I want to share with you the shortcut to creating your next marketing plan. And it is a secret I feel most in the profession of communications and marketing don’t have the guts to reveal.

Go to that file folder on your machine that has your 2016 Marketing Plan. Replace the 6 with a 7. Call it good. (This is assuming you had a marketing plan, which would be a miracle for most of us, agencies included.)

The reason you could read those last few sentences and feel any form of recognition is because this is the way we live now. And leaders are constantly placed in the position of matching every challenge with a degree of emotional intelligence that drains us by the end of the day. A colleague lost a loved one to cancer. You have a big presentation in a few days. You and your spouse had an argument about the election.

While we do our best to compartmentalize, we are humans. And these forces, a daily fire, fatigue our faculties in various and sundry ways. This can look like stagnating sales, listlessness, strained relationships and marketing that is just plain unoriginal and boring.

I realize this is a marketing column. But it is my observation that the confidence with which you can communicate ideas persuasively (marketing) is directly related to your mental health. I am not a coach or a therapist. But there are a few simple ways to attenuate your mind to dealing with the future and strategy of your organization.

Check out the full article in the July issue of Small Business Monthly for simple steps to becoming mentally uncluttered.