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Stay Fearless

Feel like hiding under your bed? While you’re under there, dig out that superhero costume from 1994 and check out today’s blog.

Fah- Fah- Fearless my foot. Right now, there’s like no reason in the world to feel fearless, and I mean, literally.

I’m going to share something with you – there actually is plenty out there to fear. I can sit here and say “don’t be afraid” but that’s not really what a life coach does. Mostly I ask questions. Things like “Is that true?” and “So what?” People pretty much pay me to be a pain in the neck. It’s possible that what you are afraid of is a real concern. And that’s good to know. Because, as Robert McCammon said, just because it’s real, doesn’t me we don’t act. I’m going to share here one of my favorite excerpts from his books. Basically, the townsfolk in the story are standing in the dark of night on the banks of a rising, raging river in a downpour. The boy and his father, join them, filling sandbags and slinging them into a wall, in an almost futile attempt to hold back nature. Here it is:

“There is something about nature out of control that touches a primal terror.  We are used to believing that we’re the masters of our domain and that God has given us this earth to rule over.  We need this illusion like a good night-light.  The truth is more fearsome: we are as frail as young trees in tornadoes, and our beloved homes are one flood away from driftwood.  We plant our roots in trembling earth, we live where mountains rose and fell and prehistoric seas burned away in mist.  We and the towns we have built are not permanent; the earth itself is a passing train. When you stand in muddy water that is rising toward your waist and you hear people shouting against the darkness and see their figures struggling to hold back the currents that will not be denied, you realize the truth of it: we will not win, but we cannot give up.” – Robert McCammon – from the novel Boy’s Life

Pretty intense. This week, mental health has been in the news. As we stay home longer, as we see the upsetting news about the pandemic along with the ugly campaign ads designed to frighten us, the real worries we have about sending our loved ones back to school and about what happens when grandparents and parents welcome them back into their homes, we wonder about the economics, climate change, the safety of vaccines, voter registration… all of it. And then? We have to show up at work.

This week, I cried at the grocery store because the lobsters waiting to be made into a meal were so pitiful. One of my team berated herself viciously for a small, forgivable lapse. We watch as the team pushes to hit deadlines, emails increase, tension fray. We were already overwhelmed… and the gratitude and thankfulness we started with in March are worn thin.

What’s the answer?

It’s the only answer that ever existed. In the dark, on the river bank, don’t give up.

But also, don’t just let the world pour fear into you. Ask yourself “is this true?”

The media says our democracy is about to crumble. Is that true? Really? Or do you just need to make sure you vote?

Our climate is threatened. We’re all going to fry by 2050. True? Who knows. But you can pretty easily switch your electricity supplier to 100% renewable. Lock in a one year rate, fall back to your current one if you don’t like it.

There’s more email than ever at work and you can’t keep up. So what? You might miss something? So what?

You’re starting work at the crack of dawn, stopping to home school the kids, going back to work in the afternoon, and making up time in the middle of the night and that’s the only option you can find. You’re exhausted and scared. What are you making this mean? How does that make you feel? How do you behave when you feel like that? Is that pattern serving you? What else could you make it mean and how would that feel?

Look, we’re all going to feel overwhelmed and fearful. Self-coaching is the way out of that. We can’t change the facts of our lives, we are still one flood, one tornado, one bad break away from real trouble. It was like that last year, the year before and all the way back to the beginning of time. You still have emails to handle. You have children to care for.

Here’s what you can control – the way you think about your situation. My job as a coach is not to talk you into believing things that aren’t true. My job is to help you see what’s going on in your head and how that’s impacting your world. But you can do it yourself.

Here’s how:

Give yourself five minutes at the start of the workday. Write out everything that comes to your mind on a piece of paper. Underline the hard facts, provable in a court of law. Everything else is in your control. Pick one of the controllable sentences. Doesn’t matter which one. Write it on the back of your paper. This sentence is a thought you had. Say it to yourself. How do you feel?

Write down the situation the thought is about. Make it fact. Refine it until it’s so bland that you have no emotional reaction to it. That’s your circumstance.

Read the circumstance. Read the thought. How do you feel? Imagine how you behave when you feel that way. Is that what you want to do?

Now, write down five other thoughts you can have about that fact. Try them on for feelings and actions.

Go through this, don’t just read it. Really try it out. Here’s what you learn – you can’t change the world, but you have a ton of control over how you show up in it. And when you do that, your actions change. And Actions are what drive the results we get for all of us.

Turns out, if you control how you show up – you might just change the world after all.

And that? Is just good to know.

If you want help with this, sign up for a free 25 minute session. Helping you is my way of showing up without fear. Let’s find your way.

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Action

Action is the antidote to despair – Joan Baez.
It’s also been touted as the fix for fear, anxiety, and doubt.
With an intro like that, who wouldn’t want more action?

Nothing dogs us like action, or rather – inaction. Facing fears, making a difference, and just plain getting through the workday, all require action. So why is that so many of us struggle to act? Let’s dig into action, decisions, and getting stuff done.

Today’s blog, read for you. Enjoy.

First off, let’s divide the world into two kinds of action. Tony Robbins called it massive action and passive action. Educators call it learning from resources and learning by doing. Either way, we’re talking about consuming information versus actively attempting something. Often, we postpone taking action by learning, reading, watching, talking. All of which are fine in doses, but don’t hold a candle to engaging with the world and trying something. In a sneaky, sneaky twist, our brains LOVE passive action. After all, what’s safer than reading a book or watching a movie? Our brains love safe; they love passive action.

So when I’m talking about action, I’m talking about massive action. Massive action, that has mass, movement, impact and engagement, is the action that we want to call on when we’re trying to achieve a goal. Whether that goal is getting your new cool idea noticed at work, or saving democracy – I think we can all agree that massive action is what’s required.

Do dare what is right, not swayed by the whim of the moment.  Bravely take hold of the real, not dallying now with what might be.  Not in the flight of ideas, but only in action is freedom.  Make up your mind and come out into the tempest of the living.  -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Ok, so our brains are totally against going out into a tempest. Things HAPPEN in a tempest, things CHANGE when we take action. As soon as you attempt to take action, your lazy brain, all chillin’ on the sofa with its tank top and stretchy shorts on, looks over and pauses whatever it’s binge watching. Why? Because its job is to stop you from getting hurt. What’s the easiest way to do that?

Depends. Could be it might frighten you. It might tell you that your idea will get you laughed at. Could be it might tempt you... chips and salsa anyone? But you are too smart to let that stop you. Be ready. And if your mid-brain wins this round, notice how it did it. I noticed that my brain could get me to skip my morning walk if it was raining. Can you spell treadmill? Boom. Then my brain told me that using the treadmill was selfish. After all, the dog needs to walk too. So for a while, I let that be my excuse. If the dog can’t go, I don’t go. Wait? What? Tricky. Turns out, the dog’s chill if I use the treadmill as long as I don’t make her use it with me.

He was a sociopath, I think, in love with himself and no one else, craving action for its own sake, and indifferent to any long-term consequences, a classic Man of Destiny.  – Hocus Pocus  Kurt Vonnegut.

Truly, that’s not the best quote for this article but I just love me some Vonnegut.

So action for action’s sake isn’t what we’re talking about. Running around with no clear goal or without thinking things through can be trouble. However, most of us take way too long to come to a decision. We want to make the perfect decision. In reality, making the best decision we can, in a reasonable amount of time, is all we need to do.

Check out my article on decision making – Beauty & the Beast

Once the decision is made, action is where it’s at. Taking real action sends a message to ourselves that we can effect an impact on our own lives. In fact, any meaningful results you’ll ever get come from taking action. We live in a world that feels out of control. We have invisible viruses, we have bosses that make decisions based on information that we aren’t told about. We use technology we barely understand to do our jobs. We have our retirement invested in a stock market that, from the looks of it, is disconnected from reality. Our brains don’t like any of this. We like certainty.

Action takes us out of rumination and engages us with the world. Want another bonus for taking action?

Dude, the day feels longer when you fill it with diverse actions towards meaningful goals.

Try it. Compare a day with no plans, when you engage in passive action to a day when you take five or six different actions towards a goal. Which day felt longer? Which one felt like a life well-lived.

Lady, I’ve just told you the secret to having a long life. No matter how many years you actually live, you experience more life when you’re taking action.

And that? Is just a good way to feel.

If you want to take more action and figure out how to get past the mental roadblocks to action, sign up for a free 25 minute mini session. We’ll discuss how coaching helps.

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Vacation Like A Boss

A step by step guide to going on vacation and not freaking out.

Take your damn vacation already. If you’re employed and they’ve given you vacation time, take it. Believe me, the people who don’t have paid time off would be happy to have yours.

Now, how you prepare to go on vacation is up to you. Worrying for a full week about the work you won’t be doing, and the amount of emails that will be in your inbox when you get back, is one way to do it. Logging in continuously and then feeling sorry for yourself about having to do so, while blaming your company, boss, current housing situation or the guy next door is another way. Last but not least, go out on vacation and then overwork yourself trying to do two weeks of work in a week. That’s fun, too.

This year, try something new. The Friday of the week before you go out, block out an hour on your calendar. Turn off all notifications, sit for ten minutes and list out everything you need to have in order to actually leave on time, come back and know that other than your inbox, everything is under control. Write it all down. When you run out of thoughts, ask your brain for five more. Do that a couple of times. You’ll know you’re at the end when your brain starts handing you drivel.

Now, take that list and label the items A (must be done before I go) B(Must be done but could wait until I’m back) and C (Get real, I could go my whole life without doing this).

Label all the A’s by priority – A1, A2 etc.

Now, look at your calendar for the following week, the week prior to vacation. Put in your lunch hour. Put in your email time. Put in a couple spots for last minute meetings and put in a spot every day for the unplanned.

Go to the week of vacation. Delegate or decline everything you can. Reschedule what you absolutely can’t delegate or decline.

Go to the week after vacation. Look at what’s scheduled. Is there anything you’ll need to do before you go out to get ready for that? Write it on your list, mark it A,B,C and give it a priority if it’s an A.

Now, go back to the week before you go out. Add in everything, starting with A1, until you run out of time. Don’t overcommit. You’re not going to work sixteen hours a day to do this. DEAL with the reality of the time you have available.

This is going to happen anyway, so don’t lie to yourself. You could ignore this reality, but when the actual 24 hours comes around, you’re going to work on something, and the day will end no matter what. Wouldn’t you rather be doing the most important things?

We can’t escape the reality of the 24 hour day. Period.

Really work during this hour. lay it all out, get it as close to perfect as possible.

Follow your plan for one week. Then go on vacation, stay-cation whatever.

Here comes the critical part – honor your commitment to yourself. Turn off work, look around and remember what you love about not being at work. Really make this time as vibrant and wonderful as you can. Have a vacation if it kills you.

When you get back, do not let yourself fall into the mindset of overwhelm. Remind yourself that you have all the time you need to do the most important things.

Your colleagues are capable. The company can survive without you and that’s not a bad thing.

Sort your inbox by name. Delete all the emails “from” people or systems that you don’t need to answer.

Sort your inbox by subject. Keep only the top email. If they split the chain and kept the same subject, and they needed your input, they’ll reach out.

Now, plan your week the same way you did before you left and move on.

And that?

Is how you go out, come back, and stay even.

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Get up, Log off, Get Gone

Look, you gotta go now.

It’s the Summer of Covid-19. Are you still at your desk?

I used to be this woman. Minus the nice bathing suit and the toned legs. Yeah, minus all of it except the phone. That briefcase would have been my laptop and instead of a beach, I’d be chillin’ on the lanai at my mother’s in Florida, but the concepts the same.

We all know that it’s good for us to leave work at work. Not so easy, you say?

Here’s a few simple tips that have worked for my clients.

Dedicate Yourself To Leaving Work at Work.

1. Don’t wait to have time, to take time.

Clients who overwork tend to think they can’t sign up for that pottery class, can’t get that dog, can’t start that work out routine until they figure out how to leave on time. This is backward. One of the reasons you stay too late at your desk is that you don’t have a clear goal for what comes next. By clear goal, I don’t mean weeding the garden if that’s your least favorite chore. Trust me on this. Schedule the class. You’ll figure out how to get there.

2. When your boss tells you to go, take him at his word.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this. The employee is overwhelmed and can’t see the forest for the trees. Boss gets concerned. “Go home.” “Take your vacation.” “Leave early today.” Employee nods and gets back to work, telling himself that the boss is nuts, or that’s nice but I have too much work. People, your manager is trying to help you. Hopefully, he or she has been around the block and can see a forward that you can’t right now. Or maybe, like me, he just knows that you’ll work smarter and faster once your head isn’t full of cotton and misery. When the boss says go, go.

3. Understand that stopping your thought patterns takes practice.

Our brains like to do what we did yesterday. Why? Because we survived. There’s no super intuitive magic going on. You can’t stop thinking about work because you aren’t taking ownership of your brain. If you don’t guide it, then it’ll do what’s easy. What’s easy? Whatever it just did. So now that you’re on vacation, now that you left your desk on time, don’t expect it to be roses. Now is the time you have to do some work for you. Now is the time you have practice directing your thoughts. It’s not fun – until it is.

4. Don’t expect there to be fun things to do unless you’ve planned them.

If you walk away from your desk and find yourself standing in the kitchen with a strong desire to refill your coffee cup and head back into your office, then just turn to your plan.

What? You don’t have one? We’re right back at item #1 again. Plan something fun. Just last week, I sat down with my coach and she made me construct a list of things to do in the evening. Things that feel good, don’t require food and aren’t about productivity or work. Brilliant. So, now? I’m heading out for my walk. Plan something good and enjoy your time off.

And that? Is just a great thing to figure out.

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Don’t Chain Your Joy to Your Desk

Think breaking free from your desk has to happen before you find joy? Bass Ackward, man.

Look, work is hard, right?   Being out of work, looking for work and having work – we’re talking difficult situations, regardless of which boat you’re in now.

Whether you’re overworking, underworking or struggling to find or keep a job, in every case, you’re going to hit up against a belief.  The belief that you have to know the solution before you get to the results.  Not so, Sparky.

I know exactly what it feels like to hamstring myself by tying together things that can be independent.

I was a woman who wanted to be “She who never wonders what to wear.”  The experience of walking to my closet each day and trying outfit after uncomfortable outfit, was balled up so tightly in my head with being overweight that I actually believed that I couldn’t have any other experience until I lost weight. It simply didn’t occur to me that you don’t have to be thin to have seven outfits that look good and fit.

I used to have twenty-five percent of my salary tied to credit card debt. Along with my mortgage and a car payment, that pretty much meant we were always one paycheck away from financial failure. I didn’t think I could change that. I thought you had to born with the miserly Scrooge gene in order to be debt-free.

I had my experience of being utterly miserable in my job.  I believed that my boss had no idea what I did all day, had no time to understand it and basically, disregarded me.   I felt the amount of work on my plate was more than anyone could ever do and I believed that I didn’t have the political clout to help our team. I was miserable because of my work.

It’s easier to see when we’re talking about frumpy clothes and harder to see when we’re talking about work but in each case, a belief that was connecting two unrelated things was holding me back.

I believed I had to be skinny to have clothes I liked.

I believed I had to be born with a talent for money to get out of debt.

I believed that my boss, my company and my workload had to change for me to be happy.

None of those was true.

I have stayed inside a dressing room long enough to hear the canned music tape play completely through three, count ’em, three times. No lie. Turns out, if you’re willing to spend several hours inside a clothing store, trying on every style, in every size, you can emerge as “She Who Never Wonders What To Wear”, even if you’re a size 16 – or 2XL – or a size 2.

I have also been thunderstruck with the thought – What If Money Is A Skill? Whaaa?? I have read dozens of books on personal finance. Turns out, with patience and time, you can get out of debt without living in a tent or starting a farm. Who knew?

 It’s also true that you can be happy, at work, at the job you have now. I learned to love that exact same job I described. I did it because I wondered if I could be happy doing anything and I set out to find out if that was true.          

Just like getting out of debt, or finding nice clothes that fit, getting happy where you are is a matter of trial and error. To get happy I did all sorts of things. I made a playlist of in-your-face music to listen to on the way to work. I played it every day… Drive by Incubus, Happy by Pharrell Williams, Taking Care of Business by Bachman Turner Overdrive and 51 other songs that made me feel in control and ready to take on my day. I left on time for a week straight just to see what would happen. I figured out what I loved and was good at and did those tasks first, forcing myself to find ways to offload work or make the dull stuff more efficient. I spent a week saying no to three things every day. I listened to management and leadership books. Basically, I kept trying stuff until I found what worked for me.

One day, as I was walking out of the office, on time, I passed the desk of a dear friend. I knew she was deeply unhappy and I also knew she didn’t have to be that way.

I coach, I bother with all this because I’m profoundly certain that you can be happy.  I want you to know that you can be deeply satisfied, right where you are.

Don’t, please, please don’t chain your joy to your desk.

The two things don’t depend on each other.   Don’t wait for things to change.  Try things -things I suggest and things you think of for yourself. 

There is nobody on the planet who can tell you where your path goes, or how you make magic in your life.  Nobody.   You are so incredibly unique and perfect, and so amazingly yourself, how can anyone know what fantastic direction you’ll go?

If you chain your joy to your desk, if you wait for your job to make you happy, you are missing the race.  You are missing the path.  You are sitting down on the path.  And that’s OK but please, if you’re not happy there, don’t stay there.  

And I don’t mean leave your job. By all means, stay there, until you figure out how to be happy at that job.  Even has you fail at things, you can be happy. Even out of work, keep trying new ways. Find ways to feel joy, even as you struggle, fail, and triumph. Once you do that, nothing is chained to your desk, not you,  not your happiness, nothing. 

And that, is just my wish for you.

If you would like a free 25-minute session – click here. It’s free, it’s on zoom, camera on or camera off. It’s my pleasure

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2 Truths and a Thank You

Q2 2020 – that was fun.
Now, it’s time for mid-year reviews. What’s better than that?

I have been doing a shit ton of thinking, and just in case you didn’t know, that’s way more than a metric ton. You probably have too.  I hope you’ve spent a day with the TV off at least once. I hope you’ve seen a friend, even if it’s on Zoom. I hope you have a life coach.

The whole blog – plus some riffs on how to do this work – read for you. Also, a shout out to Brig Johnson and Brooke Castillo for their podcast conversation.

Thank you

I’ll start with the thank you.  I want to thank my client, who began our recent coaching call, telling me she’d been thinking about me and asked how I was.  If you think I’m writing directly to you, my friend, with your amazing smile, I am.  Your grace and concern for me meant the world, especially considering all that you have on your plate right now.  Thank you – One Million Times –  for demonstrating the absolute best response to any situation. 

               “I’ve been thinking of you.  How are you doing?”

 In any conversation, the normal ones, the difficult ones, or the awkward ones, starting with words that say “I see you as a person and I care how you are” is the most honest and most welcome thing anyone can say.  So, if there’s someone that you work with or care about, and they don’t share all your life experiences, maybe you disagree on one or two ideas, and you’re unsure on how to begin, try this:

               “I’ve been thinking of you. How are you doing?”

Truth #1

The only place where we can deal with the human condition– is now.

After having to make an utterly unwinnable decision about the life of my dog – I’ve been thinking about death.  I have a client with anxiety about death.  I told her that I start my morning meditation acknowledging that all the work I do today, will be required again tomorrow. Oh, and none of us escape death.  You get it. We all get it, but sometimes the world around us just makes that fact more crystalline. More cutting. More devastating.  One morning I found myself asking – how? How does anyone do it?  How do we live knowing this?  

The answer my brain gave me was immediate.  Now. We live now, the only place we can live.  When we are now, right now, we meet the world where it is.  

Truth #2

There is only one way to deal with any issue – you must do it as who you are today.

I hope you have a life coach.  I do.  I get coached regularly, and I also get randomized coaching – I sign up, and any coach available, shows up on the other end of the Zoom line.  Both my random coach and my on-the-regular coach told me the same thing as I did my own work on racism, politics, and police.   They told me to stop. They picked and prodded.  They kept bringing me back to my body, my feelings, not letting me escape into vague solutions or diversions. They wanted specific situations, concrete examples, actual feelings.  I had to sit in my own soup.   Not fun. Not what I ever want to do on my own.  So much better with a coach.   

They both insisted that I stay where I am, not changing, not going anywhere.  They both told me there wasn’t a timetable.   There is no specific date when this latest self-project is due, nowhere to go.  It’s always right now; I’m always me.  One black coach, one white coach. Both letting me see that I’m OK right now, and I’m not going anywhere without bringing myself along.

Whether I’m trying to understand how I got to June without getting the right things done at work, or I’m trying to deal with my fears for my son or my frustration at being back here again as a country – If I’m running from my feelings, hiding from the truth of my current thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, I can’t get to the next, maybe better, version of me. I can’t deal with any issue as an imaginary, somehow better, version of myself. I only have who I am now. 

Why do these two ideas matter?

There is only one place from which you can deal with the organized chaos that is work or the ferocious change that is life.  You must handle them both from the here and now, as the person you are today.   Marginalizing your feelings, distracting yourself, and being unwilling to sit in your soup, sends your brain off dreaming about the future or ruminating on the past. 

So what?

So, you are missing your chance to act, to observe, to experience work and life – as it is now.  

Emotions are a giant doorway into the now. 

If you would like a free 25-minute session – click here. It’s free, it’s on zoom, camera on or camera off. It’s my pleasure

Treat them as objects – things to be handled, cradled in your lap, held up to the light – known.

At work, and in life, the more you can bring yourself back, again and again, to the specific feelings you’re having, the more you can stop trying to become a different person and just accept the person you are. 

Having a coach lets you be you – out loud and unjudged, honestly, imperfectly.  With a good coach, you find nothing but compassion and acceptance.  He shows you that you can be accepted as you are. 

Accepting yourself,  you can relax and start to be curious about this person you are. 

That softening of judgment, that’s the opening. As you stay here, with the opening, the opening starts to change around you. For me, it’s like relaxing. I stop feeling like someone or something is trying to impose expectations on me. If I’m OK as I am, then there’s no reason to resist change. There’s a new perspective, naturally arising in the moment. From that new now, a new me breathes in.

And that? Is how you move forward.

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What Was I Thinking?

Feelings are a better predictor of actions than thoughts. Too bad they’re so messy.

It was 6:40 in the morning, and the woman on zoom was wearing leopard print glasses.   I reminded myself for the third time that I absolutely did not want to talk about the thing that was bothering me.  I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to have a conversation about it and I certainly didn’t want coaching on it an hour before I was due to start work.   I’d booked the session specifically to get an idea of how another coach might handle a client with no issue.   Plus, I just didn’t want to discuss it.

The whole blog, read to you by me. You’re welcome.

“Hi!” She said.  “What can I help with?”

“I don’t have an issue,” I said.  “Don’t you have a question of the day or something?”

She smiled at me.  “Sure.  Tell me, what were the three main feelings you felt this week?”

I sensed a trap.   I wasn’t going to lie.  “Stress, excitement about a project I’m starting and, um, frustration.”

Inside of twenty minutes she had me talking about the issue I’d sworn to avoid.   Here’s the thing – by the time we were done – and I’d gone through a fistful of tissues – my actions from the last week made a lot more sense. 

The coach had me name the cause of my stress and then dug into that situation until I was openly saying all the things that I thought but wasn’t admitting to.   She gave me permission to feel the feelings, sit with them, and really feel them.  I was astounded at how deep and strong the feelings were.   I hadn ‘t been feeling the fear, the sorrow, or the abject disappointment.  I’d bundled it all up as “stress”, wrapped it in a blanket of TV, work and books.  I dumped it my psyche’s laundry room, where, I hoped, I’d wash it out of my system without ever opening the bundle up to see what was in it.

This was a personal issue but we do the same thing at work.  Our issues might be just as upsetting or more subtle, but if we’re not willing to dig in, get messy and really look at what we’re feeling, our actions at work can be just as mystifying as my sudden need to watch every episode of House.

At work, we aren’t binge-watching TVor sitting at our desk with a great thriller novel and a bowl of chips, but we do the same thing – we drown out our feelings by going through emails, not settling in and working, taking care of small things or snapping at coworkers.

If the underlying motivation for all this activity is unwelcome feelings or a desire to not look under the hood and find out what’s fueling our emotional engine, the results are the same – our actions seem oddly disconnected from our intent.

Why Bother?

Look, I did not want to unroll my personal emoticons for the lovely EU coach with the leopard print glasses.  I sure as heck prefer logic to emotion at work too.  There’s one problem with avoiding emotions –

Emotions Drive our Actions.

Figuring out what we’re feeling and then allowing ourselves to feel them can yield powerful benefits.

  • Actions stop being mysterious.

Let’s take an example from myself at work – for some reason, I seem to be incapable of delivering on time any report on the team’s activities.  Once you dig into the feelings you have when you’re confronted with the task, you might just have an eye-opening insight.  Any time I have to report out exactly what our team did for the past quarter, I’m gripped with a certainty that we did nothing. Not because we’re slackers but because I have terrible recall for things that are complete.  When I understood that I had a deep feeling of being a fraud, it was easier to understand why I kept putting off doing the darn power point.

  • Build Self Compassion

When you understand the feelings, you’re having it’s easier to be compassionate with yourself.  Once I realized how I actually felt about score cards, I felt compassion for myself.  I mean, I’d feel bad for anyone who worked hard and still felt like they were somehow not cutting it. 

  • Release Judgments

I had a lot of judgments about myself not doing the scorecard report on time.  I was lazy, lacked discipline, a procrastinator, a disorganized manager.  Once I realized I was just a person who only remembers how to solve problems and what the current list of problems is and I quite literally believed that I wouldn’t find any accomplishments recorded, all that negative self talk fell away.  Of course we did stuff.  Of course, we earned our pay.

  • Change your thinking and get different results.

Armed with my insight, I decided to change the way we do the reports.  Why not invite the team and have them tell me what they did? Why not have them each bring the data for their area and let’s put them on the PowerPoint together. Now, we meet once a quarter and celebrate all we’ve done as a team.  Members get to see what other people did and we all get to feel like we’re part of a group that adds a lot of value.

And that – is just a great way to feel.

If you would like to have a free session where I walk you through how to uncover your own thoughts & feelings, click here. Free, on Zoom, my pleasure.

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Agency

Is this a random spill or symbolic artwork? How you make sense of your world is entirely in your mind.

I’ve struggled this week with how to make a blog on personal power at work relevant in the light of current events.

Although I can listen, see, imagine, and sympathize, I will never experience what it is to be a black person in America. Although I’m the mother of a police officer, I will never know what it’s like to be one. I can’t walk in any of these shoes.

Here are the shoes I can walk in – a pair of pop-art pumps with chunky heels – because these shoes belong to me.

These are literally, my shoes.

Standing in those shoes, here’s what my experience as an American woman has taught me – systemic, conscious, and unconscious bias is 100% real.

Here’s what I can tell you – I have been told and shown, based solely on gender that I am ridiculous, inconvenient, a threat or worse yet – a disposable object.

Here’s what I believe – People do abuse power and when anyone in power acts as if the rules and laws don’t apply to them, they should be held accountable.

So let me be clear – on the macro level, I for sure don’t think we should pretend inequality, injustice or violence doesn’t exist. That would be crazy. I believe in social agency. I believe in protest, in free speech, and the ability to leverage our influence to change our laws. We have a truckload of problems with bias in this country and we should get to work on them.

For the purposes of maximizing our impact at work, I don’t think it serves us to relinquish our sense of agency, even if the deck is stacked against us. Which brings us to today’s topic – agency.

Agency: the ability to act independently, to impact the course of your life, and to set goals for yourself. A sense of agency is linked to subjective well being on both a personal level and for us as a society. As my grandmother used to say, as long as you have choices, you’re OK.

So many of us give our agency away on the day-to-day. When we give away our agency, we’re giving away our sense of control and, along with it, our own power.

You get to look at the world around you and decide what’s working and what’s not. You can change your mind about all sorts of things.

You change how you view yourself.

You can change what you think about your job, your boss, your capabilities, and your value.

If you’re going to embark on a journey of this sort, let me encourage you to change the way you view your own agency. I’d like to encourage you to see yourself as the CEO of You, Inc. No matter what deck is stacked against you at this moment, you have the choice to validate that reality by giving up or spend some of your time on the planet trying to reshuffle the cards. My advice is always choose to reshuffle.

For this at-work example, let’s say that I want to move up one level in my organization and to do that, I’ve decided I’ll need to demonstrate leadership on a large project.

One way to approach this is to ask my manager to give me a large project to lead. Then, I can go back to my desk and wait for the project that never comes. When review time comes, I can be frustrated by the fact that nobody gave me a chance to shine and, I can settle for whatever wages I get, remaining in my current position, probably doing less tomorrow than I did yesterday, because, well, nothing works.

Let me tell you, this happens all the time. Why? Because the person in that example believes that they must be given a project by someone else. Can she control her boss? Hell no. Can she make someone give her a project? Not before the next review cycle comes up and not without legal action and money. Maybe not ever. So this is a completely dead-end way of dealing with the here and now – even if it’s true! This is why, in the moment, I always act in favor of personal agency.

So let’s say, despite the fact that I’m an old woman of average intelligence, I think I have the ability to maximize my personal benefit, and demonstrate my effectiveness, regardless of what project my boss gives me.

Now let’s say because of this belief, I tackle even small projects with a professional process. I document what I do, I create templates to use to build efficiency, I keep track of how long I expect it to take, how long it actually takes, and what caused any variance. Let’s say I sat down at the start of the project and wrote out my expectations of how I would perform and in the end, I evaluated my performance.

Basically, I treat this little project that I’m doing by myself, as if it was the big opportunity I’ve been waiting for. I’ve assumed all the authority over how it will be handled. I’ll be evaluating my own performance, so my manager’s feedback is now secondary. I’ll be learning from the project and improving my skills. Because I’ll understand why any problems in delivery or performance occurred, I’ll be able to build in processes to prevent future delays or disappointing behavior of my own making.

Here’s what I’ve just done – I’ve taken all the power over my performance and my opportunities, out of the hands of my manager, and put it all right on my desk. I’ve basically just made my manager irrelevant in the context of this project. I don’t need to know when he wants it done, because I already know when it will be done. I can just check to see if that will suit him. If not, I can offer up options. I’m not forced into a timeline, I’m negotiating one. I don’t need him to tell me what he expects because I know what results I’m delivering. Now I can just confirm I’m delivering what he’s looking for. I basically treat my manager like he’s my customer. I have lots of power. I have the goods and services he wants to buy. I just have to keep myself relevant.

Do you see what I did there? It’s still work. I still need to deliver stuff and make it good but it is a completely different ballgame if I see myself as the owner of Myself, Inc., and my manager as my best customer. My work experience is no longer at the whim of my boss, my work life is at the whim of ME. If my boss doesn’t agree with my evaluation, well, that just means we need to communicate better. Or I might decide to make it mean nothing at all.

What I find actually happens is I get really curious about what my boss thinks. I’m not devastated when my boss has something critical to say. I’m fascinated. I take this bit of information and analyze it. Did I miss something in my own eval of me? Great! I’ll add it to the working template for next time. I already do this for myself, so getting this information upfront is like getting a free trip around the monopoly board.

Ok, sound good? So to build out your own little Yourself, Inc. empire where you rule with confidence and independence, take back your own agency.

  1. Commit to working for yourself and refuse to let your boss control your opportunities. Strike a blow for the republic of you!
  2. Study your own work by stating beforehand what you will be doing ( time estimates, results expected, and expectations of your own behavior) and then by evaluating what actually happened.
  3. Take it one step further and ask yourself how you can be better, faster, or more professional next time and add that information to your documents.
  4. When the next project comes, repeat the process but shoot for improvement using the information you learned.

In a short time, you’ll have great confidence in your ability to deliver, your ability to estimate when you’ll deliver and how you’ll approach the work. When you have that kind of bedrock under you, it’s easy to ask good questions about projects, you can estimate quickly and with confidence.

It doesn’t work if you don’t put in the effort to do it fairly. You must lay out your expectations for yourself upfront. Don’t just do work and take stock at the end, looking back at the project and feeling good or bad about it. You won’t build confidence and communicate to yourself that you take your work seriously.

Because you value your own work and treat it with respect, you no longer have your ego tied to the size of the project you’re handed, the team that comes with it, or really anything external. All your satisfaction is internally driven. When your own evaluation of your performance is the most important one you get, there’s a lot of freedom in that. When you hold yourself accountable to you, and you treat yourself like a professional, you have just shown yourself who you are at work. Better yet, you’ve just shown everyone else, too.

And that? Is just a great way to work.

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Namaste

The divine in me, sees the divine in you.

This week – no blog. Just a prayer that we come to a place of moderation, where we reject extremism and sweeping generalizations about race, gender, jobs, roles and issues.

We are so much better than this.

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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.