Month: May 2020

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Get Out of There

What do other people think of you? Better ask yourself what the question costs you before you ask it.

I love to wonder what other people think about me. I mean, kinda. Right? In STEM we don’t all walk around emoting and asking if people like us. We’re the problem-solvers, the endurance kings, the queens of creating something out of nothing. We don’t care what other people think about us. Right?

Have me read you the blog and give you the riffs. My pleasure.

I had one of those eye-opening experiences the other day. I wanted to make sure our team understood my expectations for how we work with our summer intern. I look forward all year to our summer college student joining our team. It’s a chance to make a positive difference for sure, but more than that, it’s our chance to show up as the leaders and teammates that we want to be. A time to bring our very best to the table. A chance to cheer on another human being reaching far, far out over thin air, trying to grab at the branch we’ve carefully placed there. A chance to witness a real triumph and real accomplishment.

I believe every word of that. I take enormous pride in our ability to find challenging, meaningful projects that get these college students a chance to achieve more than they thought they could. It’s my pure joy if they blow their minds while working for us and leave there feeling ten feet tall.

This year, I’m turning all that over to someone else on our team to lead. As I wrote out the instructions for how to achieve this, imagine my surprise as I realized that I have that same opportunity every day for every member of my team and I’m not bringing it. I mean, yeah, I do OK but I don’t bring it like that. Not with every fiber of my imagination, not with those big expectations, not tossing them out into the river without telling them I’ve got their lifelines looped around my fist and I’m ready to haul them out with everything I’ve got.

I almost couldn’t hit send on the email. What would this person think of me when he saw what I expected of myself and him, and realized that I was dropping the ball daily?

We don’t care what other people think of us.

Oh, big fat hell-yes we do.

Our brains are designed to make sure we hang in tight with the tribe. Tribe is survival. As children, our entire job in life is to watch other people’s body language and try to figure out how to get more cheerios and a clean diaper. That’s before we even know how to say pass the pampers.

Once we’ve got language on our side, it’s worse yet. There’s standing in the family. We grow up applying all the labels that come with social dynamics – the good one, the wild child, the troublemaker, the silly one, the funny one, the smart one, the bad one. Lovely labels stuck all over us like little price tags that rub off as we carry an armful of cans to the pantry.

All of this is 100% normal. Here’s where our education system and culture leave us in the lurch – nobody ever tells us – Here you go kid, how you feel is on you now.

Next thing you know, you’re thirty-five, walking out of a meeting, unable to stop the flood of worry over what the person across from you thought about your progress on your project.

Again, 100% normal and 100% useless.

Here’s the rule – you don’t belong in anyone’s head but your own.

What she thinks about you, your project and the way you waxed your car is on her. It tells you absolutely zero about your ride, your performance, or you as a person. It tells you everything about her.

Get it? I could have held back on my proclamation for interns, toned it down, set less dramatic expectations, aligned it better with what I’m actually doing on the regular, made it less obvious that I’m not all that. If I did, that would tell you something about me wouldn’t it?

You might think that I was being realistic in my expectations. You might think that I was a hypocrite or untruthful. You might think I was a coward. You might think I’m an irrational dreamer.

I sent the email. How do you like me now?

Here’s the deal. I can never know what you or anyone else actually thinks – even if you tell me. There are so many layers, filters and variations. In the end, the only thing that I can act on is what I think.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate people sharing their thoughts with me. Thoughts, critical ones especially, are worth their weight in gold.

Secret One: It’s darn uncomfortable to deliver critical feedback. If you get feedback you can bet the person felt you were worth thinking about for a couple of hours so they could figure out how to tell you something true and useful. Even if they do a poor job of handing it to you, it’s still the most valuable thing you can get at work other than your paycheck.

Secret Two: If you agree with the person who gives you feedback, even just a bit, and then thank them for it, you’ll get more of this magic serum. If you disagree and make them feel small or uncomfortable for sharing it? Right. It’s like killing the goose. You won’t get another omelet out of that bird.

Do you see that? Honest feedback about how we can improve is uranium. It’s the kind of information that can power a career. We should care about it. We should ask for it. We should embroider it on throw pillows and leave them on our recliners.

What we shouldn’t do is predicate how we feel about ourselves based on it.

Critical feedback is one thing. Speculative musing about what someone else thinks is where we tend to go next.

Our boss says “You need to be more organized.”

We think “He thinks I’m a chaotic mess and he’s going to fire me.” Which makes us feel anxious, and then we check our email and facebook, and maybe text a friend, all of which is – a bit chaotic and not what we’re being paid for. Ironic, yes?

Or we think “He’s the most disorganized person on the planet, who’s he to tell me that?” The answer to which is “He’s got no right to tell me.” And then we feel angry, and we discard the advice and keep doing what we’re doing and … that results in us not allowing him to tell us anything. Get it?

Better to remind ourselves that we have no business in his head, we don’t know what he thinks other than we might be better at our job if we were more organized. Truth be told, everyone is always better at their job as their organization skills increase. He doesn’t have to be good at being organized to be able to observe disorganization in us.

Ok, let’s tie this back to my story. Even if I’m not knocking it out of the park on the regular for every member of my team, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to do just that. So sending the email and braving disapproval is worth it. I meant what I said. We should make our summer intern’s ten weeks of work with us an opportunity for him or her to blow their mind.

What my team thinks of me for that, is up to them. What I decide to do with my insight is up to me.

And that? Is just good for me to remember.

If you would like to have me walk you through your thoughts about other people’s opinions, set up a free 25-minute call here.

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Confidence and the Big How

Think you have to know how to do something before you can be confident?
Think again. I’m gonna lay it down – get ready to take notes.

Straight up. Confidence is a feeling. Which means, say it with me, you can create it anytime, anywhere. On your worst day – confident. On your best day – confident. Sounds good doesn’t it?

Wanna hear all about the free site for Medical Front Liners & other stuff? Click on and let me read you the blog.

We get tangled up when we think that we need to have built up a history of skill and results in order to have confidence. If you’re talking about how certain you are that you can deliver a piece of software within the time allowed, then yeah, ok, knowing that you’ve done it before gives you confidence.

SCRATCH. Back the truck up.

No. Truth: the feeling of confidence comes from your thoughts. So if you think – I’ve done this six hundred times so I’m sure I can do it again – that thought can bring confidence. Sure. But stick with me, it’s the thought “I’m sure I can do it again” that generates the feeling of confidence.

Now, let’s ditch arrogance right here. Arrogance is not confidence. Arrogance is thinking you are somehow, someway “better” than someone else. That’s not what we’re talking about.

Confidence is the feeling of self-assurance that comes from faith in your own abilities.

The Big How

My coach gets us to build confidence by having us do stupid dares. We dare ourselves to ask someone for a free dinner, we ask for a better seat at a concert or a new job. We dare ourselves to publish a book, or a blog or sing in public. We dare ourselves to start businesses, to grow our businesses, to get on a live event and coach people. We dare ourselves to enter a 5K, return a product, or just ask for help. Sometimes we dare ourselves to jump up on a park bench and recite a poem – for nobody, in front of everybody.

Why? Because all of these things are uncomfortable. And the more you put yourself out there, and do something that has you squirming and wanting to back out, but you do it anyway, the more you realize that you’re OK. Ok with being turned down, OK with being thought a fool, OK with being ridiculous, vulnerable or just plain wrong. OK with trying and failing, OK with trying again and OK with figuring out how.

At work, we are confronted with things we don’t know how to do – all the time. How to get it all done? How to create something, fix something, get our message across, and sometimes, just how to be happy.

Here’s the big secret – you don’t have to know how to feel confident. All you have to do is have faith in your ability to figure it out.

The Big How – is about writing down where you are now, where you want to go and then listing out all the things that can stop you from getting there. For each obstacle you write down the plan for overcoming the obstacle.

Say I’m an analyst and I want to be a team lead – here’s some obstacles:

  • People don’t see me as a leader
  • There are no current openings for a team leader
  • I’m not sure what a team leader does
  • I don’t have any large projects where I can demonstrate leadership.

Now, I think about how to overcome the obstacles.

  • People don’t see me as a leader – So I can demonstrate clear leadership of myself. I can volunteer to set up meetings, which will put me in control of the agenda and the meeting and the follow-up. I can look for opportunities to be of service to my team, and demonstrate teamwork and leadership. I can dress a bit better, carry myself like a leader.
  • There are no current openings for a team leader – but I can tell my manager I want to prepare for one. I can say I want to be the next in line, her replacement. All managers need a replacement in training. I can ask for additional work that will help me learn what she does.
  • I’m not sure what a team leader does – I can meet with other team leads and find out what their responsibilities are, I can imagine what would be helpful and take that work on of my own volition.
  • I don’t have any large projects where I can demonstrate leadership. I can lead smaller ones, and demonstrate skill, and when I notice that my boss has too many balls in the air, I can ask for the chance to take one. I can get on committees and work on their projects. I can ask for a project.

Now, I have a path. More obstacles might come, but for now, these are the ones I see. If more come, I’ll add them to the path. For now, I’ve got a lot of work to do. Some of these things will fail, but since this is my path, my Big How, it’s ok. I’ll just think of something else.

For some of these, I might have to carry the big how with me for a few days, asking myself over and over – how can I solve this obstacle? Eventually, your brain will give you an answer. Try it. Even if it fails, you’ll get more information about what to try next.

Once you’ve done this process consciously a few times, you start to understand that you have the best ability on earth – the ability to figure out The Big How.

You can start anywhere and go anyplace.

How’s that for confidence?

And that? Is just a great way to feel.

If you would like to have me walk you through this process, click here and book a free 25 minute session.

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Drop Into Direct Experience

Think you need a whiskey, a pizza or – shudder – a hot bath to relax?
Not at work you don’t. Drop into direct experience right at your keyboard.

OK, short & sweet today.

Here it is… read for you – by me. With yawns. Enjoy.

So many of my clients have their days derailed by simple stressors, I thought I’d do a short blog about how to decouple the current moment from all that ails you at work.

What I mean by basic stressors are things that occur on the regular. Something more subtle than COVID-19, or financial hardship or major depression.

Here are some examples:

  • A project you’re supposed to work on right at this time that is difficult, time-sensitive, or has you holding back from it.
  • Repeating thoughts about one of your not-so-great moments
  • Repeating thoughts about worries or concerns
  • A sense of pessimism, mild anxiety, general distraction, discomfort or dislike

Your day goes sideways and you find yourself clicking on web links, wading through emails or hopping up to get water, coffee, a snack. In the old days (about 6 weeks ago) you might have wandered down the aisle to chat but now, you let the dog out, check your phone or the news.

Dropping into direct experience takes you out of your head and back into the immediate present moment. Doing this is unexpectedly soothing. The more you practice dropping into the moment, the easier it gets.

What is direct experience?

Direct experience is when you are engaging with the world around you with as few labels as possible. In a Zen story, the leader of a monastery placed a jar of water on the ground. He asked his monks to tell him what it was without naming it. Whoever passed this test, would get to be the head of a new monastery.

One monk said it was not a sandal. Other monks tried and failed to answer to the leader’s satisfaction. The cook came out of the kitchen, walked over to the jar, and kicked it over. The cook was made the head of the new monastery.

That’s direct experience. It’s the difference between reading a book about a boy and his puppy and actually living with a dog. It’ s the difference between watching a movie about the ocean and standing in the water. When you have your feet in the cold water, and it’s moving, splashing and withdrawing, you understand what the beach is. When you fall off a sailboat two miles from shore, you understand what the ocean is. Whether you call it the sea, the Atlantic or the ocean is irrelevant. What’s meaningful is cold, salt, waves, motion, air, buoyancy and if you know how to swim. The label is absolutely superfluous.

That’s direct experience and you can use it at your desk to help you focus and reduce stress. Because when you directly experience where you’re at, all the rest drops away just for a moment and you get a mini reset.

If you want to experience life coaching for yourself, sign up for a free 25-minute session here.

Here’s four ways to do to a direct experience reset:

Where am I?

They say a monk used to wake up in the morning and call his own name. No, he wasn’t senile. He wanted to center himself in the moment. He was asking himself to pay attention to where he really was. I use this technique all the time. It’s my favorite fall back to sleep method. Check out my blog, “Your Boss Should Buy You a Mattress”. Basically, all you do is ask yourself, “Where am I?” Answer with concrete details. I’m in my office, typing on a black and white keyboard, sitting in a small chair, in my home, at 6:18 pm on Sunday. That’s where I am right now. It’s a great way to remind myself that I want to get this done in a short time, and that I’m here for a purpose. Asking yourself “Where am I?” reminds you that what is really happening, is what is really happening, right now, in the room, where you’re standing. Right now, in this place, you’re OK. Right now, you are exactly where you should be, where all the actions and events have led to. Right now, where are you?

Where am I? I’m in the hospital where I work, standing outside a patient’s room.

Where am I? I’m in my home, in front of my PC, sitting in a chair..

Where am I? I’m in my bedroom with my blanket over me.

Find the Future and the Past

I’ve done several meditation sessions where I simply look for the future. Sitting on my cushion, I ask myself to point to the future. Can I see it? Can I smell it? Is it here, with me? Where is it? if I needed to send someone there, could I? Where is this future?

Try it. Right now, look around you for the future.

When you literally look for it, it can’t be found. You have to actually do this exercise, not just read about it. Do this a few times, set a timer for ten minutes or so, sit on the floor, back straight, and quietly, with your eyes open, without speaking, keep asking yourself where the future is and see that quite literally you can’t find it. Do the same thing looking for the past. For me, I have a sensation that is very specific when I do this exercise and having spent a couple ten-minute sessions at this, I can recall that sensation quickly.

Asking yourself where the future is helps out when you’re anxious or worried. It gives you the direct information that whatever you’re worried about has not happened, is not set in stone. Quite clearly, you are made aware that you are just hypothesising about something that may, or may not, happen.

Asking yourself where the past is, helps out when you’re replaying a painful event. The people who were there, are gone. The things you said and did, are over. Right now, all that is gone and right now, you are fine.

String of Pearls

The string of pearls exercise takes the concept of Where am I? and ties it to finding the future and the past. The idea is that each moment is a direct experience and each moment follows the next like pearls on a string. One is moment rolling toward you, while the current moment passes away. In each moment, you are still OK. Sit quietly for just sixty seconds, asking yourself “Where am I?” each time you breathe in. Notice your hands, the weight of your body, the placement of your feet, the area before your eyes and the sounds you are hearing. Notice that right now, you are fine. Notice that right now, the future moment hasn’t yet arrived and the past moment has rolled away, dropping off the string. In each moment, you are fine.

5 Senses Exercise

I adore this exercise. For the full version, please check out Dr. Susan Albers – 50 ways to soothe yourself without food. Right now, where you are at, stop and listen. Name five sounds you are hearing. – Dog bark, TV in another room, the hard drive, the sound of the keyboard, the dishwasher. Now name five things you see. Name five things you feel with your body, five things you smell, and five colors you see.

For me, sometimes I only smell one or two things. When you are done, you and your worries will have had a break from each other.

Why Bother?

By the time you finish one or more of these exercises, the thoughts that were causing you anxiety, or were circling in your head or making you want to escape will have had a time out. You will have reconnected with the fact that right now, you are OK. Tomorrow, you might catch a virus. Tomorrow you might have an unexpected bill that you can’t afford. Yesterday, you might have said something foolish and chances are, you are the only one still thinking about it. Yesterday you made a mistake but you’re not making one now. In an hour, or a half-hour, or a week, a problem might arise, but it’s not here now.

And that? Is just good to experience.

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Go to Your Happy Place

Some people believe this girl’s possibilities are already set in stone. Do you?
Who decides who she gets to be? How you answer that question, can change your life.

This week, I had a good laugh. I’m not reverent, so it’s expected that some of that spills over at work. We have a little messaging system that allows us to customize information about our availability. At the end of the day, I notify the world I’m off duty by selecting a red dot and adding the phrase – gone to my happy place.

Today’s blog, read for you.

One day, I forgot to change back to the green dot that says available – working from home when I started my day. My boss IM’d me, and asked – “Are you working? It says you’re at your happy place.” One of the people on my team said – “Work IS your happy place!” and we laughed.

Sure, I still get exasperated. Sometimes, I embarrass myself and want to jump off a metaphorical bridge, but underneath it all, I have deep confidence that tomorrow, or even fifteen minutes from now, I’ll see things differently. That’s the key. I understand that how I see things is up for grabs.

For most of us, that bit of awareness is like getting the best game controller ever to use on our own darn life. Once we get good at this, we’re like, high-five me. I’m out. But there’s way more to uncover, so this week, we’re moving to the far end of the tool-set. Past immediate relief, beyond awareness and even past seeing our thoughts as objects. For today, let’s spend some time working with dreams, goals, and beliefs.

To get there, I want to take you on a quick journey. We start off thinking that we have fixed character traits. To one degree or another, we believe that who we are is defined by how we show up in the world. We’re smart, we’re silly, we learn quickly but we can’t speak in public. We don’t question this and common speech patterns reinforce it. Also, we believe that the environment we find ourselves in has a huge impact on how we feel. If we have a nice boss, good co-workers, and meaningful work to do, we’re doing great. If not, well then, we’re miserable and we expect our HR department to fix that.

There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s how most of the world views things. It has one major drawback though – we have to wait for someone or something to change before we can be happy again. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t have that kind of time.

Enter awareness experiences. What I call awareness experiences are episodes when we are standing slightly outside ourselves, thinking about our own thinking, recognizing our own role in the drama that is our daily life. This can happen when we’re challenged by a coach, or simply when we observe that other people are having a different experience at the same meeting, discussing the same project. Like the time that slacker you know agreed with you about the new product design. You both knew it was bound to backfire but while you were gnashing your teeth, he was chuckling. What was up with that guy?

Awareness experiences start to soften our view of the world. They get us asking questions.

If you would like to try life coaching and see how it can help you build awareness, sign up for a free session at https://rockyourdayjob.as.me/free.

Once we start asking questions, it’s a slippery slope. If you always believed you didn’t get math and one day, you wonder if maybe math is just a skill, like playing the banjo, that’s major. Pretty soon, our questions aren’t just about how much change is possible for ourselves. If we can change, how locked down is our experience of the world? You can work with these questions and actually start to change yourself and how the world feels to you. Once that happens, it’s game on. I mean, why wouldn’t you challenge yourself?

Do that enough and you start get a giddy feeling that who you are – just might be – up for grabs too.

This is where it gets GOOD…

Once you have a questioning mindset, you’re ready to do some big dreaming. This work I’m about to describe is my absolute favorite. Some of my clients like to live here. So do I. Sadly, this is not a hotel you can check into and just hang. It’s more like a lumberyard. You come here, look at all the pretty moldings, the cool cabinets, the funky bathtubs, and fixtures, but then, you have to buy something and take it home. You have to work on installing it if you want to use it. Nobody is going to let you just live in aisle twelve, and certainly not in your bathrobe.

From the opposing camp, I have plenty of clients who don’t even want to visit here. We pull up to the door and they’re like : “Nope, got no money, don’t need anything, couldn’t even imagine what’s in there. I’ll wait in the car.” If that’s you, just know, you will not get lost in there. You will not get depressed about all the things you can’t have. You are far more likely to have a beautiful master bath someday if you actually know that they exist. Trust me, some of the stuff in here is quite reasonably priced.

Are we still talking about identity? You bet.

So how do you do this dreaming big stuff?

Ask yourself who you want to be. Brainstorm a long list. Go all in.

Here’s just a few of mine: I want to be a person with few regrets. I want to be beloved by my family, crazy about my husband. I want to be kind and I want to have a big mouth. I never want to believe that I’m helpless. I want to be healthier and more relaxed. I want to write a NY Times best-seller and move my whole family to Hawaii.

Ask yourself how you want to live.

Do you want to live boldly, without fear and anxiety? Do you want to live with wide swaths of free time? Do you want to live surrounded by art? Or music? Do you want to live near the mountains? Do you want to live feeling confident?

And last, ask yourself what would the best way to experience life be – for you?

For me, I think the best way to experience life is to have the freedom to get neck-deep in things that mesmerize me, make me curious, call to me. I think the best way to experience life is to experience it with a tractor-trailer full of compassion for myself and others. I’m not there yet.

And if you do this exercise correctly, you won’t be at your idealized life yet. We’re not supposed to be. What is life, if we believe there’s nothing over the next horizon for us?

Trust me, there is always something over the horizon. It’s up to us to ask what it is.

And what about you? Right now, in the place you’re at? Who decides who you can become this year? Next year? And who decides how you will experience your world?

I love this picture. Did you notice that the person’s headlamp is beaming up at the moon?

OK. I hope you set aside some time this week and answer those questions. Don’t stop until you have at least ten answers for each of them. Got it? Good. Now it’s time to bring the building materials home and put them together.

Just like going to the store, some of the things you’ve listed are out of reach – for now. I’m pretty sure that becoming a NY Times best selling author is not something available to me in the near future. Same as with the store, you all ready have some of what you wrote down. I rarely feel helpless, I have a tremendously big mouth, I’m nuts for my husband. I let myself get up to my armpits in hobbies and interests. That’s how I became a coach.

So analyze your dreams. What do you already have? Circle them on the page. What is really far out? Underline that. What’s left? Possibilities, ladies and gentlemen, possibilities.

I can write a book. I can take concrete steps toward being more compassionate at work and at home. I can set aside more free time.

I can start to redefine who I am and how I experience the world.

I can make this life of mine, even more aligned with my dreams. So can you.

And that? Is just good to do.