On Creating Your Encore Career I had the opportunity to talk with Dennis McIntee of the Leadership Development Group. Dennis literally wrote the book on drama-free teams. It is titled The 8 Qualities of Drama Free Teams: Do More. Stress Less. Zero Drama. He still does this kind of work today as he helps organizations and leaders eliminate the drama from work and get more results.

In our interview, Dennis and I discussed the stories we tell ourselves. If you’ve ever felt like your thoughts or mindset were getting in your way, Dennis has encouragement and great insights for you on overcoming these obstacles of the mind.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves and Drama

The outcome to any successful result is typically drama: complaining, making excuses, blaming others, playing the victim, and not owning our results. 

The common challenge for organizations and individuals that are stepping out and doing something new is that this kind of drama gets in the way. We make excuses about why we aren’t doing certain things. 

At the end of the day, those excuses aren’t even reality. They are just a story that we make up inside our minds. What we need to do is deal with that untrue story and tell ourselves a better one.

Tell Yourself a Story of Confidence

Most of our issues are based in fear. Learning to navigate through that fear is extremely important to our personal healing and growth. 

Too many people seek out help from others, totally convinced that those people can help them. However, at the same time, they're not even convinced that they can do it. 

To truly grow, we must overcome that mindset. We need to learn to believe in ourselves. A great first step for this is to muster just enough confidence to take the first step. Don’t worry about getting it wrong. As you take one step at a time, you’ll begin to see your confidence blossom. 

Get a Team Around You

If you want to go really fast, then go alone. However, if you want to go really far, you need to build a team. 

We spend so much of our time trying to learn how to do new things when we don't necessarily have to know how. We just have to know who. Get clear in what your unique talent is, what fascinates and motivates you, and what you would do for free. Then, create a life where you get to do only those things and have a team around you to take care of everything else. 

You can do this by asking the people around you for feedback. Ask them what kind of things you’ve done for them that they find difficult. Often, we minimize these things because they’re so easy and fun for us. However, this is exactly where you need to apply yourself. 

Find a way to build a business around those skills and hire out everything else that you don’t know how to do or don’t enjoy doing.