Wow. We've now recorded more than 100 episodes of The Diary of a CEO, and I've had some of the most amazing, inspiring, and life-changing conversations with some of the world's most accomplished experts, business people, psychologists, athletes, you name it. So this week, we're going to do something a little different, something many of you have requested for a long time, and something I've always wanted to do. This week, we're going to look backwards.
This week, I'm going to share with you the key moments, the actionable, life-changing, epiphany-inducing moments from the last 100 episodes that had a lasting impact on me, that changed my life. So without further ado, I'm Stephen Butler, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. We hear this phrase a lot, which is find your passion.
I almost feel that it's, in many respects, quite harmful, because that question is kind of loaded. It assumes a singular passion for a start. It shows that you can discover it like an Easter egg. And also, the context in which that question usually sits in implies that once you find it, then it's a can of unlimited happiness and orientation forever, and then that's yours.
I just feel like sometimes language can be harmful, because it simplifies very complex things, and sometimes multifaceted, plural things. So I wondered if that phrase, find your passion, was something you felt similar about? It's true that passion can be a significant multiplier of human potential. So if people are passionate and engaged in a business, they can direct their energy in a worthwhile, meaningful manner.
So it's worthwhile, but you're right. There's a big difference between passion, a big difference between happiness and joy. Some are in the moment. I think joy is in the moment.
I think happiness is something that we continually adjust towards. Passion can be a significant multiplier of human potential, particularly in the workplace. So it does have a place. It is something which is useful to understand.
And ultimately, it always comes down to personal introspection and self-awareness for me. And I think that we need to work harder at understanding ourselves, and when we are constructing a mindset which is conducive to performance. So we optimize our potential when we're in a particular state of mind. And that state of mind might be passion, it might be relaxation, it might be enthusiasm, it might be enjoyment, but we need to always get to know ourselves and know that there are certain things which enable us to do others.
And once we work backwards and understand what that looks like, maybe we can gain some more consistency. I take a lot of sports people into a lot of business people that consistency of mind gives you consistency of play. And I'm convinced of it. And the more consistent we can be in our thinking, we understand the building blocks, the component parts of success.
And the more success we can have. And how does one establish consistency of thought? Because I completely agree with that. I completely agree.
I've seen that in my own life. When I've been consistent with my thinking, I've managed to perform the same habits every day. But then sometimes I'll lose consistency in my thoughts because I lose, I guess I lose attachment or my anchor with my why. I've talked a lot on this podcast over the last couple of weeks about this realisation I've had this year with the gym, which was every year, February, March, I was incredibly motivated to go.
I was fired up, trying to look good for summer. And now obviously once you look good and summer has ended, it's almost like you've lost your anchor, right? So you get into September. And the why which made you go into think consistently every day has evaporated and I can't get myself to go to the gym in October.
Right. You know, I would say that consistency of mind comes from understanding the intrinsic quality of our decision-making processes. And I say that a lot to people in sport and in business. So you can make a good decision and have a really bad outcome.
You can make a bad decision and have a good outcome. And this is why I've worked with leadership teams who have confused luck for genius. A really bad decision is a great outcome. Markets have changed, competitions have done something, something's just worked on earth over.
So it's really important for us to not judge our decision-making by our outcomes. And we often do. So we'll say this is a good decision because it resulted in this, or this is a bad decision, it resulted in that. And we can only understand the outcome retrospectively.
So it's wrong to measure our decisions by the outcomes. And then we need to go back to how we made a decision in the first place. And once we start to understand the intrinsic quality of our decision-making process, we can become more consistent in how we make decisions and therefore have more control over those outcomes. So I think that, you know, two things.
I think that, and I'll use you as the example here, Steve, that consistency of mind will come from knowing how we make decisions. I understand how we put our weight into evidence, how much we use prejudice and bias and opinion, whatever it might be. But let's understand how we make decisions. And in that way, we can be consistent in how we apply our logic and thinking and feeling, trying to determine some best outcomes.
And then the other thing, as you've just positioned, is reframing. Let's stand back and create some time and space to understand why we do things and why we don't do things. Now, I always say that the people who are most successful, and I've had a pleasure working with six sports people who got to number one in the world, I can guarantee you, the one thing they had in common was that they never made big changes. And it was small changes.
So I'm a big believer in the one degree of change. If you take two parallel lines and you move one by one degree, it may not seem much at first. But it's a really big difference between where you start and where you end up. So everyone's trying to make a dramatic change.
I see change from tomorrow, it'll be different.