Feeling Groovy in Leadership

Why feeling groovy matters for CEOs

00:00Bill Gallagher: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken, Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:28Bill Gallagher: Well, this is a funny one for you, but I want to help you start feeling groovy. Why would I come up with that? Why do I think feeling groovy is important for you? I don't know. If you're listening, you're probably curious.

00:45Bill Gallagher: My name is Bill Gallagher. I'm the Scaling Coach on most of the show, and I coach CEOs. My purpose as a business person is helping CEOs fulfill their vision for a better world. I know that each of you has a vision for your business that will make the world better in some way, if you're listening to me. If you just want to enrich yourself and screw the world, you probably don't listen to me. You probably listen to somebody else who's just focused on getting rich or that kind of thing. But I think you all have a vision for making the world a little bit better that you're working on, and it's going to make you some money in the process and build something you're proud of. And I think that it's important that you feel groovy. You might even not use those kinds of words, right? That kind of language is maybe better suited to someone in their sixties, as I am, but feeling groovy. Right? I think feeling groovy, content, peaceful, abundant, feeling groovy is an access to you feeling powerful and self-expression, accomplishing what you need to in the world. Right? So I want to give you a little access to that, and it may immediately bring to mind the lessons and the message and all kinds of things like that. But what comes right there for me is the 59th Street Bridge Song by Simon and Garfunkel. Paul Simon wrote this song crossing the bridge between Manhattan and Queens, or thinking about crossing the bridge between Manhattan and Queens. And the line, the song starts, slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last. And it ends with life, I love you, always groovy.

Slow down to make the morning last

02:40Bill Gallagher: I think there's a powerful, powerful lesson in here about just being present, slowing down. We get so, so busy, right? We're busy, and we're running on to the next thing, and we're not fully present and joyful and grateful most of the time as we go through. Maybe you are. I know a lot of us, there's an awful lot of hours spent in our lives yearning and straining and working and striving for something else. I'm starting to hear another lyric from another far more contemporary band. So if you find yourself yearning and burning and churning and straining, then maybe it's time to slow down and stop moving so fast. I think there's something really powerful about slowing down and not moving too fast. The pauses that we give ourselves allow us physically to recover, mentally, emotionally to recover, spiritually to recenter, and let us get to a place where we could make thoughtful choices about what's next, about what there is to take on. So slow down, you move too fast. Right? We want to make the morning last.

Pausing lets you recover and think clearly

03:59Bill Gallagher: So getting a little centered, finding a way in all of the busyness. And I'm talking to you whether you're running a million dollar business or whether you're running a billion dollar business, there's a value in pausing for a minute, finding a little joy, a little amusement, a little distraction. Right? In the song, they sing to the lamppost. They sing to the flowers. They're leaning into, Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon, with his thoughts and sentiment in his poetic, happy, silly kind of a way. He's talking about leaning into that and feeling good, feeling groovy about all of it. And I think that's really useful. Look. When you work too hard and you're all yearning and churning and straining and all that kind of thing, you don't do the best thinking. You don't inspire and connect people in the same way. It's all effort and struggle and frustration and fear and survival, and there's no joy and appreciation, that kind of thing. And look, I think you need both. There's a time for that, and you will inevitably do that. But I'm here to tell you, probably all of us aren't getting enough of this slowness and joy and appreciation and silliness and that kind of thing. And I think it'll make a difference. I think it'll make a difference. I think in those moments, you'd have insights to new moves for things that you actually do want. Your thinking, your strategy would get better. You'd connect better to other human beings. You'd be more fun to be around. You'd attract people. People would want to hang around you more. They'd feel more naturally effective, more appreciation of their world and their circumstances and that kind of thing. Your customers, your suppliers, your team members, all the people that you interact with, right, your bankers, your vendors, all the people will enjoy being around you more if you can bring a little of that groovy feeling to your everyday life. Right? So what would it take for you to slow down, for you to pause, for you to have more time to think, to just be, to enjoy, to appreciate. Right? How could you do that? When would that occur? Is it on the way to work? Is it stepping out for lunch? Is it on the way home? Is it in between offices or locations in your thing? Is it holding the elevator for someone instead of hoping it closes before they come in? Is it, I don't know what it is, but what is it that would let you bring a little joy, a little celebration into your life?

The social study on lucky people

06:47Bill Gallagher: There's an interesting study some years ago. I forget if it was Cambridge or Oxford or something. Anyway, somewhere over there. There was a study of happy people, and I'm going to bastardize the hell out of the story. I'm going to chop it up. But the principle will be there even if I don't accurately tell the story. So they wanted supposedly to study happy people, and they asked people, are you a happy person or neutral or unhappy? And they broke people into two groups of happy and unhappy or not particular… oh, lucky. Lucky. Sorry. Lucky. Happiness is what I'm going for, and there's an access with lucky here. So they were looking for lucky, people who thought of themselves as lucky and either unlucky or not particularly lucky, and they broke people into these two camps, and then they set them off for the same experiment, social experiment out in the town, village, wherever. And they had arranged a set of circumstances and set people off with this assignment, and then to come back and to be interviewed about it. And something interesting occurred as I read of this study that I think has an access to this, like, being present. Right? And in this case, was applied to people who thought of themselves as lucky. And I think luckiness goes to abundance and happiness, and I think they're very related. So not super rigorous example here. But in the experiment, they set people off on this thing. So they said, walk down the street, go to this coffee shop, get a coffee, come back, and talk to us about what you noticed, what the experience was. And along the way, they had arranged, like, some money and some interesting people to meet and some things to see. And the lucky people who called themselves lucky had the experience. They came back and they said, oh, it's just a beautiful day. And I went out and I found some money on the pavement. And then I went to the coffee shop and I had a coffee, and I met this fascinating person who told me these amazing things.

08:47Bill Gallagher: And then I came back, and there is what there is. And the other people who went off, were either unlucky or whatever, came back and had the same opportunities that the lucky people did, that they didn't see them because they didn't think of themselves as lucky, as the conclusion of the study. But because they were out there not being present, not slowing down, they just went about the thing. They walked down the street, they got the coffee, they came back. They said, I don't know, I went down the street, I had a coffee, it was fine. And they might have even complained about something, but they didn't find the money, they didn't meet the interesting person, they didn't have a great experience.

Presence lets you see what others miss

09:25Bill Gallagher: The lucky people, the people who slowed down, who weren't moving too fast, who were looking for opportunity, right, who had time to kick down the cobblestones, to look for fun, to feel groovy a little bit on the way, they expected to find something great in the day because they thought of themselves as that way, not because they knew it was going to be there. And they were looking for it and they enjoyed their life and their moment and that kind of thing.

09:52Bill Gallagher: I think there's something in there that's very related. And I read that, I was fascinated about it. It's carried with me. I've shared it many times in workshops, in classes, in coaching sessions, and that kind of thing.

10:06Bill Gallagher: If you're willing to be present, to slow down, and to look for the opportunity, you will see things that other people miss. Now in order to do that, you've got to give yourself some room, some space to do that, to not be so preoccupied going off for what you are focused on and fixated on that you don't have a chance to see anything else. Right? If you'll slow down, if you'll create a little room, if you'll give yourself some time and space to feel groovy, some permission even to feel groovy, right, you may find yourself at the end of it all being able to say, in your case, life, I love you. All is groovy.

Life I love you, all is groovy

10:43Bill Gallagher: And that's what I'm really here for, wish for me, for you, for all of us, that we can get to this place where we're growing the businesses, we're building what we're building, and then in the face of everything, the good times, the bad times, the challenging, we can say, life, I love you, all is groovy. Hope that's helpful for you. We'll talk to you again next time. Until then, keep scaling. Life, I love you. All is groovy.

11:11Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.