S1, E2: Mastering Pressure, Stress, Anxiety, Discomfort, And Uncertainty

Proactive Mindset Formation, Part 2 of 7

Let’s start with a brief recap of the introduction to proactive mindset formation episode:

While you cannot control the disturbances or distractions that come at you daily, you can control your response to them. This is the outcome of a proactive mindset. A proactive mindset positions you to pre-decide you will be open to creatively find a way to keep growing in the face of tension.

Remember, to keep growing, or to mature, requires two things of us.

It requires that we individuate and relate. The kind of proactive mindset formation I’m talking about is one that empowers you to do these two things.

And while I’m interested in the theory behind proactive mindset formation, I’m way more interested in making the complex process of forming a proactive mindset accessible, doable, attainable—simple and approachable—even though it will always involve more nuance and incomprehensibility than we may be able to image or than we may prefer.

It is this interest that has driven me to create the model I’m sharing with you.

It is a model that—if engaged with discovery thinking, with a desire to think, feel, and then take authentic action in alignment with the things that you discover matter most to you—it is a model that empowers you to individuate and relate. It empowers you to grow. To mature.

It relates to the idea of moral formation that author and commentator David Brooks describes as “helping people restrain their selfishness, helping people find a purpose in life—so they have something to shoot for, and teaching people how to treat each other with kindness and consideration.”

I almost called my model the Mature Mind. As it relates to Brooks’ school of thought, it could be named the Moral Mind.

But in the interest of our current communication and branding culture, I call it The MettlEdge Mind.

The MettlEdge Mind empowers you to own your distinctive design and engage in positive relationship with others by helping you form a proactive mindset that equips you to be sound-minded and self-controlled. It equips you to harness your mind, to put Your Thinking Into The Service Of Your Passions in order to build sincere rapport with ALL kinds of people.

I use those two words on purpose.

Sincere means you show up with your distinct self. You do not do as the book of Jude verses 10 and 11 state. You do not blaspheme all that you do not understand and abandon yourself for the sake of gain. You embrace what you do not understand and show up with what you have to give.

Rapport means positive connection.

So, the MettlEdge Mind equips you show up with what you have to give and experience positive connection with others. No matter how convinced you may be that you’re not a relational person and no matter how different or distinct others may be from you, The MettlEdge Mind can help you build awareness that you have more options available to you than you may realize to counter disruptions and constructively engage people and ideas.

Awareness that you can push through hard things that have the potential to hijack you and instead of getting stuck, you get through and grow.

Awareness that opens you up to the everything you were made to be.

But to be open to this kind of growth requires us to be open to sharing our distinctiveness with others, despite our differences. Despite theirs.

When we do this, that’s when we experience what I call serenity in motion. Meaning, we keep going strong with peace of mind in the grind. Doing so calls for us to let there be tension.

It calls for us to master the pressure, stress, anxiety, discomfort, and uncertainty we experience in order to allow the tension these things bring into our lives to coexist with peace.

This is the first of six frames of the MettlEdge Mind. Let there be tension.

Focus: What are you thinking about all of this right now? Where is your brain taking you? Go there.

To be clear, when I say let there be tension, what I mean is let there be pressure, stress, anxiety, discomfort, uncertainty. Personally, I’ve often wished there was a way to live without tension, without stress. It would be so much easier. But that’s just not how life works. Tension disrupts us daily.

Here’s the thing. Tension is uncomfortable, but if your goal is to live without tension you are picking a battle against one of the most useful forces you have to move you from your careful, comfortable, and controlled existence to the heights of your potential.

If your goal is to live without tension, rather than allowing it to develop you, you’ll unintentionally become less of what you were made to be by avoiding—or numbing—the very things that make you more. Over time, you may abandon yourself for the sake of gain, and while that thing you gain may be something like wealth, accomplishment, or power, it may just be comfort.

And just like that, you get snagged. Tension is the boss over you. Rather than showing up with what you have to give, rather than naturally growing up your unique wiring, you’ll do things like grow disappointed, discouraged, disillusioned, and depressed.

Tension is far from fun, but this kind of stuff—disappointment, discouragement, disillusionment—is far from joy. So let there be tension—and be the boss over it.

Perhaps you can think of some things you have given up to tension.

Maintaining a high standard of excellence with endurance is hard. To keep going strong, to keep growing strong, high performing people like you must adopt and foster a mentality that allows them to thrive in the grind in the midst of pressure.

This does not involve dropping your drive. I highly recommend not doing this—from personal experience. It does not involve dropping your desire for excellence. Again, I highly recommend not doing this. You were made to drive with excellence. And such a drive can build barriers to relationships.

When I became aware in my late teens and early twenties that my drive built within me such a strong focus that I was running over people to accomplish my goals, instead of figuring out how to refine my drive, I resigned to the notion that my drive was wrong. My intensity was worthy of putting on a shelf so I could build relationships with others rather than building accomplishments for myself.

For the sake of comfort, I abandoned my natural way of being to try to be more like other people who were more naturally kind, empathetic, and connected. I mean, isn’t that how I should be?

Fuel: Have you ever thought about abandoning a natural way of being when you’ve become aware of how it may negatively affect others? Have you acted on that thought? Do you think I was crazy for acting it? Do you question my credibility because I did?

I could have stepped into the tension to refine my drive and work with others to build more than I could have imagined. While I didn’t do this in my twenties, I eventually began to step into the tension in the decades that followed.

But only after learning that to keep going strong, to keep thriving in the grind, I needed to drop my unwillingness to be still with others. To be with others. To let myself be known with others.

This required me to drop my demand that productivity be defined by activity. It made me drop my resistance to taking time to think and feel and to let those things inform my choices rather than controlling my actions to align with what I thought I should—or could—do.

I had to drop the pride I held in my ready-fire-aim successes. And stop hiding the ready-fire-aim failures.

This wasn’t easy. I told a group of wonderful women after the first few months of sitting together with them over what seemed to me to be unfocused and purposeless conversation that it was all a waste of my time and money. But, thankfully, I kept coming. And eight months later parts of myself that I had abandoned years before were set free.

To keep going strong, to keep growing strong, high performing people like you and me must adopt and foster a mentality that allows us to thrive in the grind in the midst of pressure.

You don’t need to drop your drive, you do need to be still enough to design ways for yourself to continue to grow up who you are, not abandon it.

You need to be still enough to recognize you may need to drop some demands related to how you go about getting things done. You need to be still enough to design a way to keep moving forward—to keep growing as a person, a leader, a human being in relationship with other human beings—with joy.

The first demand that must be dropped is the demand for things to be easy.

Again, the truth about tension is that it is one of the most useful forces you have to move yourself from your careful, comfortable, and controlled existence to the heights of your potential.

Let there be tension.

Fight: In what way do you want to fight to let there be tension in your life?

Consider how you are feeling right now? Let yourself feel it and think about what this means for you? Feelings are messengers. What message are your feelings broadcasting right now?

What do you want to do in response?

When will you do it?

What difference will it make?

This has been episode three of our podcast series on Proactive Mindset Formation.

Up next in our “The Six Frames of a Proactive Mind” Series, Let There Be Compassion.

Don’t forget to join our Substack community. Download the substack app to your mobile device and search for @MettlEdge. Then, follow me—Jill Williams—to begin to receive this podcast in your inbox weekly and catch me when I go live.

Also, you can go to my website, mettledge.com, and check out our available 1:1 coaching opportunities and our 6-month MettlEdge Mind Cohort. As I said at the beginning, I’m interested in the theory behind proactive mindset formation, but I’m way more interested in making the complex process of forming a proactive mindset accessible, doable, attainable—simple and approachable—even though it will always involve more nuance and incomprehensibility than we may be able to imagine or than we may prefer.

It is this interest that has driven me to create the model I’m sharing with you. And it is why I want to do more than talk about the model. I want to give you a way to engage with it in a powerful way, with 2 to 3 people you trust in our 6-month mettledge mind cohort.

Schedule a call to talk more about this at mettledge.com. Click on learn more.

I pray this podcast has been a blessing to you! Let’s go!

References:
https://socialconcerns.nd.edu/virtues/magazine-home-fall-2024/soundbites-fall-2024/
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jude&version=ESV