Life and Leadership Topics - Dr. Houston and Clint Herndon

There are seasons of life where nothing is happening, and nothing is growing—these are desert seasons. No matter how hard we try, we don't see any progress. Maybe you are in a season like that now.

There are years of parenting when it feels like no matter what you do, your child is lost. There are years of marriage when external forces press in so hard you don't know how you will make it. There are seasons of work where you may feel like your boss doesn't appreciate you, and all your hard work is not paying off. There are seasons of health where the best you can do is survive another day.

While these times in life require extreme effort with seemingly no results, they often produce the inner "fruit" of grit, persistence, faithfulness, loyalty, discipline, love, and selflessness.

In today's episode, Dr. Park and Clint discuss how to learn from life's lessons and the impact that it can have on who you become.

If this episode resonated with you today, please subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. You can find us on Next Peak Podcast. If you want to connect with Dr. Parker Houston, you can find him at LeadYouFirst. Sign up for his weekly blog to receive some research-based tools that will help you transform your work and your life.

Interested in sending us a donation to help keep our podcast going? Check our Buy Me A Coffee.

Until next week, keep climbing your next peak.

"Some people live 80 years, but most people live one year 80 times." - Zig Ziglar

In today's episode, Dr. Houston and Clint discuss "Checking the Dashboard of Life."

The new year is a great time to look back on 2021 at what you did, your successes, your mistakes. And it's an opportunity right now to take the new year as an excellent marker to say, where can I course correct? Where can I be more intentional, proactive about where I want to go with my life, and not neglect these indicator lights. So if you've got something that's trying to get your attention, don't ignore it.

One great way you can take stock of how your year has gone is to do a quick check of your life dashboard. Consider the following life accounts (add your own accounts if you want), and rank each of them from 1-10 for how satisfied you are with each area of your life (10 being the best). Then write down one or two things that would cause that account to improve. For example, if your health account is low, you might write, "lose 10 pounds."

✨ Life Accounts
✨ Health
✨ Marriage
✨ Parenting
✨ Work
✨ Finances
✨ Personal Growth
✨ Spiritual Life
✨ Fun
✨ Friendships

If this episode resonated with you today, please subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. You can find us on Next Peak Podcast. If you want to connect with Dr. Parker Houston, you can find him at LeadYouFirst. Sign up for his weekly blog to receive some research-based tools that will help you transform your Work and your life.

Interested in sending us a donation to help keep our podcast going? Check our Buy Me A Coffee.

Until next week, keep climbing your next peak.

Say something interesting about your business here. Sometimes the people can look at their mind, body issues from not only really exploring their insight and their emotions but even looking at it from a spiritual perspective. What is life teaching you? What is God teaching you? How is God trying to get your attention through what you're experiencing?

In today's episode, Dr. Houston and Clint do something slightly different. They both sit down for a "fireside chat" - Reflecting on 2021 & Setting Goals for 2022.

If this episode resonated with you today, please subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. You can find us on Next Peak Podcast. If you want to connect with Dr. Parker Houston, you can find him at LeadYouFirst. Sign up for his weekly blog to receive some research-based tools that will help you transform your work and your life.

Interested in sending us a donation to help keep our podcast going? Check our Buy Me A Coffee.

Until next week, keep climbing your next peak.

In today's episode, Clint Herndon and Dr. Parker Houston ask the question, "Are you overly gripping the wheel of life?"

Too much focus on planning the future can fuel unhealthy needs for control and cause us to live most of our lives in a projected mental future—that may or may not ever occur.

It robs us of the joy found only in the present moment and the serendipity of watching life unfold with events we could never have predicted or planned.

To dig a little bit deeper on this topic, check out Dr. Houston's most recent blog: Are You Over Gripping the Wheel of Life?

If this episode resonated with you today, please subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. You can find us on Next Peak Podcast. If you want to connect with Dr. Parker Houston, you can find him at LeadYouFirst. Sign up for his weekly blog to receive some research-based tools that will help you transform your work and your life.

Interested in sending us a donation to help keep our podcast going? Check our Buy Me A Coffee.

Until next week, keep climbing your next peak.

In today's episode, Clint Herndon and Dr. Parker Houston discuss finding value in suffering, which is a tough topic, depending on the type of suffering you've been through. I want to acknowledge they're all different kinds.

Dr. Victor Frankl, author of a Man's Seach for Meaning, said, "What is to give light must endure burning." - Dr. Victor Frankl

As a leader, how you respond to suffering is essential. Learning how you help your team navigate suffering or tough seasons and how you help team members walk through devastating times in their life is a crucial part of leadership.

Action Steps:
1. Do not be in denial.
2. Make sure to look for possible meaning in what you're going through.
3. Is life or God, if you're a person of faith, asking you to change something about yourself? Because in general, people often don't change without pain.
4. Spend time around suffering.
5. Fasting is a way to intentionally induce a small amount of suffering, whether you restrict food, social media, any screens. This can help you see how your body, mind, and spirit react to suffering and remind you that there are people who might be suffering more than you currently are.

If this episode resonated with you today, please subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. You can find us on Next Peak Podcast. If you want to connect with Dr. Parker Houston, you can find him at LeadYouFirst. Sign up for his weekly blog to receive some research-based tools that will help you transform your work and your life.

Until next week, keep climbing your next peak.

In today's episode, Clint Herndon and Dr. Parker Houston talk about how to become a true expert. In fact, you can learn quickly and become an expert sometimes rather quickly if your mindset is in the right place and if you have the right kind of posture, psychological posture towards whatever you're trying to learn or grow in.

Socrates said, "I neither know nor think that I know."

Dr. Houston discusses the Dunning Kruger Effect which says "Unskilled and unaware of it. How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessment."

1. Incorrect self-assessment of competence derives from the person's ignorance of a given activity's standard of performance. One of our action steps is to know the standards of any particular area that you're in.
2. Without the self-awareness of metacognition [It's just higher thinking, like being able to watch your own mental process], people cannot objectively evaluate their own level of competence.

Self-Awareness is a vital part of being a great leader. It's a top skill. You can't get better at something unless you're very highly self-aware and you can see where you need to improve.

Action Steps:

1. Radically accept your brain's desire for certainty and routine. 
2. Ask for feedback. Overcome your ego. 
3. Find out about the current best practices in your field.
4. Talk to people who don't share the same views.
5. Stay open & stay curious.
6. Consider looking for these kinds of open and curious learners when hiring. 

If this episode resonated with you today, please subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. You can find us on Next Peak Podcast. If you want to connect with Dr. Parker Houston, you can find him at LeadYouFirst. Sign up for his weekly blog to receive some research-based tools that will help you transform your work and your life.

Until next week, keep climbing your next peak.

When you're happy at work, you can feel more motivated and productive. It's important to be happy with your job. On this week's episode, Clint and Parker discuss "10 Tips to Finding a Job You Love."

(1) Once your income is good enough, don't keep using it as the only standard for taking jobs. Just because you increase your income doesn't mean that it will also increase your happiness. Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University who is also a New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including "So Good They Can't Ignore You," stated, "Sometimes you have to turn down promotions to maintain control." That has been some of the most useful advice.

(2) Find out about potential bosses before you take a job. Leadership expert John Maxwell says you have two choices if you are already working for a difficult boss—find a way to support them—or leave.

(3) Meet your future team before taking a job. Jim Rohn also famously said— "You are the average of the top five people you spend the most time with." And we spend an awful lot of time with our coworkers.

(4) Find ways to apply your life purpose and values to your work. You may only need to change your perspective and not necessarily change your job. Dr. Wayne Dyer said, "If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

(5) Know your strengths and how you can apply them. According to Dr. Tom Stanley, who spent his life researching millionaires, you are also much more likely to increase your income when you do something you love. People who love what they do will naturally persist longer and harder than those who hate what they do.

(6) Maybe you need to change your mindset instead of changing jobs. Yale psychologist, Amy Wrzesniewski, found that people view their work as a job, a career, or a calling. And this can have a huge influence on how you feel about your work.

(7) Does the job take you where you want to go in the long run? Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward. Look ahead to what you want your life to look like in 10, 15, 20 years.

(8) Ask your boss to change part of the job to match your interests. This is a common organizational term called job crafting.

(9) Stop looking for the perfect job. Everything has its trade-offs. You're always going to have pros and cons. So maybe you need to look for an 80% good enough job and stick with that and not keep searching.

(10) Don't be a victim, be the author of your life. It can be easy to blame your boss or organization, but the fact is, you are making a choice to be where you are.

To learn more about this topic, check out Dr. Parker Houston's blog on "Happy at Work - 10 Tips For Finding a Job You Love."

If this episode resonated with you today, please subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. You can find us on Next Peak Podcast. If you want to connect with Dr. Parker Houston, you can find him at LeadYouFirst. Sign up for his weekly blog to receive some research-based tools that will help you transform your work and your life.

Until next week, keep climbing your next peak.

Perfectionists often postpone big things in an attempt to avoid mistakes or embarrassment, but this strategy can often be very detrimental.

Not everything in every area or every decision has to be an A+. In some areas of life, C's are okay. When we are struggling with perfectionism, we tend to let that infiltrate all areas of our life. We often think that everything we do has to be perfect. It creates pressure on our life that not only does our work have to be perfect, but our kids have to be perfect. Our marriage has to be perfect. Our yard has to be perfect. Our house has to be perfect and so on. It seeps into every area of life. However, in all honesty, no one can obtain that. It's not possible. None of us are perfect. We don't have enough resources or enough time. We are not God.

Done is better than perfect! Here are six steps to help you complete your tasks without being perfect:

(1) Just start. Build up the positive momentum.
(2) Your first version is never going to be your best work.
(3) Not everything in every area or every decision has to be an A-plus.
(4) Perfect doesn't even exist.
(5) Get feedback as early as possible.
(6) You gain confidence and self-respect when you finish things. Confidence and self-respect come from completing something.

The idea is that whatever your theory is, whatever your work is, it is imperfect. It may get expanded upon, but you're laying a foundation.

Finish something this week or month that you have been working on too long. Nothing takes up mental bandwidth and causes distress, like an unfinished project you keep working on. Give yourself the gift of completion! Dr. Parker Houston wrote a similar blog called "Perfectionism, The Secret Theif of Dreams."

If this episode resonated with you today, please subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. You can find us on www.nextpeakpodcast.com. If you want to connect with Dr. Parker Houston, you can find him at www.leadyoufirst.com. Sign up for his weekly blog to receive some research-based tools that will help you transform your work and your life.

Until next week, keep climbing your next peak.