Minute With Mallon: An Awful Newsletter!

Sep 18

Written By Robert Mallon

Welcome to Minute with Mallon!

Something I Taught:

About a year and a half ago, I heard a saying that made me pause and think about life:

Pebbles look like boulders until they're in your rear-view mirror.

Think about that for a second.

It's so easy when something "bad" happens, we place an unrealistic value on the importance of it. That's called “AWFULIZING”.

According to experts, awfulizing is a mental habit of imagining the worst possible outcome, exaggerating negative possibilities, and causing unnecessary anxiety, fear, and stress. It overwhelms people and blocks them from seeing solutions due to disastrous thinking.

I wish I could tell you that I've mastered this in my life and don't experience it, but I'm a human being and we all do it to an extent.

As a matter of fact, I've taught the concept of awfulizing to hundreds of people and still find myself doing it.

When I heard the saying, a very specific AWFUL situation came to mind that I was experiencing that week. (Funny, I barely remember the details of it now!)

But I can assure you that it was AWFUL and that the world would never be the same! Haha 😆

So I went into Notes on my iPhone and wrote it down with the date next to it. I titled the page, "Things That Seemed Big!" (That's written in the past tense on purpose.)

I'm looking at the list right now, and I see that there were 5 items added over a 3 month period. Each with differing degrees of badness. But they were BAD enough that I actually remembered to put them on the list. Now, in just over a year and a half, I barely remember them, and none of them had any sort of an impact on my life.

BUT - they seemed so huge then! I can remember the emotions I felt when I was dealing with the situations. I even lost sleep! And now when I look at them, there is no emotion. They are like looking at a serene lake which doesn't even have a ripple on the surface.

So what are three things you can do to keep things in perspective and help you with this universal problem?

Recognize the pattern: Awareness is the first step. Acknowledge when you're spiraling into worst-case scenarios, and label those thoughts as awfulizing or catastrophizing.
Challenge the thoughts: Ask yourself questions like:

Is this really as bad as I’m making it out to be?
What evidence do I have to support this worst-case scenario?
What is the likelihood of this happening?
Have I successfully handled a similar situation before?

Focus on what you can control: Awfulizing often involves imagining situations that are out of your control. Shift your attention to what actions you can take now to improve or influence the situation.

And last, consider creating your own "Things That Seemed Big!" list. This really helped me - so much so that I decided that I didn't need to use it anymore after about 6 months.

Hope this helps. And consider sharing this with your team, your friends, or with the people you are closest to.

Something to Ponder:

We should double our impact on the world every decade!

My dear friend and mentor, the late Dan Miller ❤️

Something I Learned:

Today I was working with one of my Mastermind Groups. The men in this group have been together for 7 years and know each other and their businesses deeply.

I asked one of the men what his biggest 2:00 a.m. struggle was. In other words, what might wake him up in the middle of the night? He said that he's outgrown his current facility and location. So we began talking about it.

One of the men pointed out that the facility and the current size of the business was not reflective of the size of his ego, but was now a reflection of what he set out to do several years ago.

The man then said, "The better question is what do you want to create and what size organization do you need to create to do that?"

"Not how big, but what do you want to create? And most importantly, why do you want to create that? How big is arbitrary and we never truly know the answer to this question. It's more about how you're feeling at the moment. How happy or grumpy you are at a given time.

Growth for the sake of growth doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But growth to fund the initiatives you want to launch is a much better way to look at this."

When asked why, the man who owns the business said, "I want to pour into our people at a higher level than we've ever done before, and help them make life improvements which will be different for every person because they all have different needs."

He went on to tell us about some training that the company had recently provided to an employee which had a dramatic effect on her life.

"What do you want to create?" Now that's inspired thinking. It inspired me, and I hope it inspires you too!