was I was watching a movie with my son and I got to say this was like the best movie, one of the best movies I have ever seen, and I have no idea how I never even heard of it before. My son asked me, Hey, have you seen this movie? I’m like, No, I’ve never even heard of it. And it came out in 2013. I’m a big movie buff. I feel like I’ve seen or heard of just about every movie out there, and it even has Rachel McAdams in it, who’s a phenomenal actress, and I still had never heard of it. It’s called about time. 

John So if you have not seen this movie, it’s a great movie. It’s got a great message. It’s a great cast. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a heartwarming movie. Check it out when you get a chance. I don’t do many movie reviews on here. Maybe I should do some movie reviews every once in a while because there are great leadership movies. So in any event, I’m not going to give away the movie at all, but I will tell you one scene of this movie, and the scene had to do with a guy coming. Coming. Going through the course of a day. And it was basically, you know, a really kind of high-pressure work situation. There was some, you know, he was late for some stuff. It was just a really fast-paced day. It was one of these things, from one thing to another to another. And you could tell it was not a good day. 

John It was just a, you know, one of these days that you wish you could skip and just not go through. He got up at the end of the day, is lying in bed with his special person, and she asks, Well, how was your day? Said it was really. Horrible. It sucked. And he basically had an opportunity because part of this movie has to do with being able to relive certain things, and he got an opportunity basically to go through that same day again and this time. And I think it was her that said, Well, why don’t you just go through do this differently and go through the same day, but just pay attention to things a little bit differently? I can’t remember exactly how the scene at that point went, but he ended up going through the day, and this time he actually took a whole different approach. 

John He had a whole different attitude to the day, the thing that was really stressful at work. And it was just this really ugly kind of situation with a boss, you know, yelling at one of his coworkers. And it just created this really tense environment. And instead of really getting swallowed up in it and taking it personally, he kind of made light of it and almost poked fun at it. He went into his next situation and instead of passing by and not paying attention to somebody who was, he was interacting with and this was a cashier that had this great attitude. Like this really just bubbly voice. Big smile. Great personality. And prior he had just kind of blown her off, not even interacted this time. He took a moment and looked her in the eye. How many times actually check out of a place are you going to look the cash cashier in the eye? Or do we even acknowledge we even have a conversation? 

John Hey, how are you doing today? Good doing well and you’re still not even interacting. You’re not even looking the person in the eye. I catch myself doing that. I mean, you’re just so busy you’re concentrating on stuff, whatever. During this time, he took the moment to just have a conversation with the person who smiled. And the bottom line is that he started just paying attention to the things that were happening during the day. By the end of the day, he was in the same situation. His wife said, How was your day? He said You know what? It was a great day. It was a great day. And it’s interesting because all the events happened the same way. 

John But he took a different approach and noticed things he did not notice before the appreciated things he didn’t appreciate before he drew satisfaction from things he didn’t take before he had interactions with people in a different way. And it was still the same. It was kind of two different people going through the same situation, one coming out of it with a horrible feeling and a horrible attitude, and the other one coming out of it with a grateful, positive, and really appreciative attitude. And it just made me really think about how much we control our feelings and experiences. And ultimately, if we can do that in one situation, we can do that and totally change the outcome of a day, and then we can totally change the outcome of a week. 

John And if we get really good at that, we change the whole direction of our life, right? So if we think about it, I mean, ultimately, you know, we control our attitude. Nobody can, nobody can control. My people can influence my attitude, but nobody can control my attitude. I’m the one who decides ultimately, if I’m going to be in a good mood or a bad mood, honestly. I mean, of course, you have stuff that happens. It puts you in a bad mood, but I’m the one that chooses to stay in that bad mood if something makes me angry. I’m the one that chooses whether I’m going to carry that anger into my next phone call or meeting or my next interaction with my kids or somebody special that is now changing that interaction. 

John But I’m the one who chooses to carry that through the whole day, or I make the decision and I say, You know what? I’m going to put that behind me, or I’m not going to let that person get to me. I mean, it’s amazing because I talked to leaders sometimes and I’m like, you know, they’ll have one interaction, one bad meeting, and then they’ll be with me talking about that really bad meeting. And then in another meeting, talking about that bad meeting as well. And all of a sudden in this meeting, this one interaction that they had maybe at the beginning of the day has had this ripple effect throughout the whole day. It’s now caused them to be less of the leader than they could have been. They’ve now negatively influenced other people because they let that one interaction. 

John They gave power. It’s like a fire that you give extra oxygen to that now it’s building instead of snuffing it out, right? I mean, think about that for a minute. How many times does something happen in the day that pisses you off, frustrates you, and it impacts how you are throughout the day and you convince yourself you’re like, OK, well, something didn’t go right. Whatever I don’t. It could be something small. It could be, you know, you get caught in traffic in the morning because you took it or you miss a turn and you’re now caught in traffic or caught at a light, and you convince yourself that it’s not going to be a good day because of that, you know what, I’m just miserable is just not going to be good. And you know what? 

John Hey, it’s not going to be a good day. But more importantly, as a leader, not only is that not going to be a good day for you, it’s not going to be a good day for the people that you’re interacting with because you’re going to negatively impact them. That’s the power of leadership, right? So if we can figure that out. And it’s interesting, we sometimes lose sight of how important the small stuff is or small moments. I, you know, you don’t get the chance like this movie to rewind and relive stuff. You get one shot. So you might as well take the time to appreciate and notice the stuff that’s actually happening in the situation that you’re in. You know, I’m I every once in a while, I’m like sitting at this great, beautiful desk that I had made by. I did an episode about it and it’s gorgeous. 

John And I’m like every so often I’m like looking down at the grain of the wood and stuff. I’m like, That’s really neat. Like how? But how easy is it? Sometimes we sit in an environment. We don’t even appreciate what we have around us. I was in the middle a couple of weeks ago of prepping for a keynote and upcoming keynote speech. And, you know, it’s kind of deep inside thought, deep in concentration. My phone buzzes. It’s a text and it’s my neighbor and my neighbor says, Hey, John, I know if you’re home or not, but if you are home, there’s this really is an owl that’s perched on your roof. You might want to come and take a look at it. I actually thought for a minute I was so deep in thought and like focus and concentration. I’m like, You know, now I, you know, let me just stay focused, and then I’m like. 

John Owls are pretty cool about you, but owls are really, really cool, fascinating animals, and so I’m like, All right, let me go out there. And sure enough, this thing this hour. I mean, how often do you see an owl? I don’t know. I never can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen an owl. I hear them. But to see them and this thing is perched and his big is perched on the, you know, peak of my roof. And he’s just sitting there, hanging out, looking at us, you know, doing what an owl does, turning his neck and stuff. And I’m out there talking to my neighbors, chatting it up and stuff, and I’m out there for, you know, whatever, like 10 or 15 minutes, just admiring this thing. And it just was such a cool, peaceful, enjoyable moment. 

John I got some cool conversations with my neighbors that I wouldn’t have had before, and I ended up going back inside and it was amazing because what I thought was going to happen, was the opposite. I thought I’d be derailed or distracted to track a distracted rather. And it would be hard for me to get focused and now I’d lose my momentum. That was the reason I didn’t want to take the break to look at the owl. And in fact, I actually was more focused and I had one of the best ideas I’ve had and a part of a presentation, a story that I want to tell that illustrated a point perfectly. And I was trying to find it. And it was like magic. I sat back down, I started working on it and it came to me this story. I’m like, Yes, perfect. And it became part of my keynote, which was a big success. But I think I’m like, you know, had I not taken that moment to go out there and see that owl, I would have lost that cool opportunity. 

John But I wouldn’t have done it because I would have thought it would have done the opposite. And in this case, it actually was a benefit. It helped me. So my point is you get all kinds of stuff around you that we ignore that we are in such fast forward mode that we’re just we’re going a mile a minute. Believe me, I know how it is. You’ve got a million things on your plate and sometimes you just need to take a breath. You just need to take a break and you’ve got to look around and just pay attention to the stuff that’s happening. You know, take a walk outside, you know, talk to that neighbor, you know, grab your kids, go grab some lunch, pick up the phone, call somebody you haven’t talked to in a long time. 

John Just do the stuff that you typically haven’t done in a long time and or don’t do or sometimes don’t take the time to really appreciate and do it. And amazingly, it changes your whole attitude. It does. It’s amazing. Sometimes we just get we get stuck in a certain mindset because that’s how we started our day. Well, it doesn’t have to stay that way. You control how you feel. You decide what attitude you’re going to look at things a great love the story that I heard a long time ago and two shoe salesman go to Zimbabwe or some country to sell shoes. And you know, the shoe manufacturer sends them both out. One calls back and says, Listen, I don’t know why I’m here in this area, they don’t wear shoes. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. And the other one calls back and said, Wow, this is amazing. 

John They don’t even wear shoes. What a phenomenal opportunity. So, you know, two people put in the exact same situation that views it entirely different attitude is everything. So in any event, a great movie again. About time, I think it was 2013. Check it out. I think it’s on Netflix. Fun movie. Good stuff made me think about this concept and hope it. I hope it helps you hit the pause button and take a break. Just take a look around you still take a smell of what’s around you? Go outside, and listen to the birds chirping. Do whatever you got to do. I’m telling you. Sometimes you miss some of the best things around you because you’re in fast-forward mode. And when you slow down just for a minute, take a breath. Sometimes your best. Your next best idea is just on the brink. It’s waiting to come out and you actually need just a moment, a break to have a just enter your mind. Just like me going out there with the owl, I had my best idea as soon as I got back. 

John Just trust me on this. It works and it changes your attitude, so I hope that helps. As always, I’m here. Give me because I’ve got a couple of episodes I may be doing based on two people that called me recently for some advice with some great, great issues. I’m like, OK, great, great stuff. I’m gonna share that with the audience. I’m here for you. So give me buzz. You’ve got my contact info on the show notes. You can email me, call me whatever. 

John I’m here for you as always. Like, share, subscribe and give me ideas on future content, future guests and go down below. Give a five-star review. Thanks, everybody. Have a good one! Thanks for. Joining us on today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader for suggestions or inquiries about having me at your next event or personal coaching, reach me at John@johnlaurito.com.

John Thanks, lead on!