038 - Your Calendar is a Reflection of Your True Values

On this episode of De-Escalation Conversations, host Kerry Mensior delves into the powerful concept that your calendar is a reflection of your true values.

He reflects on the challenges individuals face when focusing on what they lack instead of acknowledging their achievements, and how this mindset can affect mental health.

Kerry shares practical steps on using a calendar to live a fulfilling life by aligning it with your values and responsibilities, while also improving relationships and reducing procrastination.

Tune in for valuable insights and actionable tips to start living your life by design.

Get your FREE BANKcode here ($99.00 value):
https://CrackMyCode.com/Victory


The Power of Gratitude:
"When you're in gratitude, your brain cannot also be in survival state."

— [00:00:44 → 00:00:48]

The Importance of Your Calendar: 
"Your calendar is a reflection of your true values."

— [00:01:48 → 00:01:52]

The Gap and The Gain: 
"I want you to think about that for just a moment because anytime you've been depressed, anytime you've been down, any anytime that you've just been Feeling like you're slogging through mud every day. Most of the time, you're looking at the gap, not at the gain. You're looking at what you don't have versus what you do have."

— [00:04:02 → 00:04:49]

Time Management and Procrastination: 
"But if your family is not on your calendar, then you're not living your values."

— [00:06:16 → 00:06:21]

Prioritizing Time with Loved Ones:
"When are they gonna have a little bit of time? When are they gonna have a 15 minute time block? And right now, what I want you to do is I want you to put it on your calendar."

— [00:08:26 → 00:08:33]

BANKCode Assessment: 
"It's what we use in one of our de escalation tools because it allows you to know the language that the other person can best hear, Not the language that you natively speak."

— [00:08:51 → 00:09:03]

gratitude, success, achievement, depression, values, calendar, time management, relationships, experiences, family, goal setting, planning, procrastination, emotional state, survival state, executive state, neuroscience, mindset, priorities, reflection, accountability, personality assessment, teamwork, joy, fulfillment, training, scheduling, career, goals, priorities, lifestyle

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Transcript

Kerry Mensior: 0:07

I may not be driving the fanciest car, but I got to I got a decent car that gets me from A to B. That's the gap in the game. And I truly believe that this is a big factor in suicide. Watch, think about that for just a moment. Because anytime you've been depressed anytime you've been doubting, anytime that you've just been feeling like you're slogging through mud every day, most of the time you're looking at the gap not at the game. You're looking at what you don't have versus what you do have. And this is a perfect time of year to have this conversation. Because when we do have this conversation, we can shift out of survival state back into executive state. Because when you're in gratitude, your brain cannot also be in survival state brain doesn't allow it when you're in curiosity, you cannot be in survival state your brain doesn't allow it's neuroscience is proven. Its mother nature, again, don't fight against Mother Nature, you will lose every time.

Unknown: 1:02

You need to come right away. There's a man with a gun and it was

Kerry Mensior: 1:10

getting emergency signal from 1141. All available units will close out well. Welcome to the de escalation conversations podcast. This is a special episode that just kind of fits in between this stuff, we've been talking about the last two which was how to be successful in your goals. Having a morning and evening routine. This all fits in in this special episode is called your calendar is a reflection of your true values. And so I'm going to talk about this in just a moment. But what I wanted to share with you is the reason that I'm doing these episodes, right around the holidays, especially is it's a typically a time when we step back. And we reflect over the last year that we've had, that we're in gratitude, for the things that the way that we have the accomplishments that we've made we we get to plan out our next year. And look at okay, what did I not get to in 2023 that I want to get to in 2024. And this is repeated into 2025. And moving forward. It's not just these two years. When when we look when we look back over the last year, one of the most important things is a concept that Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy wrote and wrote about in a book called The gap in the game. And the real quick, almost 32nd synopsis is if you start out in the morning, you look at the horizon and go I'm gonna hike to the horizon and you walk all day, you hike all day, you're working hard all day, and you get to the end of the day, and a Verizon doesn't look any closer and you go look at a big gap between me and where I wanted to be

Unknown: 3:16

and where I am.

Kerry Mensior: 3:19

And that's the gap, the game, and you absolutely need to do this is you need to turn around and look back and look how far you've come. And oftentimes, that's a lot more clear how far ahead we are, versus where we were before. Yeah, we may not have reached our goal, we may not have reached the pinnacle of our success, we may not have gotten to exactly where we planned on because we got diverted along the way. And maybe that diversion is really good thing. And maybe that journey

Unknown: 3:50

is

Kerry Mensior: 3:51

so rewarding. But we only look at the gap. It's going to be depressing. And I honestly truly feel that this whole concept of the gap. And again, looking at what's missing versus what we have the gap of what we didn't get done, what we procrastinate what we failed to do what we tried but didn't accomplish, versus looking back and going this is what we did accomplish. This is what we have. These are the blessings in my life that are real. I may not be driving the fanciest car, but I got a I got a decent car that gets me from A to B. That's the gap in the game. And I truly believe that this is a big factor in suicide. Watch Think about that for just a moment. Because anytime you've been depressed anytime you've been doubting anytime that you've just been feeling like you're slogging through mud every day, most of the time you're looking at the gap not at the game. You're looking at what you don't have versus what you do have. And this is a perfect time of year to have this conversation because when we do have this conversation, we can shift out of survival state back into executive state because As when you're in gratitude, your brain cannot also be in survival state brain doesn't allow it. When you're in curiosity, you cannot be in survival state your brain doesn't allow its neuroscience is proven. Its mother nature, again, don't fight against Mother Nature, you will lose every time. So as we launch into this episode, what I want you to think about is that framework, as we talk about how do you how do you use your calendar to live your best life possible? That's really what this episode is about.

Unknown: 5:31

I hope you enjoy

Kerry Mensior: 5:37

it. So what I want to be really clear about is this thought process, your calendar is a reflection of your true values. And I'm probably being redundant and rhetorical or both, or one or the other. I don't know which mixes but I want to be I just want to be really clear on this, because it is so critical for you to understand your calendar is a reflection of your true values, your calendars, your values, and action. What I mean by it is this, you may want to have or believe you have values that family comes first. But if your family is not on your calendar, then you're not living your values. And so what do we do with that? Well, we simply we change our calendar to reflect our life that we choose our life by design, not by default, you've heard me say this before, number one reason why we procrastinate is the task feels a little overwhelming or uncertain. So with those two words, overwhelming or uncertain, I'm going to pop quiz you here. And I'm gonna let you know that in advance those two words overwhelming, and or uncertain, or those executive state words or they survival state words. If you said survival state, you're right thing, bing, bing, bing Winner, winner chicken dinner, a negative emotional state negative emotions equals survival state, top notch work, show when a task, you're like, you're thinking, I don't know how long this is going to take, or this feels like a lot of work to do, you're going to push it off, because it's a fear response. And this is inbred into we don't have any choice about this. This is It's Mother Nature. And if you try to beat mother nature, you will always lose. So work with Mother Nature, don't try to go against her, you're not going to win against Mother Nature. If it's against nature, it's not going to go well. If you look at anything you've ever procrastinated on 99% of the time leave 1% margin for error, but 99% of time, it's those two things one or two are both going on, uncertain or overwhelm. Does that make sense? So here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about when you and whoever is significant in your life, when you're going to be together next, this might be your wife might be your boyfriend might be your girlfriend, hopefully not all three at the same time. Whenever you're going to be together, start with the person that's most important that you spend the most time with, this could be your, your child, your kids, all of them, however many you got. But pick one person to start with. When are they going to have a little bit of time when they're going to have a 15 minute time block. And right now what I want you to do is I want you to put it on your calendar, do a calendar event for you, I'm just gonna say your wife,

Unknown: 8:36

or your husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever they are.

Kerry Mensior: 8:41

And I want you to do your bank code assessment. If you haven't heard of bank code before, it's a rapid personality assessment. It's it's what we use in one of our de escalation tools, because it allows you to know the language that the other person can best hear, not the language that you natively speak. It's the other person's language, what they natively speak what they can best hear. So what you're going to do is go to crack my code.com forward slash victory as I want you to victory in life. And there'll be in the show notes. So if you're driving, don't worry about it, but crack my code.com Ford slash victory. It's free, I pay the subscription cost. So you can just do it for free as many times as you want to. So when I was a sergeant in the police department, what I would do is I would have my squad do their bank code, and then we would sit around and talk about it. So everybody knew what everybody else's bank code assessment looked like. I've done this with other teams that I've worked with, in fact, every team that I work with, everybody does your bank code assessment we do with clients and clients teams. And we we actually keep a spreadsheet with everybody's bank code, so we know exactly why they're saying and doing the things that they're doing. because it gives us great insight, it's free to you, you can do it as many times as you want, takes 90 seconds or less. So let's say you're in a husband wife relationship, you have your wife, do the husband's, as if she was the husband, and you. You do the wife's as if you're the wife. So if you're married, I'm talking to you, you're a guy, you have your wife do yours, you do hers from talking to a wife, you do his and he does yours. And the reason is this, what we found in close relationships, is that the partner most of the time will be straight up accurate. If we do our own, sometimes what happens is we tend to put down how we think we should be or what we wish we were like, or how we want to show up in life. Now we actually do show up in life, your partner, they're not going to cut you any slack. In that regard, they're just going to do it like it really is. So you end up getting a better result. Fill in the contact information for the right person that the assessment is being done, see, and keep each assessment straight when they go to your email. Now, you set this calendar invite, set it for 15 minutes, because for both of you to do this, it's going to take 90 seconds or less, to get longer to fill in your contact information that will be to do the assessment, or you're going to do is sort the cards, the values cards in order, there's only four of them, you know, sort the first three, the fourth one goes into place.

Unknown: 11:35

You sort them for very

Kerry Mensior: 11:37

simply, there's a explainer video on the page cracked my code.com forward slash victory that tells you exactly what to do. But basically, what you're doing is certain left to right, what's most like you what's what you most appreciate about those values, and what's least like you what values you least appreciate, or you least live by. And that's it. Now, when you set this calendar and fight, make sure you use the default for Outlook as an example is 15 minutes get Google's the same way. Set another one that's for like two to three minutes in advance of the appointment. So you get that second reminder of first one you might dismiss and go I got 15 minutes, and all of a sudden, 50 minutes has gone by. When you calendar, this, two things just happened. First of all, you took a step forward and benefiting your relationship, because your relationships going to be better be better because you're doing something together. That's always a positive thing for any relationship. The other thing is you take something off your plate, maybe that you that's been lingering, you've been meaning to do for for several weeks. But the reason that you do this is it's for accountability. It's not just to make you feel good. It's also to make you feel accountable. You do feel good. And that's great. It helps you make progress. And and so when you take it off your plate, here's what happens in your head. First of all, you have a sense of relief. Second of all, you're like 15 minutes, 15 minutes is not a big deal. I just sometimes there were 20 hours a day, 15 minutes is nothing. Yeah. So we're just talking 15 minutes. And the cool thing is it's going to pop up, you're going to do it, you're going to sit down, you're going to get it done, your your your your wife, your husband is going to be happy because you're connecting with them. You're doing something together. There's all sorts of good stuff going on here all at one time, because you did one calendar appointment. And that calendar appointment was in alignment with your values, which is my relationship is important reason I'm pausing to point all this stuff out is because this is the stuff you get stuck on. And this is a great way to get unstuck. And I'm not going to tell you it's the win all game solution. I am going to tell you it's a big game changer though.

Unknown: 13:51

Because

Kerry Mensior: 13:53

what you did by making that calendar appointment fact, I would recommend you pause this podcast or have it keep keeping talking in the background while you do this. Do it right now. Don't wait, don't put it off. Because when you do you not only take a step forward, not only do you in advance, help your relationship, but you also set part of your mind at ease, because you're getting something done, because you're getting something done. And it's not overwhelming when you set it on the calendar. And the reason I wanted to have you go through this exercise with me. It's it's because it's it's easy to do and it benefits you. You set some time on your calendar for 15 minutes. What you did is you told your mind to chill out, it's 15 minutes is totally doable. And that takes under the feeling of Yeah, I got this. It takes on to other things that you're going to do as well. Because you start to have this toward momentum you get those little dopamine hits that we talked about before. And this also helps you to not procrastinate this helps you in so many different ways. It helps you live your values that helps you not procrastinate which automatically all of that makes you feel better, because you're more satisfied in life helps you to move forward, how to be successful. It's all wrapped up in this thing today in the part that happens when you look at your values you as a man, you as a woman, what your values are, it's important to us. But look at your calendar, your calendars, your values, and actions. Again, think about that for a second, what goes on your calendars, what you say you value, you look at your calendar and go, Well, there's stuff on there that maybe I don't value, okay, then maybe you need to look at changing your calendar. And those are stuff that's not on your calendar that you say you value, take a look at your calendar, it's the same process either way, there's stuff on there, I don't want their stuff on there. That I don't want to be doing that that's not the best use of my time, and there's not stuff on there that I do want has the same answer, take a look at your calendar because what you really value ends up at the end of the day, it ends up on that calendar. Now give you a personal example, Diane and I we don't give each other presents, we give experiences. So either over the big wall calendar, the 24 by 36, world calendars and they're they're the wet erase markers don't use dry erase because it ghosts and can't ever get it off. But wet erase, they work good. And if you want, in fact, I'll even put the links to the calendar in the markers in the shownotes. And if you want, and we give this I have a little cheat sheet guide for the colors of the different markers, what they mean on the calendar, and I'll send me an email and I'll send this little cheat sheet guide to you for free. It's it's it will save you some time.

Unknown: 16:50

But we have the 20 the next

Kerry Mensior: 16:55

year's calendar, so today's in 2023. So next year 2024. We have 2024 calendar. And they're held up with old magnetic discs on the wall. And this little cheat sheet for the different colors. For example, if I'm training, and it generates revenue, I use green ink for that. Because that way I can look at it and I can see where the revenue generating activities are. And so I know that the nonprofit organization is moving forward in positive direction because we have revenue coming in. I can look at my calendar, see a bunch of green, I got a client meeting I've got I've got a training session, maybe it's travel, whatever it is, I can glance at it. And I keep it a digital calendar as well. But Diane can't necessarily always easily access that. But she can look at a wall calendar. So all my travel goes on that wall calendar and the general travel, it's in blue. And so she can look at it and she can immediately know what is Carrie doing to make sure that idea is is moving forward. How is he directing the team, she knows in an instant, what's going on in life. And then she can also look at it and go okay is Carrie in town. And if he's out of town, great, I get to have a girls night out. And I get to look at my calendar. And those are my values. I got stuff on my calendar, and Diana and I do this every quarter. So for Christmas as an example I got this deck of cards is 52 Cheap and free dates. What we do is we go through the deck, I give her the deck, she goes through it and she picks out six cards, six activities she would like to do. And maybe it's a picnic in the park, maybe it's a train ride, maybe it's by renting bicycles and going on the boardwalk, it could be any number of things.

Unknown: 18:51

She gives the deck back to me, I

Kerry Mensior: 18:52

pick out six things. I give her my six cards, she gives me her six cards out of those six cards.

Unknown: 19:00

I pick four.

Kerry Mensior: 19:05

She picks four out of my six. So she's given me six things that she says I would love to do the six things anytime and 2024.

Unknown: 19:13

I've done the same. I pick

Kerry Mensior: 19:15

four of those things. So we have eight things total. We have eight things that we're going to do during the year. You do the math real quick. That's two things every quarter and we exchange those cards, that's our Christmas presents each other. We don't give gifts. There's no need for more

Unknown: 19:33

physical stuff.

Kerry Mensior: 19:38

What we do is we give experiences we give time together, we give connection together. We'd give building our relationship together. And then we'll go over the calendar and we'll schedule out we'll put on the calendar and we both know it's flexible. We might not do it because something came up but we'll shift it but it's on calendar so it gets shifted. It doesn't just disappear We combine calendars we calendar, each of our experiences. So every quarter, we're doing two fun things together one, hers, one mine.

Unknown: 20:07

And there's four quarters. So there's four for each of

Kerry Mensior: 20:11

us for activities for experiences, my number one values my family family first. And I make sure that those experiences go on the calendar first. Kids First day of school for us, it's the grandkids because our kids are growing grandkids first day of school, we want to be able to support and join in, if at all possible Spring Break experiences that we give each other for Christmas. Very first thing goes on my 2024 calendar is my family stuff. Then my conferences, my trainings go on after that. Sometimes that means a conference I really want to go to we've got to do some negotiation. Hey, it's the grandkids first day of school, you're you're going to be here, can you go to this? If I go to this conference, how you feel about that, we figure out what best works. Now what we did with a bank code assessment, we told your brain is totally doable in 15 minutes. And it is that relieves the fear center of your brain, it gets you moving forward. I hope this kind of wraps up this whole, living your life by design begins with what you put on your calendar. And if what's on your calendar is not the best use of your time, it's not the stuff you want to do and change it. You have control over your life, you might go Carrie, I feel like I don't have control over my life. Then we need to have a deeper conversation. Because ultimately, you do us don't feel like it right now. And we can fix that we can shift that. So I hope this little section helps you in this. Understand this concept of your calendar is your values, your real values in action. I hope you found a lot of great value in this episode of The de escalation conversations podcast, please be sure to go to our website, the idea dot world th e ID e a dot world on that website. Just click on the link that resonates with you most if you're a K through 12 educator if you're a firefighter, medical services, law enforcement, flight attendants, whatever industry you're in, we have specialized training for you. So check that training out because literally it can save your life. It can save your relationship it can save your career. So check out the idea that world and I look forward to seeing you soon. Take care