Think of your body as a company and each of your emotions and character traits is a separate employee.  Some are great like your internal motivation.  Many are not so great like your tendency to procrastinate.  A few aren’t really good or bad like your propensity to use big words to sound smart even though you’re not exactly sure what propensity means.  People can see right through that sort of thing.

The problem is all these emotions and general character traits battle each other for dominance within your mind and body.  What you need is a good leader to keep them all in line…

Congratulations! You’re Hired.

You’re the proud CEO of YOU, INC.  It’s a pretty important deal to be the CEO because you control everything about the company of YOU.

You’re also the owner of YOU, INC.  Try not to muddy the waters.  You’ve been the owner of YOU, INC. for your entire life.  You may not have realized that you’re also supposed to be the acting CEO.  Not everyone takes an active role as the CEO in their own life.  A lot of owners are hands off.  They let the low level employees run their companies.  None of those other companies matter though because you aren’t in charge of THEM, INC., you’re in charge of YOU, INC.

You have a bunch of hairbrained employees who all have a specific job.  Each of them think their job is the most important job and they really don’t care about anyone else’s job.  Your job is to organize all those employees so that YOU, INC. is as profitable and useful as possible.

Not all the jobs are positive.  When you dig into the company you see there are all sorts of lower level employees who really serve no purpose in today’s modern world.  Unfortunately, the Human Condition Union (HCU) is such that these employees will be around for a long time, so you have to learn to organize them.  You have to learn when to tell certain employees to shut up  and you have to learn to coax the ideas out of other, quieter employees.

Many of your best employees are also the quietest.  You’ve got the Motivational Employee whose job it is to motivate everyone.  That employee sees instagram posts of nature with inspiring words and really gets fired up.  It’s their job to attempt to get the whole company on board with this new found motivation.  Maybe their goal is to get the body to workout or the mind to learn a new trick.  All good things for YOU, INC. as a company.

You’ve got some real shit employees.

Take for instance Anti-Motivational Employee who sits directly across from the Motivational Employee.  This employee has no job other than to piss on the dreams of the motivated employee.  He’s the ultimate troll.  Every time the Motivational Employee finds some sliver of positivity Anti-Motivational Employee loudly proclaims how corny Motivational Employee is being.

“Hey everyone,” Anti-Motivational Employee says. “Everyone, stop what you’re doing.  Motivational Employee sees a picture of a tree! Haha! What a loser.”

For many people Anti-Motivational Employee is louder than Motivational Employee, so he tends to get heard more.  Anti-Motivational Employee will mock anyone and anything at the drop of a hat so it’s easier to roll your eyes when someone is being positive rather than get on the positive train with them for fear of some Anti-Motivational Employee somewhere mocking you.

There’s also Fitness Employee who wants everyone to be exercising all the time like YOU, INC. is some sort of spandex wearing cult.  There’s Sweat Pants on a Weekday Employee who just wants to eat junk food and be depressed all the time.

YOU, INC. is full of all types of employees.  Greedy Employee, Happy Employee, Fun Employee, Health Nut Employee, Accountant Employee etc.  Each employee serves a very specific purpose in getting YOU, INC. where it needs to be, or throwing YOU, INC. down a rabbit hole that leads to bankruptcy.

Every human on Earth has basically the same employees under their control.  The successful people are those who are able to silence the negative employees while bringing the positive employees to the forefront.

You’ve got your shady employees who are always looking to cheat and steal from the other companies around.  You’ve also got your humanitarian employees who want to help everyone they see.

Every employee in your company fights with the other employees to get your ear.  They all want their particular branch of the company to be heard.

Your job is to listen to these voices and decide which one to act on.  A lot of people just let their employees run amuck.  When Anti-Motivational Employee starts yelling about how stupid someone jogging looks with their yellow fanny pack it’s your job to not let that employees remarks keep you from working out yourself.  You consult with Fashion Employee to see if a yellow fanny pack is something you want to avoid but you don’t let Anti-Motivational Employee’s quips keep you from listening to Exercise Employee.

A lot of people just let Anti-Motivational Employee run the entire show.  He makes fun of people who are trying to get their lives on track and makes you feel silly for thinking about trying to do the same with YOU, INC.

“Ha, our brave CEO wants to get YOU, INC. in shape?! That will never happen,” Anti-Motivational Employee being dickish, as per usual.

As the new CEO of YOU, INC. you get to stand tall and take the reigns of the entire company.   This is great news because about half of your employees are negative bags of dicks.

Nobody particularly likes these negative employees, not even themselves, but they are loud and make the other employees feel stupid when they stand up to them.  The CEO is the hero who gets to tell those pesky negative voices to stand down.  It doesn’t matter how loud some of the voices are, you’re in charge.  You get to be the one to make the final decision.

When you look around at how all the other humans are running their personal companies you see a pattern.  A lot of people go their entire lives being run by the negative employees because they’re afraid of them.  They feel beaten down by the Chaos Employee.  The Chaos Employee would love nothing more than to make the company they work for a complete shit show.

Luckily, there’s also an employee feverishly working to make YOU, INC. as organized and calm as possible.  That employee gets overshadowed and drowned out by the loud, obnoxious, unorganized employee.

The Chaos Employee is NOT Employee of the Month Material

If you feel hopeless about the organizational skills of your employees realize not all employees are creating chaos for your life.  Just one employee is creating that chaos.  Luckily, that one shit employee is just a low-level sales rep.  You’re the CEO.  If you don’t like YOU, INC. constantly being in a state of panic and chaos then it’s up to you to demote that employee and promote the organizational employee.

The voice of Chaos Employee slithers in your ear, “It’s no use.  We are just so unorganized around here.”

Chaos Employee doesn’t bother to mention that the reason YOU, INC. is in utter chaos is completely his fault.  Instead, he lies to you and makes you feel like your entire company is full of Chaos Employees.  Tell that employee thank you for the feedback but we’re actually going in a different direction.  Then ask the shy Organized Employee what she thinks.

“Well, we could start small,” Organized Employee states meekly.  “Maybe today we could concentrate on just getting all the laundry off the floor.  I bet we’d feel a lot better if we just got that one thing done.”

“HA! That will never work.  We don’t DO organized laundry,” responds Chaos Employee.

Previously there wasn’t really a CEO of YOU, INC.  The owner would hear everyone chime in but would just let the employees sort it out themselves.  Because Chaos Employee is louder, YOU, INC. as a whole would give in to his demands.

Now there is a CEO of YOU, INC. whose whole job is to make sure the voice that best moves the company forward is heard.  Not only do you have the ability to choose which employee to listen to, you have the obligation.  The Chaos Employee won’t get blamed if YOU, INC. goes bankrupt.  He’s just a low-level sales rep.  The blame will fall squarely on your shoulders, because you’re the CEO.  When the shit hits the fan, Chaos Employee will take zero responsibility.  He’ll look at you and ask why you didn’t control the situation.

In this case Organized Employee is in the right.  You have to make the hard call and bring Chaos Employee into your office.   Sit Chaos Employee down and tell him, “Look, I know you’ve always been able to get away with whatever you want but this is my company and this is how I want it ran.”

Chaos Employee will inevitably fight back and complain about how lame you’re being.  He’ll say things like, “Anti-Motivational Employee thinks you’re a total buzz kill.  It’s not just me.  Nobody likes the way you’re running things.”

The truth is, if you are firm with your employees they’ll respect you more.  Employees don’t hate tough bosses, they hate inconsistent bosses.  You aren’t the CEO to make friends, you’re the CEO to make YOU, INC. the most efficient and well managed company it can be.

“Thank you for your viewpoint, but we’re going with Organized Employee’s idea.  Oh, also please send Anti-Motivation Employee in.  I need to have a word with him.”

People view their lives as though they have just one employee. If that employee is being loud and negative they think that’s just the way it is.  You aren’t just one voice, but an entire company full of competing voices.  You are the only one who sees the entire picture.  That’s why you’re the CEO of YOU, INC.

I just want to shake people when they say things like,  “I know I should do this, but I’m just not organized.”  What?!  So you can see something that you know you need to correct for you to be happy and you just won’t do it?  You are in charge of your company.  If you can see that organization is clearly needed why would you let Unorganized Employee run the show?  Unorganized Employee is an idiot.

We all have some shit employees.

If you don’t have that employee telling you to eat the ice cream and a different employee telling you to skip the ice cream then what kind of weird ass company are you running?  It’s completely normal to have these employees pulling you in a million directions.  Don’t get down on yourself because you have shitty employees.  We all do.  Learn to control all your employees so you can make YOU, INC. as successful as possible.

You teach people how to treat you.  If you let someone walk all over you, they’ll continue to do that because they know they can get away with it.  Same goes for your employees.   If you’ve always had trouble following through you’re going to have that voice creep in that says, “What’s the use of starting?  You know you’re going to quit anyway.”  

Recognize that employee is a douche bag and you don’t have to listen to his negativity.  Listen to Motivational Employee who is quietly in the background holding up a sign saying “You CAN Do It!!”

The more you ignore Anti-Motivational Employee the quieter he’ll become and the more you feed Motivational Employee the louder he’ll become.  Feed the good employees.  They’re all cheering you on.

You have a negative employee telling you this article is silly and you have a positive employee telling you to share this article with your CEO friends.  *Whispers* Listen to your positive employee. 

Here’s a few more motivational posts, if that’s your jam.

1. 5 Steps to Stop Being a Chronically Late Person
2. How to Turn Your Weaknesses into Strengths
3. How to Be Proud of Yourself and Why It’s Important