Category: Soul Food

You can watch this episode of Soul Food on the Soul Food YouTube Channel.

When I was a teenager I started taking piano lessons. Because I had a terrific teacher (a big shout out to Mike Herron! – @MikeHerronMusic) and I loved to play, I improved fairly rapidly … but it took time. I still remember the leader of a church youth group I was a part of asking me to play the piano at a youth meeting. I had the music sheets in front of me and I was glued to every note. God help the meeting if the wind blew those music sheets away! I did that for quite a while then eventually learned to just look at the chord symbols and improvise a little. One day, I had memorised the songs and I was able to look around while playing and note, “Hey there are people in the room!” This progress didn’t happen overnight. It took time and effort.

Pat Riley, a well-known American basketball coach, once said, “Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.” The key word there is “gradual”. Often we see people excel in some endeavour or activity and think that we could never do that. But we don’t see the journey they have taken to arrive at that level of excellence. 

Personal growth doesn’t just happen. It’s not about hanging around for one more year. After all, some people grow old but never grow up! Personal growth needs to be intentional. 

I remember hearing a helpful illustration from leadership expert John Maxwell. Take 5 areas of your life right now – your people skills, your organisational abilities, your financial management, your motivations, and your vision for your life or career. 

Let’s say right now you are below average in each of these areas – so we will give you a score of 3 out of 10 in each area. Of course, in life things act on each other and there is an overall synergy that develops. So if we multiple your scores like this – 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 we get an overall score of 243. 

When you are a 3 out of 10 it’s easy to look at others who are much better  than you and become discouraged and even depressed. But could you lift each of these areas from a 3 to a 4 in the next 3 months? Of course, you could.

Look what happens. When you multiple your scores like this – 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 we get a score of 1024. That’s an overall increase of 400%! A few small improvements in a number of areas results in incredible overall progress.

As we said, “Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.”

As we think about personal growth, it is important to remember that success in life is not about competing with or being better than other people. It’s about developing your own potential – being the best that YOU can be.

As we keep growing, we keep fresh and relevant in our career and in our life in general. When we are learning, we are growing and when we are growing we tend to enjoy life much more. It’s all about personal growth. 

What steps could you take today to become the person you want to be? Set a goal, plan some ‘baby steps’, and then as Nike says, “Just do it!”

Let’s recap our main points:

1. Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
2. Personal growth needs to be intentional. 
3. Success is not being better than others; its about reaching your potential.

That’s all for today. This has been Episode 9 of Soul Food with Mark Conner. See you next week!

Hi everyone and welcome to Soul Food Episode number 5. 

[You can watch it on the Soul Food with Mark Conner YouTube Channel or visit https://linktr.ee/markconner for other social media platforms]

We are currently talking about stress, with a specific focus on internal stress – the stress we carry on the inside of us. It’s one of the most subtle but dangerous types of stress.

Internal stress comes from a variety of sources. One of those, which we talked about last week, is something called unrealistic expectations. 

Another source of internal stress is emotions that we ignore or that can sabotage us if not responded to appropriately. 

Emotions are a bit like the weather – they come and they go and each of us has a huge range of emotions on any given day. Many of our emotions are what we could call ‘positive’, but feelings of anger, worry, fear, resentment, discouragement, hatred, guilt, jealousy, and sadness are also part of what is means to be human. Sometimes we can view emotions such as these as ‘negative’ and think that we shouldn’t have them. We then try to ‘fix’ them or eliminate them as quickly as possible and start thinking more ‘happy thoughts’.

I like to see emotions are indicators. They tell us what is going on beneath the surface. If you are driving your car and a red light starts to flash on your dashboard, you don’t get a hammer out and smash it, yelling “Stop bothering me!” No, the red light is your friend – it is letting you know that something needs your attention. 

In the same way, we don’t want to allow emotions to dominate our life stories and what we hope and dream for, but we also don’t want to ignore them or suppress them. Pay attention to your emotions. Feel them fully. Consider what your emotions are trying to tell you. If we ignore our emotions or push them down, then they can create ongoing internal stress inside of us. 

I was shopping the other day and got a shopping trolley with one wheel that didn’t work. How annoying is that! It was squeaking and was squealing. It’s very draining! One emotion having a negative affect inside of you is just like that. It saps your energy and causes internal stress. 

Once we have noticed and acknowledged our feelings, a helpful way to process our emotions is talk to a safe person about what we are feeling. The very act of externalisation helps us to unpack and better understand our emotions. As we hear ourselves talk about our feelings, we often gain insight about what is going on inside of us. 

That’s why counselling and coaching can be so helpful in our life’s journey. 

So if you are stuck dealing with draining emotions, then have the courage to ask for help. 

A funny story – a few years back my wife and I were driving on a gravel road out near the Cardinia Reservoir. As we were driving along we saw some emus. So we decided to stop and take some photos. I stopped our car, began to reverse and pull to the side of the road. Unbeknown to me, there was a huge ditch at the edge of the road and the car started to slide down it. Nicole got out and directed me. We went forward a little – and slid down further. We went back a little – a slid down further. We were stuck?

Who do you call? Not Ghost Busters! The RACV. So, I got on the phone and made the call. About 30 minutes went by during which Nicole and I had some ‘intense fellowship’ about my driving skills. Eventually, a beat-up 4-wheel drive came around the corner and stopped next to us. I proceeded to tell the driver, who had a few teeth missing, that we were waiting for the RACV. He said, “I am the RACV!” Anyway, he got his rope out and before we knew it, we were out of the ditch and on our way. 

What’s the point? It was pretty embarrassing for me to call for help. But if I hadn’t, we’d still be stuck there. 

So if your emotions are making a lot of noise, are constantly interrupting you, or are wreaking some havoc inside of you, please don’t ignore them. Listen to them. Give them your attention … and, if necessary, have the courage to make a call. Talk to a counsellor or a safe person who can help you process what you are feeling … so you don’t stay stuck. 

Let’s recap our main points:

That’s all for today. Once again, I’d love to hear some comments back from you and why not talk about this your emotions with your family and friends today.

This has been Soul Food with Mark Conner. See you next week when we continue talking about dealing with internal stress. See you then!

To listen to a 20-minute message on ‘How to Nurture Your Emotional Well-Being’, visit Mark’s podcast channel.

Hi everyone and welcome to Soul Food – Episode number 4. 

[You can watch it on the Soul Food with Mark Conner YouTube Channel or visit https://linktr.ee/markconner for other social media platforms]

Today I want to talk to you about stress – something we all have to deal with.  Stress means pressure. It’s a feeling of emotional or physical tension usually caused by some event that makes you feel frustrated, angry, nervous, or even in danger. A certain amount of stress is a normal part of life. But too much stress can be detrimental to our well-being.

The first kind of stress is external stress. It comes from outside of us – the world we live in, the people around us, the challenges and problems we have to negotiate, and the everyday circumstances of life. For most of us, there’s a fair amount of external stress we have to negotiate, especially during this current COVID-19 global pandemic.

But today I want to talk to you about internal stress – the stress we carry on the inside of us. 

You know, we all have different capacities when it comes to handling stress. Imagine you have 100 units of stress coping ability. That means you can handle up to 100 units of stress and still be okay. 

Here’s a simple diagram to illustrate this.

Yes, that’s a picture of me back when my hair was bright red.

In this example, as long as the stress in our life is 100 units or less, we can cope. But if it gets higher, we are in dangerous territory.

But imagine if we are using 80 of our stress coping ability units on internal stress. How much external stress can we handle? Not much! Only 20 units. 

Have you ever seen a person where a little thing happens to them, something minor, and they just lose it? And you think, “What was up with that!?” I’d like to suggest to you that it wasn’t the little thing – it was the fact that the little thing was one thing to many. It pushed them over the edge. 

So where does internal stress come from? Good question.

There are many sources of internal stress. Today I want to speak about one common one – unrealistic expectations. 

All of us carry unrealistic expectations – about ourselves, about other people, and about life in general. And this creates stress on the inside of us. 

I remember talking to a counsellor once about my task addiction. He asked me if I used a task list. I said, I sure do and its a really long one. He asked what I did when I finished the day and hadn’t completed the list. I told him I simply transferred the tasks to the next day. We then explored how my unrealistic expectations about what I could accomplish in a day often left me focused on what I HADN’T DONE rather than celebrating what I HAD done. I’ll never forget him asking me what it would be like to only make a list of what I COULD realistically accomplish in a day.

I remember becoming a leader of a church when I was quite young. My expectation was that I would be able to solve all of the problems in the church. But I found that as soon as I worked through one issue, another set of problems arrived at my doorstep the next morning. I had to adjust my expectations to the fact that life is simply a series of challenges we have to work through. 

Well-known business consultant Jim Collins recommends that businesses set 5 new goals for each new year AND decide to STOP doing 5 things (see Jim’s insightful article on creating a Stop Doing List). The fact is that most businesses and most people only ADD more and more and never STOP doing things … creating all sorts of unrealistic expectations that are impossible to achieve.

What about you? What are your unrealistic expectations?

Do you expect to always have it together, to never fail, to never make a mistake? Do you expect everyone to like you, people to always be nice, and everyone to think just like you do? Do you expect every item on your shopping list to be in stock at the store, the sun to always shine, nothing to ever break, and COVID-19 to be over next week?

Unrealistic expectations create stress on the inside of us … and limit our ability to handle the inevitable external stresses that come our way. 

What would it look like for you to adjust your expectations – to embrace some ‘reality thinking’?

Let’s recap our main points:

That’s all for today. Once again, I’d love to hear some comments back from you and why not talk about this internal stress with your family and friends today.

This has been Soul Food with Mark Conner.

See you next week when we continue talking about dealing with internal stress.

See you then!