Change Catalyst

Cat­a­lyst | noun | cat·a·lyst | ka-tə-ləst | An agent that pro­vokes or speeds sig­nif­i­cant change or action — Mer­ri­am Webster

About a month ago I was hum­bled when some­one who had attend­ed one of the work­shops on my book Your Oxy­gen Mask First shared with me how the book had impact­ed his life – had actu­al­ly, he said, saved his life.

As I saw the emo­tion on his face I real­ized there was more to it.

Carmine had been very suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neur who’d recent­ly sold his busi­ness. He real­ized that he had got him­self into a very bad place, men­tal­ly, from all the chal­lenges and excite­ment of build­ing and run­ning a great com­pa­ny, and had done some damage.

As we talked he could see that he need­ed to do some­thing about it and get to a bet­ter place.

One of the gen­tle­men in the work­shop told with him about a great 10-day pro­gram where he could go and real­ly look in the mir­ror, do a per­son­al re-set, and come back with a bet­ter mindset.

Note: If you want to learn more about these types of pro­grams, let me know – there are many great ones out there.

A Change Catalyst

The sec­ond part of his sto­ry is that he’d had very dam­aged rela­tion­ships with mem­bers of this fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly with his moth­er. He had only seen her once in 25 years and the last time was more than 10 years ago.

No won­der he was excit­ed to send me a pho­to of him with his Mom, and his son – her grand­son who she was meet­ing and get­ting to know.

I want to be clear that I’m not tak­ing cred­it for this. The book was a cat­a­lyst for him to get on this path, to make things notably bet­ter. And most of us need a cat­a­lyst to open our eyes and hearts, to real­ize we need to do some­thing differently.

Here’s a direct quote from Carmine:

“I heard Kevin speak about his book soon after the emo­tion­al­ly charged sale of my com­pa­ny, and the tim­ing could not have been bet­ter. After com­plet­ing his Resilience Self-Assess­ment, it was clear I had some work to do on deal­ing with my emo­tion­al junk – and so I did. Your Oxy­gen Mask First pro­vid­ed the cat­a­lyst that has led to pro­found changes in my life, and in my per­son­al rela­tion­ships and, for that, I am so grate­ful. Thank you, Kevin!”

How do we get there?

We often find our­selves in sit­u­a­tions that we tol­er­ate – that become ​‘nor­mal’ over time – when we are super-con­sumed with all the demands of run­ning a busi­ness, and a life. We con­vince our­selves the sit­u­a­tion is not that bad and slip into accept­ing dull medi­oc­rity – or out­right pain — because we don’t have the band­width to take on one more thing – espe­cial­ly fix­ing some­thing that doesn’t work, and so we put up with it, and take the path of least resistance.

But if we don’t deal with the Issues, they become great, big, ugly toads (chap­ter 5 in my book) until they smoth­er us and affect our well being.

The Chal­lenge

• If there are things in your work, or your life that you are tol­er­at­ing, or are both­er­ing you, you need to know there’s a solu­tion for everything
• If you are stuck, reach out. We know many peo­ple who can help in dif­fer­ent ways.

The chal­lenge most of us have is that we accept the dull pain in the back of our head with a belief that it’s the way it’s sup­posed to be. There are lots of chal­lenges and many things, in life, that are hard. But there are also things you can influ­ence or have some con­trol over.

It’s a con­scious choice to put up with it – or improve it. It’s up to you.