Growth Instigators Hotline

#442/43 Charger. Mother Cabrini 1&2.

• Aaron Havens • Season 5 • Episode 442

Share episode

Your battery is low, but the calendar won’t let up. We take a simple, everyday charger and use it to unpack the quiet mechanics of sustainable leadership—how capacity, not constant motion, drives clear thinking, better decisions, and humane momentum. From a friend’s day of solitude at Mother Cabrini, overlooking Denver as the city lights come alive, to the frantic airport hunt for an outlet, we map where renewal hides and why leaders miss it until the red bar flashes.

We get honest about the shadow side of extreme ownership. When “push through” becomes our only gear, we trade creativity, patience, and presence for performative busyness. Together we explore practices that recharge the mind and protect the work that matters: scheduled solitude, rules for rest, weekly reflection blocks, and boundaries that make deep work possible. Instead of waiting for crisis, we design systems that keep the battery in a healthy range, so performance is steady and teams feel the stability of a leader who isn’t running on fumes.

You’ll leave with a reframed view of energy as a strategic asset and a set of simple starting points—find the hidden outlets in your day, build rituals that restore attention, and treat health as part of the job, not a perk. If you’ve been measuring success by how busy you feel, this is your permission to plug in before you go dark. If the message resonates, follow the show, share it with a leader who needs a recharge, and leave a quick review to help others find it. Your future self—and your team—will thank you.

https://growthinstigators.com/


SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to message 442 and 443 of the Growth Instigators Hotline. I'm Aaron Havens, your host and growth coach. This week we are talking about a charger, an everyday normal object that we can assign deeper meaning to, something that can remind us of a bigger truth. Welcome to part two and three of five as we dive into lessons we can glean from a charger. As I record this, my friend is driving down to Mother Cabrini for a day of solitude. I've been there multiple times. It's a wonderful place. It's a place of escape. It overlooks Denver, and if he stays there long enough today, he will be able to see the lights of Denver slowly turning on, and we'll have a bird's eye view of the city. I'm hopeful for his day. I'm proud of him for making rest and reflection a priority. This week we are taking leadership lessons from a charger. My friend, we'll be recharging today. Let's go to the extreme opposite. Say right on if you can relate to this next picture. Picture it. A traveler with a nearly dead phone searched every wall in the airport for a plug, frustrated until they found one behind the couch. Okay, maybe we've all been there. Leaders must look deep for renewal, quiet reflection, solitude, prayer, or creativity. Often they hide in behind the noise. Even in my life, my friend asked if I could join him for the day. If it wasn't for an adoption of two beautiful grandkids and a mad rush to clean an HOA, big old HOA gutter contract and complete four big commercial window jobs before the weather turns cold and the need to finalize a big government bid today, I would. Really though? Is your life like mine? When do I stop enough, schedule it in, and prioritize recharging in my life? Maybe that is the dark side of leadership. We can easily mistake movement for growth, we can justify being too busy, we take extreme ownership to the point where we live less than optimal lives. Well, at least our businesses are growing, at least others will think we are successful. No, my friends, at what personal costs are you willing to keep quote unquote pushing forward? Yep, I said that. Don't give up on yourself today. Prioritize your health today. We need you around for many moons to come. That, my friend, is how an everyday object can instigate growth. Leave a message after the beep or send me an email at Aaron at Growth Instigators.com.