#9: Rerouting Life for Success

Sometimes, we have to reorganize and reroute our lives when they get off course. It's quite common to lose our way from time to time, especially when we're thrown off by something unexpected. Just as a GPS automatically recalculates a new route when we miss a turn, we can also make adjustments to our life's journey. The only thing is that in our lives, this rerouting system doesn't happen automatically. Let's explore the necessary steps to assess our current position, respond deliberately, and forge a new path toward success.


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Credits: 

Song: Green Lights
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Transcript

This is The Neat Lifestyle Podcast, episode number nine. Today's episode is all about rewriting life for success, so stay tuned. 

Welcome to The Neat Lifestyle Podcast. My name is Katia Mesquita. I'm a personal organization expert, an online business entrepreneur, and your host on this weekly variety show. I'm excited to bring you an extra dose of inspiration to become more organized, stay organized, and make things work better for you. My goal in this podcast is to help you achieve a more functional, harmonious, and meaningful life. I can't wait to connect with you today. Thank you so much for tuning in, and now let's begin. Welcome to The Neat Lifestyle Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I'm your host, Katia Mesquita, and sometimes we need to reorganize and reroute our lives when they get off track. It's very normal to lose track of the course of our lives once in a while, especially when we get caught by something unexpected.

We can make this kind of analogy to a GPS. You know, when you set the destination you want to go on your GPS and you start the route, and you miss an exit, for instance. It happens to me. It happens to me once in a while, and then the GPS reroutes automatically for you, and you are good to go. The only thing with this analogy is that in real life it requires some effort from us to check where we are at and to see how we will respond to that unexpected event instead of just reacting, finding another way to get there, and putting that new plan into action to succeed. For that, we must combine and apply three important elements of success. Intellectual intelligence, faith, and emotional mastery. And what I mean by success is not just financial success, okay? It's also living a joyful life. Being financially successful doesn't necessarily mean happiness. There are so many people who, no matter how big their bank accounts are, they still feel miserable, and some of them have been asking me what makes me a joyful person.

And my answer to that was, when it comes to solving a problem and get our lives back on track, rerouting our lives for success, and experiencing a more joyful life, intellectual intelligence alone is not enough. The problem is that people usually disregard emotions, the management of emotions, and more than that, experiencing emotions in such a way they can understand, have a deep understanding about their own emotions and other people's emotions. The inability to manage emotions can hold them back or even play against them. That's exactly one of the reasons so many people with high IQs and excellent academic achievements are unsuccessful in life.

Before I go deep into that, let me just make a little bit of a disclaimer here. What I'm discussing are reflections based on books I read and personal experiences and should not be taken as advice whatsoever. I'm not a psychologist, at least as of today. If I get inspired to, maybe one day I can consider, but it's not the case at this moment. So, if you know or suspect that you have a psychological, emotional, or health problem, you should consult your doctor or another trained health or mental health professional, okay? That said, now back to where we were at. 

Intellectual intelligence, as you already know, is related to analytical problem-solving skills and abilities to think, pay attention, process, discover, retain information, and remember things. It has a very popular test. I believe most of you are already familiar with, is the IQ test, which measures people's reasoning ability, right? The other element is faith, that confidence in something or someone. And let's consider faith in a more comprehensive way. Not only the faith that most of us intimately have in a supreme being but also faith in ourselves. The third element that so many people neglect is the emotional mastery, which is a comprehensive understanding of emotions. It involves experiencing emotions in the first place, accurately identifying the emotions, and modulating them more favorably to engage with others successfully and achieve more accomplishments.

Some of you at this point might be asking if emotional mastery is the same thing as emotional intelligence. It's basically a matter of terminology that has to do with the accuracy of the terminology. Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions. Presupposes the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. It gives the impression that emotion is just a skill you acquire as any skill, like by reading a book, for instance. The terminology "emotional mastery" proposed by Dr. Joan Rosenberg is more accurate because it's more comprehensive, as the learning process involves experiencing the emotions instead of just acquiring emotional skills. And once we identify that we just have been using one or two of these elements, it's still time to develop the third one. It's doable and it's already happening in our lives. We may just need a little bit of self-improvement and emotional experience to connect them together, harmonize the three of them, find the sweet spot, that intersection between head, faith, and heart.

Imagine a Venn diagram with three circles. One is for intellectual intelligence represented by the head. The second one is for faith represented by the beliefs, and the third one is for emotional mastery represented by the heart. That intersection is the key, so it is normal to have our lives a little bit off track occasionally, but the most important thing to be mindful of is how fast we make efforts to get back on track and how committed we are to staying on track as much as we can. Every moment we deviate from our focus to blame people or even beat ourselves up, is time wasted and we don't get the time back. We must master and have power over our emotions and not let the emotions have power over us. 

Our ability to modulate our emotions also determines how we respond to life events and people. And how can we develop them? First, we must recognize which of these elements we might need to pay attention to. Second, we need to be willing to expand and utilize them. For those who are mentally capable, of course. Learning new skills can be helpful if we identify that we need to improve our intellectual intelligence, and if we want to improve our faith, it is important to dedicate some minutes during our day to silence. In the past, I used it to feel very uncomfortable doing prayers because it felt like a one-way conversation, but as I started to have some quiet time, I could understand that silence is that moment of receiving answers to our prayers.

That's why so many insights come during our shower or during a walk, especially when this walk is in a park, closer to nature. When we disconnect from the noise and worry and connect to the silence, we start noticing more subtle things like the water in our bodies, the birds chirping, the sunlight, our skin, and our breathing. Then, all of a sudden, we can have an idea to solve a problem or the insight that answers our prayers or even that million-dollar idea. Some people have million-dollar ideas. And how do they have these ideas? Think about it. It has a lot to do with silence, with faith, and to reach emotional mastery. My invitation is to see unpleasant emotions from a different perspective as tools to deepen our understanding of ourselves and others by being willing to embrace and fully experience unpleasant emotions instead of avoiding them.

It may sound counterintuitive, but when we truly experience emotions, we get emotionally stronger. Some people avoid grief or embarrassment or any kind of emotion, right? But when we allow ourselves to spend some time, just a little time, feeling that emotion, we get emotionally stronger. We develop compassion because we know how it feels and become more capable of managing our emotions and modulating them to engage with others. So, to master our emotions, we can get started by reading some books, listening to some podcasts on self-improvement, or by attending some self-improvement coaching programs. There is a book I highly recommend that I already mentioned in previous episodes. It's a must to read if you haven't done so. It was written by psychologist Dr. Joan Rosenberg. It's a life-changing book called 90 Seconds to a Life You Love. It's super easy to read because it's very conversational. You can also listen to the audiobook version of it if you prefer.

I love audiobooks because I can listen while I am driving or doing my dishes, for instance. It's very simple to access on your phone. You just subscribe to one of the audiobook platforms available. There are many. I have been using an app called Audible, and as of today, I have been having a good experience with, and I have been so happy using their service that I became their affiliate. I'm usually very selective with affiliate programs or whatever I recommend because sometimes the companies change quality, you know? Sometimes we recommend something, and the company changes, and anyway, for quite some years now, I have been having a good experience with them, and I will stick with them as an affiliate as long as they keep the good quality and you can get this audiobook for free if you are new at Audible, and if you live in the US. I will leave the link for you on the show notes of this episode.

Most importantly, please share with me your experience reading this book. For me, it was life-changing and I hope it's going to transform your life as well. Let me know. You can send me a DM on Instagram. It will make my day. And for those who are not good at emotions, especially men who were usually taught not to feel, I also want to recommend that you watch a video on YouTube. It's a 15-minute TEDx Talk from Kris Girrel, author of the book Learning to Feel. Just go on YouTube and type "How We've Been Misled by 'Emotional Intelligence.'" I can also put the link in the show notes of this episode for you. 

Now, let's be more practical. What can we do to keep our lives on track as much as we can? One thing that can make the whole difference is to do a weekly strategic stop for an assessment. You can do it either at the beginning or the end of each week. This assessment is basically focused on reminding the big annual goal divided into smaller chunks, monthly goals, weekly goals, daily goals, then checking what was accomplished on the previous week, what got on the way, any challenges or obstacles, what needs to be done to overcome those obstacles and adapt the plans to the following week. You can do this assessment on your own or with your team if you lead a team. You can do a short meeting of 15 minutes. Using this technique for whatever in your life you want to keep on track helps you achieve things faster. This concept was inspired by another amazing book called Scrum, S-C-R-U-M, The Art of Doing Twice The Work In Half the Time. This book explains a framework that helps individuals or teams self-organize work, bring projects to life, and have them done faster and more efficiently.

Scrum is a project management technique developed by Jeff and J.J. Sutherland. This term, scrum, comes from the Game of Rugby, and it refers to the way a team works together to move the ball down the field. So, if you are a business owner, or work in a management position, or even aspire to one of these two roles, you must check it out. If you split it into approximately two-hour listening sessions, you can easily finish this book in three days. It's a life-changing and business-changing book. I'm so enthusiastic of books because they boost our self-improvement, and remember, every day is like a new beginning, a brand new opportunity for us to develop or improve these three elements, intellectual intelligence, faith and emotional mastery. It is also a new opportunity to remind ourselves of what we are going after, what we are fighting for, and surround ourselves with things that help us to stay motivated.

We can surround ourselves with pictures or any images of what we want to achieve, photos of our loved ones, strong and uplifting quotes, encouragement message, a lot of stuff. It doesn't matter. Whatever remind us to regain or remain focused. I like to stick some powerful statements to my mirror. I read them every morning. It really helps me stay on track and regain the strength I need. I also include in my prayers a special request that I put sometimes on my mirror, sometimes on my nightstand, or any place I can reach and read as soon as I get up in the morning. And this special request is a quote from Napoleon Hill that says, "I ask not, oh divine providence, for more riches, but for more wisdom with which to accept and use wisely the riches I received at birth in the form of the power to control and direct my mind to whatever ends I desire."

And that's all for today. I hope you received some value. If you did, I would appreciate if you left me a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite platform. And remember, no matter what you want to improve, the first thing you need is to organize your time to make room for personal development. So you were invited to participate in my free live training on time organization. I really want it to be a game changer for you, helping you set a starting point for a more organized life, and if you realize that you don't find the time even to reorganize your time, that's exactly why you should join me. It's a 60-minute live training, and for those who might be asking if there will be a replay, yes, but only for those who sign up and only for a limited time of seven days. It is absolutely free and easy to sign up for. Just head over to www.neatlifestyle.com/programs or simply click on the link in the show notes of this episode. I can't wait to meet you live. I'm Katia Mesquita, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye!

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you liked what you heard today, be sure to share it with those you care about so they can also benefit from it. If you aren't already following me on social media, do so by clicking on the link on the show notes or simply by visiting my website at neatlifestyle.com. I appreciate you so much. I hope you have an amazing day. I'll see you in the next episode of The Neat Lifestyle Podcast.