Seven Years On, Reflections on Your Oxygen Mask First: How to Live an Amazing Life

“Life should not be a jour­ney to the grave with the inten­tion of arriv­ing safe­ly in a pret­ty and well-pre­served body, but rather to skid in broad­side in a cloud of smoke, thor­ough­ly used up, total­ly worn out, and loud­ly pro­claim­ing, ​“Wow! What a ride!”

-Hunter S. Thompson

I can’t believe it’s been sev­en years since we pub­lished Your Oxy­gen Mask First about the 17 habits to help high achiev­ers sur­vive and thrive in lead­er­ship and life.

I wrote the book because lead­er­ship is a com­plete­ly crazy way to spend your life – and it’s ridicu­lous­ly amazing.

But, as exhil­a­rat­ing and reward­ing it is, it’s also the supreme test of your per­son­al limits.

If you buy into the myth of mar­tyr­dom, you will be pum­melled by your success.

So, I made it my mis­sion to find out how to achieve huge suc­cess with­out being clob­bered by it. The result is Your Oxy­gen Mask First.

Sim­ply put, you won’t be of any use to any­one, unless you help your­self first. So, the anti­dote is resilience. Oxy­gen. Lots of it. All the time.

If you ignore your well­be­ing, the smartest busi­ness strat­e­gy on the plan­et can’t save you.

Sto­ries and Epiphanies

Since pub­lish­ing the book, I’ve shared it with oth­ers, spo­ken about it more than 100 times – even shared the stage with Patrick Lencioni at a large events with the Growth Fac­ul­ty in Aus­tralia – and devel­oped a lead­er­ship devel­op­ment pro­gram for exec­u­tives and senior lead­ers based on the prin­ci­ples in the book.

Through it all, peo­ple have gen­er­ous­ly shared all kinds of sto­ries and epipha­nies, relat­ed to dif­fer­ent prin­ci­ples in the book.

Most com­mon­ly, they said that:

• That real­ly val­ued get­ting per­mis­sion to take care of their own resilience, instead of look­ing after them­selves last
• With their bat­ter­ies drained, they often made sit­u­a­tions worse when they didn’t.

Over the next sev­en weeks, I’ll take a deep dive on some of the core prin­ci­ples of the book and how they’ve been impact­ed peo­ple, and share links to resources that might help.

Here are two of the sto­ries brave­ly shared by peo­ple who got into very chal­leng­ing states and what helped them to get back to being themselves:

• CEO Burnout, A Per­son­al Story
• A Very Close Call

The Chal­lenge

• What is the #1 thing you can do for your­self this quar­ter to be your best, most capa­ble self?

Your Oxy­gen Mask First Resources

• Oxy­gen Mask First 17 Habits Assessment
• Free Audio­book and Workbook
• Order the book
  • On Ama​zon​.com or Ama​zon​.ca
  • In bulk (dis­count avail­able for 100 or more copies)
• Free Chap­ter
• Amaz­ing Life Grids
• Videos on Each Chapter
  1. Live An Amaz­ing Life
  2. For­get Work-Life Balance
  3. Dou­ble Your Resilience
  4. Invest In Your Sweet Spots
  5. Lick Your Toads
  6. Deal With Your Emo­tion­al Junk
  7. Man­age Your Men­tal Health
  8. Learn Like Your Life Depends On It
  9. Get Tough Feedback
  10. Make Your­self Useless
  11. Quadru­ple Your IQ
  12. Stop Being Chief Prob­lem Solver
  13. Teach Peo­ple to Meet Your Standards
  14. Tack­le Dif­fi­cult Conversations
  15. Love the Lessons
  16. Keep Going For It
  17. Plan, Plan and Plan Again

Oth­er Blogs

• Liv­ing Life in Tan­dem with Your Busi­ness Achievements
• Are You Liv­ing an Amaz­ing Life?
• Charg­ing Your Batteries

Old­er Podcasts

• Top 10 Growth Whis­per­er Podcasts