Last WORD

Create the Cycleby Bo Sanchez

Here’s an important key to success that I want you to learn: Create alternate Cycles of Stress and Release in your life.

I find this “Stress and Release” anywhere I look. If you look closely, the best speeches, the best stories, the best books, and the best movies have perfected the cycles of stress and release.

Imagine if you’re watching a movie, and the entire movie was ALL stress—a string of never-ending suspense- filled moments that don’t let up, that won’t even make you breathe… After a while, it becomes too tiring. And unsustainable.

If you watch carefully, every great movie is all about the cycle of stress and release, stress and release. At one moment, you’re at the edge of your seat, watching the hero fighting a gang of 17 men to save a beautiful girl (Stress), and then you see both of them sipping coffee in the coffeeshop (Release), but then a motorcycle comes crashing into the café with a hooded man spraying bullets at them (Stress), and everyone dives and runs out into the streets, and the couple find themselves in a cheap hotel room, looking into each other’s eyes and realizing they love each other and start kissing each other (Release), but suddenly a lone sniper is on the next building and takes his aim, and his rifle’s red laser is on her blond hair… (Stress).

A great speech should also be built on this cycle. Once, I heard a speaker scream his points like a madman. He pounded on the pulpit, stomped his foot, and hardened his jaw. Note: I do this too, when I want to emphasize a point. But the problem was this speaker was doing this from the moment he stepped on stage until the moment he stepped off it. After 15 minutes, his audience zoned out. No matter how intense he was, nothing was coming in our minds anymore.

I sometimes become intense on stage, but I reserve that for the main points of my speech. In other worlds, I employ the cycle of stress and release in my talk. At the start, I crack a joke, and then I tell a story, and then I stress a very important point, and then I crack a joke again. By doing it this way, I’m giving my audience room to relax, to have fun, to be at ease—which makes them ready to receive my main message.

I believe that this cycle of stress and release should also be present in our daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly calendar.

Issue Number 189 • July 2014 Page 13

Make Your Calendar Have this Cycle

You need hours of stress and hours of release.At various times, you need intense work. I don’t know what intense work means to you. It could be building

your products or selling your customers or negotiating your deals.But you also need to alternate stress with release—like laughing with friends, bonding with your family,

reading a book, and attending a seminar.Some people have too much stress and too little release—and you know what happens. Their bodies cave

in, showing signs of hypertension, heart disease, ulcers, hyperacidity, etc.Some people have too much release and too little stress. They’re so comfortable in life, they drift into

monotony and mediocrity and meaninglessness. Interesting enough, their bodies get weak and sickly too,because they’ve lost their purpose.

Create this cycle into your calendar.

May your dreams come true,

Bo Sanchez