Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a business designed to help companies craft amazing employee experiences and run leadership development programs that activate change. Also, apparently a business whose name mystifies many. You know, the process of naming this business felt a lot like naming my kids.

Like a baby, you bring a business into the world and you imagine it all grown up, and you ask

yourself, who do you want it to be? And what name best captures that? And then you explain to

Aunt Bertha why you have not named it after her.

My goal in birthing this business was really to help leaders and organizations see that the fastest path to success was paved with focus and intention and not crowded by meetings and

crises and general busyness, you know, all that noise that is constantly clamoring for our attention.

But focus and intention require real discipline, to understand what's important and what's not,

and to proactively make choices, to weed out all of the extras, the noise.

Only once we can see it, can we rise above it and lead ourselves in our teams toward

impact and purpose. Easier said than done. Noise is loud and powerful, but when we know where

it tends to hide, we're better positioned to spot it and shut it down. Today, let's talk about

some of the most common sources of noise that I see around me

and how we can start to rise above it. The first is head trash, and I've named it kind of harshly,

but I call them like I see them. Head trash is indeed the garbage that gets in your head

that tells you very convincingly, things that aren't

true, but that leave you feeling awful. It's a power player in holding you back from doing the thing

that most needs your attention. You know, maybe you're a product manager overseeing a product

with a small but rabidly loyal fan base, and you're striving to get this product into more hands.

To achieve this, you know that you should either apply for that promotion, which would give you

oversight of more products you could bundle this one with, or you need to pitch the idea that

could really springboard this product to the next level. Either of these moves would help

amplify your impact.

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