Growth Instigators Hotline
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Growth Instigators Hotline
#494 Coffee: Wake up!
What if your morning coffee isn’t just a jolt, but a signal to pay attention to what actually matters? We take a simple cup and turn it into a lens for leadership, exploring why some tasks keep tugging at us until we finally make space for them—and how to tell the difference between true urgency and comfortable delay. The conversation starts with a gut-level question: what really wakes you up in life and leadership? From there, we unpack the quiet tension between “I don’t have time” and “I haven’t made it a priority,” and why that small reframe changes how you plan your day.
A real-world moment brings it home. A work truck’s soft, vibrating brakes felt like a minor annoyance—until a near miss on the highway made the risk impossible to ignore. That story becomes a practical map for acting before small signals become big problems. We break down a simple system for noticing and responding: let your morning ritual trigger a quick scan, pick one thing your gut says matters, and schedule a concrete next step today. You’ll hear how following the tasks that naturally keep you up late can reveal your true priorities and how to design your calendar around that energy instead of fighting it.
Expect a blend of reflection and action: prompts that help you identify where you’re procrastinating, strategies to move from intention to execution, and a reminder that attention is a safety feature, not a luxury. If you’ve felt the pull to do work that’s quietly important—but keeps getting bumped by louder, easier tasks—this is your wake-up call. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs the nudge, and tell us: what’s the small signal you’re finally ready to act on?
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Welcome to message 494 of the Growth Instigators Hotline where we examine an everyday normal object and assign it a deeper meaning. I'm Aaron Hadens, your host and growth coach. What can coffee remind us of today? Wake up! For those of you that drink coffee for the caffeine, is this your wake up drink? Is it about the caffeine or is it about the process of getting motivated enough for the day? I get both of those. A simple question we can reflect on using coffee as a teacher is this. What wakes you up in life and in leadership? I can tell you, this week I've been able to spend some time on one of my businesses paying attention to small details that I've needed that I've needed to pay attention to for a couple months now. Nothing huge yet. When I finally get to tasks that I know are important because somewhere in my gut I can feel they are important, I will stay up long hours to get those done. This wakes me up. Where in your life or leadership are you putting off something you feel is important? And why haven't you made it a priority yet? I often justify my procrastination in this area with something like, I just don't have time for that. And oftentimes that is true, even though I teach and coach people to say, I haven't made it a priority instead of I don't have time for that. Some things can wait, and some things need immediate attention. One small example in one of our work trucks, I've noticed the brakes getting a little soft and vibrating through the steering wheel when stopping the truck. Nothing big, but it just doesn't seem right. Nothing of great threat. It just needs attention sometime. So last week when one of my employees said that she had to drive into the HOV lane to avoid a sudden traffic stops and the brakes were vibrating and weren't good enough to stop in time. Gosh, that's a wake up call. Okay, update on that. I took the truck to get brakes the next day. Wake up. So, with Coffee as the teacher, where in your life and leadership, what causes you to wake up? And where is that needed today? Hey, thank you for tuning in today. You can listen to any of our past messages wherever you get your podcast. And if you have thoughts you'd like to share, I'd love to hear them. Contact me at growthinstigators.com or leave me a message after the beep. And hey, share this number with whoever you know. Because you know what? Next week we're gonna hit message number 500. Ha ha. Talk to you tomorrow.