Art of Consulting Podcast

00;00;00;01 - 00;00;31;05 Andy Hey, everybody, today I want to talk about the things we can do and decisions we can make ahead of time before something becomes an issue. Recently, most of us know about the government shutdown that had recently occurred. This is being recorded, November 24th, so of 2025. So anybody who wasn't aware of it in the US, the government had shut down, which was affecting air traffic because the air traffic controllers, some of them were having difficulty getting to work and some of them were being overworked because the government wasn't funded and they weren't getting paid.   00;00;31;05 - 00;00;47;13 Andy So I had to travel during that week. And what happened was I was I knew I would be able to get out of my home airport in Phoenix, of course, if the flight gets delayed. I just got home so it wasn't as big of a deal, but if I was going to my destination, I had to connect to get home.   00;00;47;13 - 00;01;10;21 Andy I couldn't get a direct flight, so I knew already I had to connect through another airport, which was a was another challenge. And of course, the whole network of of flights were being affected. So what I ended up doing was I postponed that trip because my feeling really was that once I get on that plane out of Phoenix, I had no control over when I could get back.   00;01;10;23 - 00;01;32;18 Andy I knew I had a flight booked to come home and you know, that was scheduled to come home, but I didn't know if that flight was going to be there. And and during the time when I was supposed to return home, there's about 10% of the flights they were expecting to be affected in the US. So there was a high potential that I was I was going to have an issue with my flight getting home.   00;01;32;18 - 00;02;08;08 Andy So really what I looked at was, you know what decisions can I make today to affect or put myself in a place where I'm not negatively affected by decisions that are out of my control? And so that's what I did. I just rescheduled my my trip to that client and, and, going in the future. But when I looked at, you know, look, talked about this, I thought about other sort of decisions that we make where they are one off things where we can make a choice and look at, you know, what decision can I make today where it's something that's not out of my control, but there's also much of our lives are spent   00;02;08;08 - 00;02;34;01 Andy dealing with things that have already occurred and where especially there's possibly high stress. And I go back. I recorded an episode way, way, way, way back. It was episode number nine. So this goes back to early in the Art of consulting days, one of the first episodes. So and in that episode, I talk about a lot of stress, especially when your subconscious is working on things as you sleep.   00;02;34;02 - 00;02;50;13 Andy This is one reason why we wake up at 3:00 or 3 a.m., and we have a hard time going back to bed, is because our subconscious is really working on the issues that are unresolved, and in that episode, I talk about some ways to deal with that. A couple of ways. You know, I recommend going back and listening to it.   00;02;50;13 - 00;03;14;03 Andy You can hear how young my voice might sound back then, and hopefully it sounds young. But anyways, one of the things is to immediately get up and write down all the things that are that you know are on your mind that are causing stress, and then immediately identify which ones are connected because. And then identify a step that you're going to make today to deal with that.   00;03;14;03 - 00;03;33;22 Andy One of the approaches to that is because often we can we can do things that will affect multiple areas in our lives. So and, you know, in that episode, I talk about the fact that if we don't do it, it's okay, because tomorrow morning we'll just wake up at 3 a.m. and our subconscious will remind us that we still have an outstanding task to do.   00;03;33;22 - 00;03;58;19 Andy So it'll our body and our brain will just keep reminding us until we we hopefully ultimately deal with it. But one of the things I wanted to talk about was being more proactive or preemptive on issues, especially when issues become a problem. So when we're notified of a problem that we're experiencing and, you know, we none of us get through life without major problems, it does not happen.   00;03;58;19 - 00;04;18;01 Andy You know, when we have those moments in our lives where everything is going good and things feel great and we're high, you know, we're on top of the world. Enjoy it. Because that does not happen. All the time. We're always going to have some issue and, you know, some issues are going to pop up at some point in time.   00;04;18;01 - 00;04;35;10 Andy We all have to deal with it. That's just part of being a human being. And normally those issues will be, you know, I kind of thought of a few different categories. You know, one, of course, is health. You know, when we have either a health issue, we're dealing with or a health scare, you know, those are things it could be us or it could be a close family member.   00;04;35;12 - 00;04;59;11 Andy But those are things that we're we have to deal with and things we have to look at and do something about. And, you know, we have to do some action towards dealing with that. Another one, of course, is financial. Most of us are going to deal at some point in our lives on a financial issue, either our own financial issues, which most of us will go through at some point, or it'll be a, again, a close family member.   00;04;59;11 - 00;05;15;07 Andy It'll be a child, a, you know, an adult child. It could be a parent, it could be a lot of different scenarios of people who are close to us, who are going through a financial issue. But typically it's us like we're we're going to go through some financial issue in our lives that we're going to have to deal with another one.   00;05;15;07 - 00;05;35;27 Andy It might, unfortunately, might be legal. You know, we might have a legal issue that we're trying to deal with. And again, that happens to people. It happens to close relatives. That's another one that, you know, we have to you know, people have to deal with. You know, the fourth one that I had was interpersonal issues. So when we're dealing with interpersonal issues it could be divorce.   00;05;35;27 - 00;05;53;11 Andy It could be issues with family members. It could be issues with our our children. Our parents could be interpersonal issues at work. Right. We're dealing with those sorts of things. Those are those, again are issues we need to deal with that that come up and we have choices to make where we can ignore them, but they're not going to go away on their own.   00;05;53;14 - 00;06;13;22 Andy And so we have to be proactive about that preemptive with what the next step is. We're in that situation. We have to deal with it. The last thing I want I have on the list is career. And the interesting thing was I wasn't even going to put career on the list because to me, typically our career is going to somewhat take care of ourselves itself.   00;06;13;24 - 00;06;36;24 Andy Normally, if we've got a career issue, it's going to lead into a financial issue or a health issue is going to lead into a career issue. Interpersonal issues are going to lead into career issues. Typically, our career issues are often driven out of the other four issues, and we often see that where someone is going through a divorce and their job starts to suffer.   00;06;36;28 - 00;07;03;04 Andy Many people I've not. I've been close to who who have gone through, unfortunately gone through that their career starts to suffer. And so, you know, that's one reason why when we look at those items, we need to be very proactive and preemptive about what our next decision has. One of the reasons why doing something is important is because we actually feel like we have some level of control over the things we do, rather than sitting back and letting things happen.   00;07;03;09 - 00;07;26;06 Andy And we want to be in that situation where we're doing something. So if somebody realizes, you know, they have to deal with their health, do something about it and do something about it today or their finances or whatever one of those items are, you know, do something about it. It will not fix itself. And the stress and the in a subsequent issues that come with it will not just go away magically.   00;07;26;06 - 00;07;52;04 Andy So what do you what can you do about these sorts of situations? The first thing is, of course, put a plan together. You know, even if the plan is just one step, if it's just to do one thing right, and it might be research right. Research, you know what to do in this situation. Today we've got AI that is a tremendous resource when it comes to searching for information, searching for help that might be out there, trying to find information that's there.   00;07;52;06 - 00;08;08;02 Andy Now, one of the problems with the information is we need to be able to process it. And there's a lot of conflicting information. One issue that I was going through and I won't share the details on it, but there was a lot of conflicting information. I found information that gave me one direction and then other information completely contradicted it.   00;08;08;02 - 00;08;26;18 Andy And so what I had to do there was I had now had to go find an expert in that area to try to find out what the facts really were. And so the next thing was, is to try to find an expert. So first the first thing was is the the initial, you know, looking for information. Then it was, you know, who can help me, right.   00;08;26;18 - 00;08;47;25 Andy Who is out there that can help me? It was not easy to find because it was it was an expert in an area. And as I was reaching out to people, those individuals said, no, I don't kn