Your Brain on Business Part 6: Point of Power

Hello again, my name is Rick Phelps. Welcome back to ‘Your Brain on Business’. Today we’re going to cover a concept that’s core to the ActionCOACH system: ‘The Point of Power.’

Below the Point of Power

At any given point in time, say something happens, how do we respond? And it’s a natural process that follows out as follows. Something happens, we go into denial, right? I’ll give you an example. A simple one from my personal life. There was a glass of wine sitting on the coffee table and I knocked it over.

1. Denial

Spilled it all over the floor. And my initial response to that was denial. My brain, that’d be really nice if we didn’t do that. How many times have we done something we know I didn’t do that. Then you kind of look around. And it’s like, I guess I must have done that. Of course, I did that. Alright. So denial doesn’t work really well.

2. Excuses

So immediately, we move up to excuses. Now your brain is sitting there giving you stories like that wine glasses should not have been there. Not my fault – the wine glass should not have been there. Now, the wine is spilled, it’s soaking into the carpet. This is not really helpful, making excuses about the fact that it shouldn’t have been there. And so we reject that level. And we move on to blame.

3. Blame

And this is about as helpful as the vlog with the leadership and self-deception, right? Well, it was my wife’s glass of wine. So it’s her fault. Now, staying here is a very bad thing to do, because I will get in, in deep doo-doo with my wife if I’m blaming her for that because she’ll just look at me. So you jerk, you knocked it over? You clean it up. Right. So staying in blame doesn’t help us any, we kind of move up to responsible.

Above the Point of Power

Ownership, Accountable & Responsible

And here we’re we’ve rejected denial excuses or blame. And now we’re saying okay, yeah, I really did, did not that that thing over, I’m responsible that that was my actions that caused the wine to spill. And I’m accountable for the mess. Alright, that stain in the carpet, I own that stain, if I can get it out right away. And so that’s the highest level point of power. That’s what we take ownership of the situation.

And so we go through this process, at every point in our lives as things happen to us. And the process of going from denial, the ownership can happen in a nanosecond, it could just like flip through the and then the more you’re aware of this process, the faster you can get out of this conundrum living below the point of power. The faster you can get up into a responsible world. And you want to do this because being below the point of power, being in denial and excuses, or laying blame. You’re in victim land.

This is the powerless place. This is the land of victims, oh, woe is me, Life is so unfair, and all this stuff hasn’t happened. It’s just energizing, and it’s demotivating. And it’s kind of it’s not professional, it’s not helpful, and it’s kind of disgusting to watch. As opposed to being above the point of power. When you take responsibility, you’re accountable for the results in your life. And you take ownership. And this is where the powerful people live.

Successful People Stay Above the Point of Power

This is where you energize yourself. And the difference between the people who are successful in life, the successful athletes, the successful musicians, and successful business people, right? Successful people live more of their time above the point of power than the people who are less successful. And so living about the point of power is really important if you want to have a successful life, because you’re up there in the positive world, the energizing world of positive thinking.

You want your employees to be above the point of power. You don’t want them making excuses denying that they had anything to do with the problems or blaming others. That’s just bad behavior. unhelpful behavior doesn’t solve any problems. So you want to exhibit the point of power being above the point of power and you want your team to do the same.

So it’s really important to understand and recognize that as things happen in your life, the natural progression is to go to denial. You can get out of it, get into excuses, get out of it, get into blame, get out of it, get up into responsibility, and accountability and ownership of your life. And when you do that, positive things will happen.

Now, I said you can get out of it in a matter of a split second, you can also stay below the point of power for hours, for days, for weeks, for decades. It all depends on yourself. And we don’t have to look too far in our world to see some real victims who are in denial about the real world. What’s really happening. They’re making excuses and blaming all kinds of other people. Zero ownership, zero accountability, zero responsibility for what has happened to them.

Stay Above the Point of Power With a Business Coach

With that, let you be, my name is Rick Phelps. I’m an ActionCoach and can be reached at RickPhelps@actioncoach.com and there’s my cell phone if you want to reach out to me. Have a safe and profitable week!