Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:04 Make it right. The manufacturing podcast.
Speaker 1 00:09 If you aren't getting the results you want out of your life, your business or your team, perhaps it's time for a change. Steve Polasky is been there as a business executive. He successfully turned manufacturing businesses around, led large teams of people and coached people to personal success. Steve is now a life coach and the author of infinite choices, wisdom and change. I'm Janet Eastman, welcome to the make it right podcast. And this week on the show, Steve Polasky shares some of the approaches he uses to help people make a change. This is part two of our conversation that began last week on make it right. You've been on this journey a really long time. So how long does it take to, to make these kinds of changes?
Speaker 2 00:58 Well, that's a good question. So again, there's no, there's no a destination, let's call it for changes. It's a continuous process of improvement. However, there was a huge step function on that made. Um, and let me, let me just back off before I, I talk about that and that is, I'm 57 years old now and I've done a lot of things. Um, and what I equate this to janitors, you know, throughout my life I had a backpack on. Okay. In this backpack, as I was walking, I was picking up one call colon kilogram because I'm in Asia, but let's say one pound bricks. Okay. And I was putting them in them in those backpack as I was walking. And of course, you know, one or two, you don't feel it, three or four, you don't really feel it. But eventually, you know, life and the feeling, there's sort of a metaphorical process.
Speaker 2 01:45 You start to feel a weight and eventually, you know, you get stronger and so you can put more weight in and you get stronger. But eventually you need start the buckle and you realize that you've got, you know, 200 pounds in your back. And I realized this when I ended up in the hospital. Okay. With severe stress. Okay. My blood pressure was very high and it finally occurred to me that it was like, wow, I'm like borderline ready to die. And you know, my son said to me, he said, dad, you know, is this okay? And I said, yes, it is okay. Because I just realized something and I said I was headed on a career which was so driven to achieve things that I could never really totally be 100%. I couldn't really 100% achieve that. I was always, always chasing something. So now going back to your question Janet, um, what I found was it was driven by number one a self image.
Speaker 2 02:45 It was this image where I had created, you know, Hey, I am Steve, I am the CEO, I am the managing director, I am the leader of the organization. I have to know everything, I have to know all the answers, blah, blah, blah. And I finally realize that a lot of people are carrying around self images. And in NLP what we do, and this was done with me is a technique where we associate your self image with a mask and the mask, we associate a color because we want to use visualization and NLP and the mask, you know the, the process that I went through with the person that helped me through this was a very, very intense and emotional process. And it took three different times over a period of a couple of months to actually get rid of these masks. So you actually look in this river, it's a clear river, you see the sand on the bottom of the river and you have this mask in your hand and the color of the mass signifies some, some self image that you're carrying.
Speaker 2 03:45 And you have to take this mask and you're in a deep, I'll call it a tramp state. You take this mask and you actually take it off and you put it in the river and you watch it, you know, melt into the river. And we go through this process. When I did this, it was like all of a sudden this backpack was gone. And I just felt this emotional like, Oh wow. And you know, like I said, the first time it, it probably was a 70% relief. The second time it was probably cumulative 90%. And it wasn't until about the third time that I got 100%. We're all, I'll consider that. I just felt total relief. It took two or three months. Then what we want to do is we want to wake up every day and we want to put ourselves in a good state. So I have a very specific technique to do that. And then throughout the day we always run into issues. So I have techniques which we, we, when we run into these issues, we can then go back to that initial state that we started the day with. So now I can live my day, I would say pretty much, um, in a, in a, almost a perfect state.
Speaker 3 04:52 So you can still have all of those same stresses but not feel the weight of those bricks in your backpack.
Speaker 2 05:01 Well, the stress is, keep in mind that that stress is a negative emotion. Okay. And what we want to do is we want to be free of negative emotions. And so we want a one of the, one of the ways, I'll give you the example. So I wake up in the morning and most people wake up in the morning or let's say, and there are pretty good state. And so I magnify that state through a meditation technique, which takes about 10 to 15 minutes. I then sit offside, I connect to nature. I use what I call sensory acuity to focus on my five senses so that I can put myself in a present state. So now I've started the day in a really good state. So let's say I started driving to work or I have a problem in, in this philosophy, we call that problem made disturbance.
Speaker 2 05:47 It's a disturbance to our state. So what we do is we stop, uh, we, we want to change our physiology and our focus at the same time because allows us to, um, yet back to that state we want to be in. So I do a quick breathing exercise. I take three focus deep brass. Then I kind of separate myself and I look at myself and I observe myself to say, okay, what am I feeling? What is the feeling that I am feeling? And I try to make it like sound ridiculous. In my mind I'm like, wow, I was just going to get stressed because of something that somebody else did that they didn't do. You know, because they should have blah blah blah or whatever. And you kind of start to recognize that the things that are putting you into a negative state or things that are well within your control and you just need to stop and take a break because people tend to accumulate these things throughout the day.
Speaker 2 06:43 And your stress level goes from zero to one to two to three or four to five. And eventually you get temperamental or something. And this is what I find and this is what works. And this is what I teach people. And you know what? And I think the way people are, and we all do this, is somebody might do something and they have no idea what they've done, but for whatever reason it really upsets you. And these things just add on top of each other and on top of each other. And suddenly you're in this nasty state when that person didn't, you know, they might've looked at something the wrong way and you're like, Oh, they're thinking that. Or you know, you read stuff into people's body language that's not really there and you get yourself all worked up into a state and yeah, it's not really even real is it?
Speaker 2 07:32 It's imagination and it's interpretation. Okay. And this is the point because you're right. I mean, how many times have you spent worrying about something that never happened? And I mean, if it's like, it's the worst feeling. Okay. And then it never happens and you're like, well, that was a waste of time. Um, yeah. This is what it's about. It's about the fact that, you know, what's your thoughts? This is what creates everything. And if you can master your thoughts, and what I teach people is, you know, I said, you know, mastering your thoughts is like mastering your body. It's, you know, you exercise your body to get a good body, right? Well, most people don't exercise their mind to get a good mind. And there's techniques to do that. This is, this is all it is. And so as leaders of companies and things, what we need to do is we need to help people to work in a good state. They make good decisions, be compassionate with them. They will be more dedicated to you then if you're forceful.
Speaker 2 08:33 So trying to make change is hard. Like to actually really change. You can so easily fall off the path, but you've suggested to have something called trophy moments to Mark even small achievements that'll keep you on the path. So explain to me how you might work or somebody might work with a trophy moment. Okay. So there was a written called the trophy effect. And I highly recommend people, especially competitive people. I was very competitive by nature and you know, uh, what, what happens is, is I never reward myself for things because I always felt like I was never achieving what I wanted to achieve. I never felt like I was good enough to deserve a trophy. And so this book, it's, it's a metaphorical book. Um, which basically says, you know, if you go back in your life and you say, well, how many trophies have I really given myself for things I've accomplished?
Speaker 2 09:24 You can probably count them on one hand. Yet if you look in the bad trophy side, here's all my failure trophies. There's hundreds of thousands of them. And so the idea is is in management, but I've always taught as I've always said, okay, you take a big a big project or big objective or problem or whatever, you break it into pieces. Okay. And it's the same in your life. So you can take these pieces and what you want to do is you want to make them chunks which you can check off as completed. And I try to do this in a quick timeframe. So I try to say, okay, I want chunks that I can complete in one day cause I want to feel good in one day. And so if you take any project, you can break it into sub chunks and micro chunks and all these things where eventually you can get to the point where you say, okay, here's an hours worth of work.
Speaker 2 10:15 Here's five hours worth of work, here's one day's worth of work. And then when you complete that, you don't want to be like, well, I completed 90% of it. No, you want to be able to say, I've completed 100% of that. I can check it off. And when you check that off, you want to feel good about yourself. You want to reward yourself. You don't even have to think about it. If if throughout the day, at the end of the day you have a bunch of post-its, okay, this is a technique I use and I write down the actions I'd have to get done for the day and that I know that I can check off and throw away those post-its. At the end of the day, I feel really good or I 90% complete a whole bunch of things, but never complete 100% well, I don't feel so good about myself. So I teach people to break things into bite sized chunks, which you can check off. And this is where smart goals comes in. I teach people even in coaching about smart goals.
Speaker 3 11:10 So let's, let's talk a little bit about smart goals and then I want you to talk a little bit about how you use a year lean six Sigma black belt in this whole process.
Speaker 2 11:22 Okay, well that's a great question. So, you know, I mean, we can say Sigma, I learned back in the early nineties, I was working with Raytheon company, a very large company in the U S and, but you know, the first thing is, is when people set goals, um, a lot of times as a culture allows people, okay, what would you like to achieve? And there'll be like, well, I want to be rich. And then I'm like, Oh, is this a problem? It's not the fact that they want to be rich as the fact that they're not specific. Okay. And so I, because I'm like, okay, well how will you know when you're rich and they have a hard time answering because they'll be like, well, I think when I buy my big house and I have my nice car, and I said, well, do you really think that you can check that off and say, now I am rich.
Speaker 2 12:06 And so what it means janitors is that, you know, we need to help people to create goals that are smart. Okay. Then you need to be specific. It's like, okay, I want to have a certain amount of income by a certain date per month as an income. Okay. That is a specific goal for financial. It needs to be measurable. You know, you need to be able to say, Oh, from now until then, here's my income per month. Okay, I can measure it. It needs to be, you know, attainable. Because a lot of times people come to me and they're like, yeah, I want $1 million by tomorrow. I'm like, well, that's a really nice goal, but you know, let's be realistic, which is the our part and then let's be time balanced. So we need to say, let's, let's create very specific, measurable tasks that we can complete on a timely basis.
Speaker 2 12:56 Also, the magic, you know, define, measure, analyze, improve control is an absolutely perfect tool, not just for manufacturing, but for your life. It's, you know, define the problem. What is the problem? You know, life, how can you measure it? How do we analyze it? We use NLP. How can you improve it? We use techniques. How can you control it with feedback? Am I getting better or am I, you know, whatever. I use spider diagrams. I have a life balance thing that I give people the first thing, uh, as part of their a startup process and they need to fill out eight different areas of their life on a scale of one to 10. And it becomes a spider diagram that sets a baseline. When I first meet them that says, here's where they are in that, those eight areas of their life. Then every month we fill it out again and we can see, I use a rolling three months.
Speaker 2 13:47 Uh, so I have four different spider diagrams on this so I can see the last three months plus the initial baseline month. So yeah, many, many tools in manufacturing in, in lean six Sigma absolutely can be used, uh, in, in coaching with people. When you take somebody on to coach them through this process, how long does it usually take? Well, that's a very general question because when you say how long does it usually take take to achieve what? And now P and O P we have what we call meta-model questions. OK. and metabolic questions or T gets us to <inaudible> a of peoples of people. Right. And so, you know, the question you ask is difficult to answer, but I think I know what you mean and I'll answer. And that is, you know, normally you'll see a big breakthrough like I do right now I'm doing introductory coaching sessions for one hour for free for qualified people.
Speaker 2 14:47 And the people that I've done this are coming from all different walks of life. I mean, basically I look at him, I'm like, okay, I feel like I want to coach this person. So I set up a meeting with them. They set up a meeting on my schedule and I coached them. Some of them I have to coach 100% in Thai because they don't speak English. But in this case, 100% of those people that have received this one to one and half hour free coaching session have made major breakthroughs in their lives. And they've come back to me and they follow me. They're like, Oh my God, Steve, thank you so much. Um, you know, they give me all those good feedback. That's the initial, you know, bang. You just get a quick change. The people that I coach, let's say over a longer term, usually it depends on how long I'm coaching them.
Speaker 2 15:34 I have three month programs. I have one year programs or longer. If it's a three month program, I focus on very shorter term goals. Uh, so I'll see quick change, let's say, and you know, three, four or five weeks timeframe. If it's a one year program, my strategy with them is more longer term sustainable change. So they'll see a slower change over a longer period of time. So we're talking two, three months where they'll start to see reasonable change. But it's because I have them on a longterm improvement plan. So this is why the answer to your question has many answers. Okay.
Speaker 1 16:12 Yeah. Yeah. So when people come to you though, they can actually walk out from that initial introductory meeting with some tools in their, in their pocket that they can actually use and take them to. Are they doing it mostly for their, for their personal life, or are they doing it for their business?
Speaker 2 16:29 Well, you know, after coaching hundreds and hundreds of people, uh, basically I break it down into only about three or four categories. Um, so people either have the biggest problems people typically have or financial or relationship problems or behind that the next layer would be things like their business owners and they're trying to grow their business or trying to solve problems in their business. Or the other side is health, fitness, nutrition, excuse me. And all of those things, I coach it. And so you know, it, it all boils down to basically that. And then obviously there's, you know, different scenarios, different details for every person, but those in the major categories.
Speaker 1 17:13 Hmm. I'm wondering, because you've been in Asia for a really long time and you say that you're working with the people in Thai and everything. Um, I'm wondering, do you believe that that side of the world is more open to this approach than those in North America or Europe would be? What's your sense of that? I mean, you're from Boston originally, so, and you're quite open to it. So what, what do you think?
Speaker 2 17:39 Yeah, well, it's interesting. First of all, I don't know if I can 100% answer that question. Good. Because I've been away from the Western, um, culture is so long now, like 20 years that I'm not exactly sure what's going on in America or Europe right now because I don't spend a lot of time there. But what I do know is, is that Asian people, especially Thai people, are, are very open to publicly sharing their problems. Okay. Whereas in Western cultures, people typically won't say stuff to people. They don't really know unless they know them very well. Uh, so in Asia, people are very open to sharing any problem. I mean, you know, sometimes what I would consider an embarrassing things, they would say, I'm like, Oh my God, you would never say that in America. But they would say things like, you know, whatever. So yeah, I think they're more open here.
Speaker 2 18:35 However, everybody in the world suffers from the same problems. Okay. It's just a matter of them, let's say accepting they do in a public environment or telling somebody. But usually what I find is when you give a person a confidential, uh, input, like say with my coaching, it's one on one. Uh, then you develop rapport with the person. Then they pretty much just open up and they tell you, yeah, these are my problems. I have a lot of problems because these things are just so built up and they just want to tell somebody, they just want to share it because they feel good. Just sharing it with somebody that they can, that maybe doesn't show bias towards them.
Speaker 3 19:20 <inaudible> so I think, you know, there's different ways people solve problems. They, um, you know, drugs, alcohol, crazy, things like that. Then there are those who go in, talk to psychiatrists and psychologists. Then there go people who go on these journeys. You've, you've been looking around for a really long time. How has your journey helped you become more successful?
Speaker 2 19:46 Well, my definition of success now is not, you know, growing EBITDA on the bottom line for a company. And my definition of success now is my ability to help other people improve their lives. Okay. And I feel that my success in that area is really good. Um, everybody that I'm working with, I've never had any negative comments. Uh, only very positive comments, only very good results with people. People are just, just like begging for help today, uh, in many, many areas. And you know, the fact that I am able to take what I've learned in 38 years of business and in life and apply it in an area where I can help people to improve their lives in any area, it makes me feel like really, really good. And I love doing it.
Speaker 3 20:38 <inaudible> so just as a final thought, what are some key takeaways for people who might be considering a journey like this?
Speaker 2 20:47 Well,
Speaker 1 20:48 I would say number one, obviously be open minded because you know, people are where they are based on the decisions they've been making. It's a very easy statement. Um, and you've got to be open minded and open to change and open to exploring other ways of doing things to change your life. Secondly, I think, you know, simplicity is key. Um, people tend to overcomplicate things. Um, and I try to teach people, you know, be simple. Um, live a simple life. You don't have to be chasing whatever you're chasing. All of you had life, which you never get to, which creates all this frustration. So keep simple, simple in life. Also, don't be obsessive about things. A lot of times, uh, what drives us to a negative emotional state is obsessions. People are obsessed with so many things, um, that they just chase these obsessions and they create such unhappiness from the cells that they never get out of it.
Speaker 1 21:50 And so snowball off fat detaching and then, you know, pretty much I would just say, let go. Are you willing to say, you know, enough is enough. I want to change my life. And in my book, I mean, you know, I created the saying, I just said, you know, change your life the moment you decide because all it is, it's a decision. It's not about your past, it's not about your education, it's not about your upbringing. It's about saying, now I want to make a change and it's a decision and this is what I emphasize to people. Hmm. Well Steve, I think you've been on a very interesting journey and I know that you're helping business people out there, people in the manufacturing sector, you've got a lot of insights for them on the business side and on the life coaching side. And I really appreciate you being on the show again.
Speaker 2 22:40 Well you're welcome Janet, and always a pleasure working with you and thank you so much.
Speaker 1 22:44 Yeah, I enjoyed reading the book. Um, and where can people get it if they're interested in reading it?
Speaker 2 22:49 Well, it's on Amazon and actually the other way to get it, I can give you a free copy. Basically just go to either my, my Facebook page. Uh, my name's Steve Polasky and get to my Facebook page or infinity achievers.com. Uh, and in there you can get a free copy of the book and actually if people are interested, they can apply for a free one hour coaching consultation with me.
Speaker 1 23:14 Great. Good luck on this new path, Steve. And hopefully we'll have a chance to talk to you again. Awesome, Janet. Have a great day. You too. Steve Polasky is a life coach and the author of infinite choices, wisdom and change. And that is our show for this week. Please check out our Twitter, LinkedIn feeds that are on our podcast page and subscribe and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues through iTunes, Google play, Stitcher, Spotify, and YouTube, and make it right. Podcast is brought to you by Kevin Snoop, leadership advisor and of the bestselling book, make it right, five steps to align your manufacturing business from a front line to the bottom line. Until next time, I'm Janet newsman. Thanks for listening to the makeup break podcast.
