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Master the Art of Self Compassion

Does your inner critic treat you like this?
She can.

Here’s the thing, we all want to be happy, have peace, eat well and see the Mets make it to the world series. What? You don’t agree? Because you don’t want peace? Oh, the Mets…well some of you are still with me.

While we want to have these things, we do just about everything in our power to get away from the one thing that will get us closer to happiness and peace. We overeat, binge-watch TV and fiddle away the day on social media to avoid just being with ourselves. Because hey, sometimes we can be our own worst critic.

Hey, I get it. One weekend I decided to change the sheets and clean the bedroom without music, TV, audible or even a dog to talk to. I didn’t have my phone with me. It was just me and the dust bunnies and I’ll tell you, things got ugly REAL quick.

No, I wasn’t sucked under the bed by the monster – he’s where he’s always been -in my head. First I became aware of a running loop of thoughts. My head was full of worried, fretful, self reproachful little thoughts running around in there. No wonder I prefer to clean listening to books on tape. Who wouldn’t? And that’s exactly where we foul it up.

By escaping from the thoughts we have playing on a loop in our brains, we lose the opportunity to bring them out and acknowledge them.

Not that day though. I was very aware of each thought and after about the fifth or sixth one, I got creative. I got a notebook out and laid it on the dresser. Then I waited to spring my trap. The next random thought that my brain offered me, I jotted down. Then I said, OK. That’s one. Next? I turned the page and went back to work. Soon, a new nasty bit of self-criticism popped up. I walked over and wrote it on the new page and turned that page. This went on for quite a bit. It made making the bed take longer, that’s for sure, but eventually, when I asked for the next thought, my brain was beautifully silent.

The first step to loving yourself is stepping back and finding empathy, for yourself.

I still have that notebook sitting right here on my desk. I pulled it out to see what my real thoughts were that day. Here they are:

  • People disapprove.
  • I’m a worried person
  • I’m going to be in trouble
  • I’m being shoved aside
  • My self-absorption is disgusting
  • I’m not a good wife
  • I feel bad for my husband marrying a waste like me

It’s not easy for me to share these on this website. But the truth is, I don’t even remember the situation that set this thinking off. I’m sharing my private and painful thoughts because I know that I’m not the only person who has a brain that does this type of thing. I’m sharing them on the off chance that someone out there will try this technique because writing these thoughts down on paper changed everything for me. Here’s what I learned:

  1. Writing this type of thought down gets it out of your head. The method was very important though. If you just sit down with a diary and write and write, your mind will build out logic and evidence for why these thoughts are true. You can wind up feeling even worse. But not engaging with the thought, just writing it down, turning the page and asking – OK, next? – objectifies it. Each time I wrote a thought and turned the page, my brain left that thought behind.
  2. Eventually, your brain runs out of canned thoughts. I kept writing and turning the page and finally, finally, my mind was quiet, calm, relieved. It was like it had a finite set of blather in there and was too lazy to go get anything new to bug me with. Blessed relief.
  3. Looking at what you are carrying in your mind can be the doorway to true self-compassion. When both my mind and my room was clean, I sat on the bed and turned the pages of the notebook, looking at each sentence dispassionately. None of these thoughts were true. They’re an example of what one of my clients calls snowballing -packing more and more negative around a small starting point. I thought about the woman who was having these thoughts. I felt such compassion for that person. No person should have to carry those thoughts around. It was obvious that the thoughts were overblown, and just as evident that she must have been suffering as she thought them. I had been suffering and it was completely unnecessary.
Turning your critic into your ally changes everything.

That day was literally the first time in my life that I felt compassion for myself. I wasn’t judging myself. I wasn’t full of self-pity. I wasn’t avoiding my thoughts and feelings but I also wasn’t rolling around in them. I could see the thoughts I’d been thinking and I could see that they weren’t true. I could empathize with the woman who’d been carrying them around but I also saw the error in her thinking. Until I was able to step back, I hadn’t seen how needless my suffering was. I gave myself a big imaginary hug and then told myself to move on. There were more rooms to clean.

Acknowledging that we are suffering needlessly and feeling empathy for the person who suffers is the first step in turning your inner critic into your inner BFF. After all, she looks like you, she hangs out with you and you’re stuck with each other. You two ought to be friends.

And that? Is just good to know.

If you would like help with your inner critic so you can stop agonizing over every little mistake, I’ve totally got you. Sign up for a free 25 minute mini-session. We meet using Zoom. We’ll see if coaching is something that might be helpful, and then we can see if you’ld like to coach with me or if I can recommend another coach for you. I’m pretty harmless and I love to talk about this stuff. Click here and get hooked up.

NEXT WEEK: how self-compassion is the key to showing up as yourself at work, and why it matters.

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What Does Your Boss Think?

Does guessing what your boss thinks of you feel like bonding with a rock?
Yeah, well, there’s a way out of that.

So here’s my confession. I’ve spent a lot of my work life fairly certain that my boss didn’t like me. Not that I needed my boss to like me, I mean, that’s their loss right? Right?

Don’t get me wrong, I work at a great company and I’ve been blessed with tremendous managers. But you know, org charts change, people move around and reporting structures are often a shifting landscape.

So, many times, I’ve been unsure as to where I stood with regard to my boss. Once, I was completely convinced that my soon-to-be new boss absolutely did not like me. I just knew it in my bones. And that? Was scary.

Being part of the tribe and knowing our standing within the tribe is one of those life or death things. We’ll take serious risks and work very hard to maintain our standing and feel secure in our position and when that position is unclear – my friends, you can find at yourself with a good old fashioned case of anxiety.

Good thing feeling anxious is a really great way to be productive at work. (Not.) Better yet, once we’re anxious, our performance slips and we really do have something to worry about.

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

But what if there was another way?

Demoralized and worried, I talked to my coach. She asked me if I thought I could control what my boss’s opinion of me was. I’ve been around the coaching block a time or two so I didn’t take the bait. We can’t control other people. Full stop.

OK, so stop worrying about what you can’t control, she said. And then, she suggested a radical new idea. I should start taking action on what I could control. My new boss might not like me, but I, for sure, could like my boss.

I’m pretty sure I just blinked at her. What did that even mean? I was the underling. How was this a solution?

Trust me, she said. Can you like your boss?

I thought about it. Sure, I could like my boss. I like just about 98% of the people I meet. What would that get me?

Here’s the deal – when we like other people, we get to think nice thoughts about them. When we think cool things like – my boss is well respected, understands a lot about some areas I find interesting, has a great sense of humor, is a decent human being and has a lot to manage, we start to feel – friendly. We start to look forward to meeting with that person, we look for ways to help, we’re open and enthusiastic and we stay positive when we’re around them. Soon, we’re just having a good ol’ time and who cares if they like us or not? How could we tell? We’re just busy having fun.

And guess what? Who doesn’t like to work with a person who behaves like that? See how that works? It’s a no-lose situation.

But if we tie how we’re going to feel to how we imagine someone else feels, we’ve lost all control. Because we have no control over how other people feel and now we’ve attached our own feelings to something we can’t control. NO FUN.

Emotional adulthood is when we decide to assume the mantel of command, and take charge of our own emotional navigation. It’s when we take responsibility for how we feel and let other people worry about themselves. Emotional adulthood is available to all of us, right now.

So that’s what I did. I really did like my new manager, and I was able to focus on all the positive qualities this person had. I stopped worrying about what my manager thought about me. I focused on my work and the fact that I was working for a manager I was determined to like. Guess what? My anxiety went away and to this day, I have a big, expansive feeling inside when our paths cross. Who knows if that manager likes me? I sure as hell like them.

And that? Is just good to know.

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Marginal Cost Thinking

In business, marginal cost thinking means we’ll prefer to do the things that bring us immediate profitability over things that position us well against the competition racing after our tails. In our personal life, it’s worse.

There’s an argument to be made for dedicating some part of each business week to self development. Clay Christensen’s article How will you measure your life? made this idea tangible to me. You can catch his great Ted talk here. Two ideas in that article that caught my attention. Achievement bias and marginal cost thinking.

Marginal cost thinking for the purposes of his talk is when, in order to maximize profits, you discount your sunk costs and preferentially undertake tasks that rely on your existing infrastructure rather than building out new capabilities. This means that established companies naturally become tied to undertakings that rely on those structures. New upstarts don’t have existing structures to leverage and so they innovate faster. Achievement bias, which is my own term for a concept he introduced me to, takes the basic short term pleasure construct and adds a new twist.

We all know that we’re wired to be efficient, which basically means we prefer to take familiar, dopamine-driven actions like tackling our email instead of working on our projects, hitting up the office candy bowl instead of going to get a salad for lunch, chatting with office mates instead of doubling down on our work. If you’ve been reading along with this blog, you know that much of our control in life comes from being aware of these patterns and getting our prefrontal cortex in charge of things inside our heads.

Christensen ups the ante on this by pointing out that it’s worse than we think.

We are motivated as humans by the desire to learn and grow, have more responsibility and contribute to the tribe. In other words, we want to achieve.

Here’s the rest of the news – some of what we do in the name of achievement falls into the short term pleasure vortex.

What???

People who are drawn to achievement, which is basically all of us, will prefer to do tasks that help us hit short term goal markers over things that build out personal infrastructure.

Dudette. Did you see that coming? Me neither.

It’s marginal thinking on a micro-level.

This helps explain how goal achievement can be an avoidance tactic and an addictive practice all on its own.

Before you head off to get a cookie and check your email, let’s break down what our personal infrastructure is. It’s the systems that keep us running. The stuff we need to keep the lights on in this business we call being alive: family, friends, exercise, nutrition, sleep, relaxation, purpose, meaning, goals, thinking that processes your experience – whether spiritual or creative – you get the picture.

You have a personal work infrastructure, too. That’s your specialized knowledge, your personal networks, your industry knowledge, your skills, training, and experience. And for some of us, when we get a bit of spare time, we preferentially tackle some task that will give us immediate achievement instead of investing in these infrastructures.

This explains how come when we have a few minutes, we spend it cleaning or catching up with work, or fiddling with something rather than sitting down to plan out a family reunion next year, or reading up on the latest business trends.

It’s easy to notice when a company is letting its infrastructure get out of date and choosing short term profit over long term competitiveness. It’s also easy to notice when a programmer creates technical debt in the drive to bring a program to market.

But this pattern also shows up when we put off working on our development in order to meet our day to day goals, fail to attend training in favor of getting to inbox zero or insist on attending every meeting on our calendars instead of working through a self-study course.

If you’re like me, you’re not looking at emails, meetings and day to day work as short term pleasure-seeking. These behaviors trade short term gains for future payoffs. They are achievement bias built on marginal thinking at a personal level.

And that? Is just good to know.

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Future Focus

Remember when someone told you to dress for the job you want, not the job you have? 
Turns out that someone was right, but not for the reason you think.   

When we dress for the job we want, we think we’re letting other people see us as if we’re ready and able to step into that role.  Turns out, the person we’re actually convincing is ourselves.

If you’re a growth-minded person, you have some future state you’re working toward.  Myself, I want to be a thin, buff woman who can run a 5K without having to plan a year in advance.  I also want to be a person who picks up after herself in a timeframe that is somewhat relevant to the day the mess is made.  And I want to be an innovative business partner, able to find great ways to use technology to make our company perform better, who just happens to grab great projects for her team while she’s doing it.

That’s a lot of “stuff” I want to do. 

Here’s where it starts to break down.  When I look at all I would like to learn, do and become, and I compare that to some reality checks like I want to play Pictionary with my granddaughter at the drop of a hat and be able to inhale the latest Stephen King novel the same week it comes out – I’m left with a sinking feeling that it’s all impossible. I’m trying to see how all the steps I need to take come together and not getting a clear picture, so I often wind up working on some version of “I can’t see how to have it all.”

My coach is always saying we have to act as if we’re the person we want to be.  I took that to mean that I needed to visualize myself in the future. Great. I love daydreaming – it’s easy and you can eat cheese crackers while you do it.

Thin? Check. Buff? Check. Successful? Check. Clean house? Check.

Ok – but then my coach tells me – Be more specific.

OK, so daydream up more details, right?

Here goes! Buff means that I’m 132 lbs, can run a 5K easily, can carry my 80 lb dog up one flight of stairs and I can do a Sunrise Salutation, with the chaturanga.  And successful means my team is cohesive and working toward next leveling themselves and I have time to take on new tasks from my manager plus all that innovation stuff I mentioned.  Clean house? Well, I think we all know what that looks like – a Better Homes and Gardens cover. Duh.

This week, I finally got what she’s been driving at. All of that future visualization is good but it’s not going to get me a clean house or a swell pat on the back from my boss.  What she means by specific is to think lifestyle specific.

If we want to actually achieve that future vision of us, we have to imagine that person’s lifestyle… and live there – now.

If you would like to get my free cheatsheet – How to Work Less, Starting Tomorrow, just click here. You’ll get the low down on how to kick overwork in the knees in three simple steps.

A woman who is able to innovate has to know what other business teams are planning, and not just at budget time.  She needs to know the direction they want to head, with or without technological help and then research ways to add value.  To be that woman two years from now, I have to be building relationships that extend beyond day-to-day survival.  So I have to live that lifestyle today.  That means I need to have meetings on my calendar that aren’t just about the technical issues other teams are having today. It means I have to be asking my team to work now at the level they’ll need to be for me to do that.

That buff, thin woman I want to be has a specific lifestyle too – she eats a certain way, she has to make her exercise a priority. Just because she’s thin and healthy doesn’t mean she gets to sit on her keester and watch Suits. The stationary woman who catches a full season in a week looks a lot like me – because I’m living her lifestyle.

Get it? 

This all seems obvious but most of us still think statically, in clips and short outtakes when we think about the future. We think that if we get that next job, we’ll be happy.  We don’t try to live a day in the shoes of the person that has that job.  We think if we work hard and get there, we can still be the person we are today, but with the new job.  Not likely.  What we need to be doing is figuring out what the every-day average life looks like for the person you want to be. What does he do in the morning? What does he do at the office? What does he do after supper?   Really see the full day-to-day lifestyle of that person. 

Now ask yourself, does that look like a good life?

If the answer is yes, then starting living the lifestyle – today.  

And that?

Is how you live in the future – right now.

Good to know.

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How to Create a Feeling…Right Now.

Dudette, if your emotional vocabulary is limited to happy, sad and OK, you are seriously stuck in the wrong buffet line.

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You don’t want to be a cartoon. You certainly don’t want to be an emoji. You, my beautiful friend, are a person. You’ve been gifted with a plethora of feelings, some so sublime, they can make you weep for pleasure.

Don’t waste your FOMO on food, cars or the newest movie. If you have FOMO for anything, it should be fear of missing out on the opportunity to expand your emotional vocabulary.

Seriously, when we want to try a divine meal, or drive a hot car or catch the latest flick, we’re looking for a feeling. I’m seriously mad for the new Toyota Supra. I know driving that car will give me a feeling of exhileration – that’s what I’m after when I’m consumed with the desire to leap from my chair and go buy one. I’m certainly not after the payments or dealing with the issues of owning a car whose rear differential is a massively complex computer system. I want the sheer rapture of feeling g-force and the joy of swooping around a curve in a growling, magnificent liquid-red machine. I want the damn feeling.

Try this exercise –

Would you rather have the life described here:

Good, bad, scared, neutral, angry, loving, sad, happy

Or the life described here?

Awkward, adaptable, blocked, blissful, confounded, connected, dreadful, devoted, euphoric, envious, fragile, forgiving, glum, grateful, hesitant, hardy, immobile, inspired, jittery, jubilant, liberated, lonely, malicious, motivated, nervous, natural, offended, outgoing, perseverant, pessimistic, quiet, quarrelsome, reliable, reactive, sane, seething, sullen, sunny, tender, touchy, unburdened, unbending, vulnerable, vigorous, weary, warm, youthful, zany

Right. We want the full catastrophe. We want to have a full life with a smorgasbord of feelings.

The truth is, you can have any feeling you want, right now. But you can’t create a feeling until you can name it and that’s where a great emotional vocabulary comes in.

Once you can name a feeling, you can create it. What?

It’s true. Here’s how:

Feelings are caused by thoughts. Since you can control your thoughts, you can create a feeling. (Sensations like hunger, pain, sleepiness are physical – that’s not what we’re talking about here.) Actions arise from feelings and since we can control our actions, we can also back into a feeling.

  1. Pick the feeling you want to have. Mine is marvelous.
  2. Really think about what you experience when you feel it. When I feel marvelous, my shoulders are relaxed, my brain feels light, uncluttered as if I’ve just exhaled. My eyes are alert, I’m curious and engaged. When I feel marvelous, I’m not in a hurry, I’m happy where I’m at and interested in what’s next, but not eager. I’m capable and content, curious and engaged, joyful and in no hurry. I’m marvelous, simply marvelous. There is nothing wrong in the whole world. See why I like to feel this way? Now it’s your turn. Describe how your body and mind feel when you are experiencing your desired feeling.
  3. Remember how you act when you feel this way. When I feel marvelous, I get right to what I want to do, I don’t run, I notice everything around me and appreciate it. I look people in the eye, I smile. I have time to compliment their new shoes but I don’t dillydally. I’m heading somewhere, in no hurry but not wasting time. I’m generous with my help when I feel marvelous. I’m able to listen well. I can change course easily. Now your turn. How do you actually behave, in the world when you feel this way?
  4. Figure out what you’re thinking when you feel this way. When I feel marvelous I think things like “Everything’s great. I’m able to do what’s needed. I have all the time I need. I’m so lucky to be here, to have my job, to enjoy my work. The sky is beautiful. The work is interesting. The people are lovely. I can’t wait to dig into my day.”
  5. Put that all together. Practice thinking and experiencing the emotion you want. Try to feel it all day. Make it bigger, make it smaller.
  6. Tie a movement to it. That’s it. Soon, you’ll be able to bring out this emotion any time you need it. When I practice feeling marvelous I raise my arms over my head and drop them to my sides while I give a big exhale, smile and say ‘marvelous’. I practice this often. I might look like a nut, but I can stand in the elevator, take this quick action, think the word to myself and emerge at the next floor feeling, well, marvelous and ready for what’s next.

And that? Is a terrific skill to have.

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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Letting Go of the Need to Get There

Our lives are miraculous and if you’re reading this, you’ve already arrived.

Potential must be a BIG word. It has to be tall – because we need to live up to it, right? It’s inscrutable because we have to work hard to realize it. We had better get to it because we don’t want to fail to reach our potential. Right? Right? After all, our managers are eager to help us and we want to be excellent.

Too bad. Because we’ll never succeed at manifesting our true human potential. It’s a massive Catch-22.

Our human potential is unlimited.

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

Listen, I’m a person who always wants to take on challenges, learn, grow, and keep moving, I mean, that is some fun way to live. But I want to give a big, fat raspberry to that idea that we all need to hurry to reach our potential, or that there is one perfect manifestation of our potential.

So I decided to get the facts. I went to Google and got the first definition that came up. (Yes, do laugh, but we’re moving on.) When used as a noun, the definition is “latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness.”

Basically, we’ve got some stuff we’re not using yet. It may be useful but, we have to put some work in to make that so. When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound like life or death. It might not even be worth missing a family outing for.

Look, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got lots of “stuff” I’m not using. I’m not using my ergonomic keyboard; I’m not using my subscription to Dragon Speak. Fact is, both of those are going to require a bit of effort and time and I’m not ready. Why? Because I’m busy – I’m writing my blog, I’m rushing to get outside a enjoy a perfect September Saturday walking my dogs. I’m looking forward to getting my house clean and maybe cooking that free turkey from last Thanksgiving before I get another one. You know. I’m living my life.

You are too. Well, not my life. You’re living yours.

And that? Is a gift.

According to a Japanese Zen story, we can think of our human existence like this:

Our very existence, at this moment, on this planet, in this human form, is as unlikely as a sea turtle sleeping on the bed of the ocean for 100 years, waking up and swimming to the surface, and putting its head into a floating oxen yolk. Not just any floating oxen yolk, but a golden one, as in made of gold – heavy, sinkable gold, that is floating for a brief moment, pushed this way and that by the wind and waves. The likelihood of our 100-year-old sea turtle hitting that yolk perfectly – that’s the chances of us being here as humans, with our experiences, in this life and being aware of the present moment.

The minute I allow my quest to reach my human potential to cause me to refute the wonder of this present moment, I’ve let go of the rare gift of the here and now.

And it’s worse than that. I’ve used the distance between where I am and where I can go to mean that there is something wrong with me, here, as I am, because I’m assuming there is somewhere better to go, some better person to be.

It’s just not true.

There is no getting to my full potential, ever. And there’s certainly no getting to my potential without starting where I am now.

So go ahead, walk out into the superunknown of your own potential. Take risks, try new things, learn more stuff. Set goals; achieve them. All of that creates texture and flavor in this beautiful life you’ve been given. Work hard. Do stuff.

Just know, the future doesn’t hold a final goal that gets you to the place where your life starts with you in the starring role as a fully realized human.

Dude, you’re already there.

And that? Is a good idea to hold onto.

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When You Assume…

We’re magnificently good at guessing what other people are thinking – not.

The definition of assume is enlightening. There’s the type of assuming where we presume or suppose something to be true without any evidence, but there’s also the taking of responsibility, to assume power or responsibility, and also, the assuming of a false face, pretending or assuming an appearance.

I want people to like me. So sue me. And yeah, I know that leads to me thinking way too much about what might be going on between their ears. My brain ( and yours too) was built to be pretty good at that – at least as a kid. I mean, I needed to know if my folks were going to feed me or not and I didn’t know a lot of words. Also, I had no car keys and no money, feel me? Our standard-issue brains are pretty OK at understanding if we’ve made our parents happy or not and if we’re about to have our desires thwarted. That’s pretty important for the preschool to preteen set.

As adults, our built-in “guess what they’re thinking” app starts to lose its shine. First of all, we’re trying to apply that process to more complex subjects and second of all, it leaves us making assumptions and jumping to conclusions. (Shout out to any fans of “The Phantom Tollbooth” out there who just imagined being tossed to an island.)

All that is to say, if you find yourself acting as if you know what someone else is thinking, well, it’s not your fault. You’re built that way.

But here’s the interesting part, when we think we know what another person is thinking, without actually asking them, we’re not only assuming facts that are not in evidence, we’re also assuming responsibility for what happens next.

Whoa. I wasn’t looking to take that on, were you?

When we walk into a meeting with a stain on our shirt and our boss eyes us up and down, we might assume she’s displeased with our poor presentation of ourselves. But she could also be looking to see if we have an extra pen with us. And that’s where we go from assuming we know what she’s thinking to assuming responsibility for what happens next.

When we hazard a guess at another person’s thoughts, we then have thoughts about that assumption. Those thoughts we have trigger feelings, deep shame about our slovenly blouse or anger at the fact we were dumb enough to wear white on taco day. Whatever we’re thinking, that thought will cause an emotion. That’s what thoughts do.

And then… we act on those feelings.

We might spend the rest of the meeting so worried about hiding that salsa stain, we totally can’t focus on the content of the meeting – not that I’ve ever let that happen. Heck, I’ve been so distracted by my own clothing that I considered taking a half-day to go home and collapse into my sweat pants. For a couple of years, I solved that by having a change of clothes in the car. But that’s just me. I’m a nut.

If we’re angry at ourselves for being sloppy or angry at our boss for being judgemental, we’re going to behave in a different manner. Maybe pointedly not backing up something she says, or not sticking up for our own position. Who knows what we’ll do.

One thing that’s for sure – how we react to those feelings, be they shame, anger, offense or guilt, is on us. And it’s based on castles in the air. Because at the root of it, we’re taking actions based on feelings and the thoughts that caused them – all related to what basically amounts to a wild guess.

You and I have no business inside someone else’s head, and that’s a fact.

On top of all that, we are now presenting to the world a facet of ourselves wholly built on fantasy. Our behavior is tied to what we think someone else is thinking. It’s not even tied to what we actually think we should be doing. As in, if we knew that nobody could see that stain because the light in the room and the angle of the fabric render it invisible, we wouldn’t be having all those thoughts about the boss, the look, the shirt and the what it all means. We’d just be opening up our notebook and taking notes. We’d be in the meeting as our authentic selves.

And that? Is just good to do.

I’ve helped many people get perspective on their own thoughts and get the heck out of everyone else’s mind. The relief we feel when we stop worrying about what other people are thinking and start to show up as the person we want to be is profound. I’m so grateful to my coach for helping me get out of my own way and I’d be honored to pay that forward. If you would like to work with me – I meet my clients over zoom – camera on or camera off- at a time that works for them. I’d love to work with you too. Book a free mini-session to see if this life coaching stuff works for you. Why not? It’s free and I’m nice. Click Here & Try It. I promise not to think any judgy thoughts.

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The Third Path

You screwed up again.
You just want to get out unscathed.
But what if there was a better option?

Mess up much? Me too. In fact, I make so many mistakes I could fill a steamer trunk.

And yes, I do all the things that everyone does. I indulge in shame and tie my self worth to the mistake and look for ways to avoid all that unpleasantness by eating, drinking, watching TV, reading – you get the picture. I’m not perfect – and neither are you.

None of us is, which is why mistakes are inevitable.

If you believe John C. Maxwell, and his book Failing Forward, mistakes are the way forward too. So if you’re trying to grow, then you’re going to have to make a lot of mistakes. You can read more about that in my blog Failure is not Actually Optional.

Typically, we see mistakes as a dual outcome event.

Things around us can get worse because of the mistake or we can recover from it and escape unscathed.

It’s like an evil Hobson’s choice – take a really bad outcome or be happy you got nothing.

How often do you leap from your chair and gasp “Hooray, I’ve made a mistake! Now there are new, better outcomes that wouldn’t have been available a minute ago!”

Right? Never. And yet, that possibility exists.

That third path, that failing forward, that post-traumatic growth, exists as one of three possible outcomes – not two.

  • Things can get worse.
  • Things can stay as they are.
  • Things can be better.

Here’s why we miss that third path, why we never even look to the left to notice it – during times of stress, our brains have a natural tendency to narrow our focus. To find out more about how this works and why – check out The Opposite of Chronic Stress. For now, suffice it to say, that we think mistakes are deadly, they mean that there is something wrong with us, they could get us kicked out of the tribe. All that negativity narrows our focus and we have less capacity to see a third path forward, the path that leads to something better.

We’ve all experienced it – the mistake we thought would be terrible caused an unpredicted and wonderful outcome. Yet, just when we need it most, our brains close down to the possibility.

How can we overcome this? Simple. Awareness. It’s enough to know that there are three paths out of any mistake. Write it on a post-it note and keep it handy. I might tattoo it across my own knuckles.

On my left fist – RELAX

On my right fist – 3 PATHS

And that?

Could turn your steamer trunk of mistakes into a treasure chest of wins.

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Beauty & The Beast

Uncertainty is a beast, but the phrase ‘don’t know’ can be beautiful.

Look, you don’t know everything.

Anybody can see that’s true. You hardly know which breakfast cereal to choose. At least, that’s how I feel most of the time. We all let confusion and anxiety about what’s coming next push us around sometimes. Work is full of choices. We’re asked to know which project to tackle next, which email to answer first, where our attention is best focused.

It can leave us hamstrung, standing with our arms tightly wrapped around the one or two things we’re actually certain of.

Afraid to move ahead; clearly stuck.

The truth is, we really don’t know what the end result of most of our actions will be. The way we speak to each other, our tone of voice, the time of day or location a conversation occurs in can all impact the outcome we so desperately want to control. There are so many variables and we want to be perfect. Our concern about not knowing makes us feel vulnerable and keeps us stuck, looking at one more option, one more outcome.

We think of decisions like they’re skidding cars, sliding on ice. Once we decide on a course of action, the whole thing is out of our control.

So we delay the decision.

Ouch! Decision delay and fear of uncertainty – our brains just hate both of those things. Our brains are certainty machines. In fact, we’re so aligned with certainty that we will manufacture evidence for practically anything. This love of certainty means that as soon as we decide, we get a rush of relief. ( For more information on confirmation bias, check out lessons 5 & 6 here.) So we delay decision making out of fear and uncertainty, and our brain’s discomfort with the lack of a decision makes us feel even worse. Decisions are a beast!

Ready for the beauty part of this?

Why not just tell ourselves the truth? We don’t know what’s going to happen next. Fact, Dudette.

Don’t know.

Seriously. You actually don’t know, so why not own that?

Here’s how it works. When you’re facing uncertainty, rephrase it into a question and answer it with “don’t know.” Don’t know in the big sense. The sense that NONE of us know how ANYTHING will turn out.

Will your business people need the data in the next 90 days? Don’t know.

Should you confront your staff about talking too much during the day? Don’t know.

Your company wants you to predict the cost of a project with very little specifications. What will it cost? Don’t know.

What will happen in the next five seconds? Don’t know.

Because everything in life is interconnected, even if you have all the information, still the answer is – don’t know.

And – that’s OK.

Because a decision isn’t a car on ice. It’s a car in motion.

You have a steering wheel. You have a gas pedal, you have brakes.

The only thing you don’t have is a crystal ball.

And that? Is just good to know.

Never miss a blog. Sign up here for my Monday morning newsletter – “It’s Monday”. You’ll get information about new programs and offers, links to interesting videos and books all in your inbox.

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Risky Business

Taking a chance is scary… but not taking a risk should be terrifying.

What keeps you up at night? Most likely, it’s a risk of some sort. The risk that you won’t complete a project on time, the chance that you’ll make a mistake, a problem or puzzle carries the possibility of not being able to solve it.

The future is a risky place. We don’t know what we’ll find there, and our brains don’t like it. Our brains have a job to do… they have to keep our sorry bottoms out of trouble. Our mind has to make sure we’re getting food, staying out of the rain and finding some tribe members. So basically, cheese snacks, binge-watching on the couch and social media is our brain’s idea of a good time. How about doing that for the rest of your life? You in? Didn’t think so.

The image is pretty grim.

So is the alternative – which basically amounts to taking chances.

I looked up the synonyms for risk – danger, exposure, uncertainty, peril, hazard, jeopardy, gamble. Sounds GREAT. No wonder we hide at home

When you interview for a new position – nervous city, dude. Staying where you’re at? Seems safe. Snacks, Movies, Living Room.

How about if you start changing the way you manage your work? Taking on new responsibilities, speaking out in meetings, letting everybody in the company find out what you really think and what you’re really capable of? Sound like a good time? Not so much. Better stay quiet, keep your head down, don’t fill out that employee survey. Cake, Re-runs, Standing at the counter in your Kitchen

Here’s the thing – there’s a limit on your potential. I know. Your life coach tells you that you can do anything. And you can. But you can’t do it from the laundry room. With a fistful of potato chips. You have to take a risk. We all have a limit, something that’s holding us back – and the only way past it is to take a chance on something new.

Here’s an example of one of mine. I couldn’t see the difference between what I was doing in my job and what other people who were one level up were doing. I just couldn’t see it. So, I didn’t know how to work above my level. Working at the next level is always something I aspire to, but I was limited by my ability to discern the skills that were needed, the actions that were being taken. I really couldn’t see what I needed to change.

Until I took a risk.

I looked up the synonyms for risk – opportunity, possibility, prospect, fortune, fortuity, luck. Now those, sound pretty good right?

Here’s the wickedly interesting thing: the risk seemed totally unrelated. I started a side hustle.

Starting a side hustle meant I was way busy. It meant changing my personal schedule and remaining committed to my primary employer. In no way did I want my day job to suffer. I wanted to be excellent there AND at home.

Things started to slip. Not huge, just a bit. At home, at work, at other work, with family. RISKY STUFF. Scary. I thought maybe I should get a box of cookies and quit everything. Get safe again. But I didn’t.

What happened? As things started to get out of my control, I had to look for a way to handle these new challenges. I had to start thinking about why I was struggling. I talked to my manager, who is way smart. I worked with my coach. I had an ah-ha moment. In order for me to handle all these challenges and not sacrifice my health, my sleep or my performance, I needed new skills. Now that I was neck-deep in a challenge, I could see exactly what I needed to learn. I needed to learn how to get out of the trouble I was in. I needed the skills that the people just ahead of me on the path have – and they got those skills by overcoming obstacles – like how to work smarter instead of harder – like how to get out of the way of their teammates so that they could start working on new skills of their own.

OOOOOH. Now I get it.

I couldn’t even see around the corner to understand that there was a path, never mind how it was laid out until I took a risk. Without taking a risk, you will never see the way past your current limitations.

So if you want to push your limits, you have to take risks. The two go hand in hand.

I looked up some synonyms for risk: contingency, flyer, header, openness, plunge, speculation, stab, venture, wager, and last, but not least…

Shot in the dark.

Take a chance. The couch will be there when you get home.