Episode 914: Refocus, Gain Control, Set a Plan
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 914 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:08] Dan Miller: [00:00:08] Hi, I'm Dan Miller from 48 days.com. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your call. Having the ability to find the work you love is key.
[00:00:25] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.
[00:00:33]Scott Maderer: [00:00:33] yes, this works for almost any change. This works for almost any improvement. If you're trying to work on your health situation, you've got to go through the same process. If you're trying to work on your money situation, you've got to go through the same process. If you want to work on maybe improving yourself in terms of studies.
[00:00:53] You've got to go through the same process, but here's the kicker. Here's the trip. Welcome. [00:01:00] And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:01:16] We'll learn to invest in you. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
[00:01:25]And today's episode about impacting the world through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about the three stages of change that I use with clients and coaching. I also share why this framework works for almost any change. And I share why too often we try to do these things wildly out of order.
[00:01:46] You've heard me talk about developing your talent and what are the best ways to do that is through books. But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by [00:02:00] audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial.
[00:02:08] There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. As I was talking with Roger on Monday, it made me reflect on how one of the things that I've talked about a little bit before, but I thought I would dive a little deeper into it today.
[00:02:41] Which is the stages that I use when I'm working with clients on how they move through the process of. And the truth is there's a lot of different ways you can frame coaching and I'm not going to say that one is right and the rest are wrong. But for me, this three-stage [00:03:00] idea makes a lot of sense. And I've discovered that I can apply this same lens to a lot of things that aren't just working with clients in coaching.
[00:03:10] Those three stages are refocus, gain control and set up. Let me talk a little bit about what they are, and then talk a little bit about how oftentimes we use these raw, see refocus is about stopping and taking a look at where you are doing an honest assessment of what's going on. It's about taking a stock of what's gone wrong.
[00:03:41] Maybe what's gone wrong. What are some of the things that you should be doing differently? It's the Dr. Phil moment. How's this working for you? It's the moment that you've got to be brutally honest with yourself. You've got to really take stock of where you stand. You've got to not [00:04:00] just look at all of the good stuff and think about the best case scenario, but you've also got to look at what happens if it doesn't work, what happens if something goes wrong?
[00:04:09] But you don't want to look at just what happens if it goes wrong, either. You also want to think about hopeful things. It's about really diving in deep and asking those powerful questions about change, about what's going on and what's happening. It's one of the reasons that working with a coach or an accountability partner is often very useful in this stage because we tend to either look at things as if everything is going wrong.
[00:04:36] Are we look at things as if everything is going right. And the truth is neither. One of those extremes is usually what's really going on in the situation. We tend to be very up down pro con black and white in our thinking, but the reality is there's often a shades of gray. The second stage gain control.
[00:04:58] This is about stepping back. And [00:05:00] now that you've done that assessment, now that you've looked at the reality that you're operating from now that you've been brutally honest with yourself and said, this is where I stand. It's about stopping and figuring out what is what's on fire. What's maybe going so wrong that we really need to intervene quickly.
[00:05:19] What's maybe doing okay. That we can leave it alone for awhile. What are the areas that I need to focus on first or second or third to improve this situation? It's about actually putting together steps and an action plan that you can do in the next stage gain control is about stopping the bleeding.
[00:05:40] If something's going wrong, it's about making it where it's not going quite so wrong. It's about making improvements to the situation. And oftentimes these improvements are small improvements at first, but they begin to compound over time. So maybe it's okay. Just simply not going into debt any [00:06:00] further than you are today.
[00:06:01] It's not yet about paying off the debt. It's just about stopping the continuous cycle of going into debt. That would be an example of that kind of gain control. Of course, how you do that. Again, involves a lot of work. Involves a lot of questioning, involves a lot of work from the refocus stage. And again, this is where working with a coach or an accountability partner, somebody who has experienced, and who's seen a lot of different things can often jumpstart that process.
[00:06:32] Because they've got some ideas that maybe you don't have. And then from there you naturally begin to set a plan. You begin to look at not just the immediate, not just what do we need to do to stop the bleeding. What do we need to do to deal with the emergency that we're dealing with today? But you begin to look beyond that and say, what's the path forward?
[00:06:51] What's the path that's going. Tomorrow a little better than today. What's the past that's going to make next year. Even better than that. What's the path [00:07:00] that's going to get us completely out of debt or what's the path that's going to get us beyond that. And now that we have achieved at freedom, what are we going to do next?
[00:07:09] What's the bigger reason for this. What's the true long-term and short-term game plan. The truth is what's interesting is then you'll begin to execute on that. And as you do, you'll discover the need to refocus again, you'll circle back to the beginning because the truth is you'll uncover new situations, new issues, new problems, new challenges, and new successes and new wins as well.
[00:07:37] And those will change the situation because it's dynamic. And so it's really a loop rather than a path refocus gain control, set up plan refocus again, gain control, set a plan refocus again, gain control, set up. And the truth is this works for almost any change. This works for almost any improvement. If you're trying to work on your health [00:08:00] situation, you've got to go through the same process.
[00:08:02] If you're trying to work on your money situation, you've got to go through the same process. If you want to work on maybe improving yourself in terms of studies or learning, you've got to go through the same process, but here's the kicker. Here's the trick, even though I've slayed this out. There's somebody that automatically every single time you do this, you want to go straight to setting a plan.
[00:08:27] You don't want to stop and do the refocusing gain control steps. You want to just say, what does the plan say? What are the seven steps that I need to follow so that I can get where I want to go? And I'll just go execute on these steps. But without doing the work of refocusing and gaining control, usually those steps don't stick.
[00:08:49] You either begin to move forward and then slip backwards or you move forward, even get to the end goal. But because you haven't really been doing that loop of refocus gain control [00:09:00] and set a plan, you end up right back where you started from a few years later. I know so many people that have set really big goals for themselves.
[00:09:10] Whether that's a health change, whether that's a money change. And then if slipped back to right back into their old bad habits, because they don't really work refocus, gain control and set a plan, and therefore they never achieve lasting and sustainable change. That's why these loops this process, this thought process about change really works.
[00:09:37] Thanks for.
[00:09:38]Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to [00:10:00] inspired stewardship.com/talent and sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent.
[00:10:09] Or if you're in the U S you can text 4, 4, 2, 2, 2 talent tips. That's talent tips to 4 4, 2, 2, 2, and get those tips until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.