Category: Mindfulness

Posts that relate to thought work, how we perceive the world and ourselves.

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King Action and the Big To-Do

Back to Basics Folks. If your bias for action isn’t getting you to your goals, stop acting like you’re on a ridgeline with no bailout.

Look. I love to hike. I love to scramble and I love to get myself above tree-line and stay up there for as long as possible. I especially love to do that in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. When I’m looking at the ridged buttresses of those gray peaks and imagining that I’ll be at the top of all that in less than a day, I feel insignificant and awestruck. When I’m at the top and looking back to where I started, I feel a great validation. Yes, I can. Yes, I did. And yes, in the face of nature, I’m tiny and amazing.

For a person like me, not athletic, not always in great shape, working a couple of sedentary jobs, there’s a certain bravery, or crazy, in getting out there and trying this stuff. I’m super aware of all the ways my body and I can fail each other. I’m aware of all the ways that nature is blind and uncaring. Storms walk across the ridges, temperatures plummet. So much of it is out of my control. All of it is out of my control. To get to the top and keep going, requires a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach, a strict focus on the here and now, attention to the next action, and faith in your map. What you don’t need is a bunch of emotions making you screw up.

In back-packing, as at work, the mental game can turn a series of actions you need to take into a endurance ridden, instestine twisting obstacle course. What’s the answer? Simple. Shove down those emotions and keep going. Afraid of heights? Keep your eyes firmly on the next rock and do not look out over the expanse of nothing to your left. Afraid of being fired? Keep your nose to the grindstone, watch your mouth, double check your work.

Basically, think of the next action you can take and get to it, no matter what.

Makes sense when you’re on a ridge, with no good bailout. When fifty-mile-per-hour winds drive rain into your face, force you to lurch forward, bent over, using your boots and hands, with your pack-cover reverberating like an oncoming train, being able to push down your emotions and get one more yard closer to safety, is a great skill.

When there’s a crisis at work, staying focused, clear-headed, and calm pays huge rewards. Just get the map, the plan of action, and take the next step. You can vent about it later. For now, action is king.

This all breaks down when there’s no action to take. Like the guy in his tent, wondering what the sounds outside are, or the desk-jockey wondering if his employer will be in business next quarter, sometimes there’s no clear action to take. In those cases, managing your thoughts and the emotions they create is a clear next step. It’s the action you can take to feel better. The action of rethinking. You consider your perspective and manage your thinking. You remind yourself that your food is in a bear canister. You acknowledge that you have done all you can to help your company.

Look, most of the time, backpacking is just a slog up a hill with a big weight on your back. You’re not in trouble and you’re not out of actions. But if you’re going to spend the next four hours going up an endless staircase, you’ll do better if your emotions aren’t working against you.

In the same way, most of the time, work is just work. More stuff to do. Death by a thousand documents.

That’s when your bias for action can kill you. Shoving our emotions aside, thinking our way out of our frustrations, doesn’t take us where we need to go. To thrive during the majority of our business lives, the skill of sitting with feelings reigns supreme.

Emotions are what drive us to act. Different emotions cause different actions. Before you can switch emotional states to get better action, you have acknowledge what you’re feeling. Bummer, huh? At work, I just resent this fact. I prefer to act, to shove down emotions. I don’t want to muck around with feelings that are less than flattering. I certainly don’t want to talk about them.

That’s different from my experience hiking. On the trail, it’s become natural. My favorite trails start at zero and head straight up, right from the trailhead. So I’ve learned that during the first half-hour of the hike, my mind will be doing everything in its power to get me to head back to the car. I’ll notice every little wrinkle in my socks, I’ll be hyper-aware of my heart rate and breathing. In short, I’ll be miserable. I’ve learned to hang around with that discomfort. The first half-hour of a tough hike is spent basically noticing my mind, acknowledging that yes, it’s uncomfortable out here. Yes, I’m breathing hard. Yes, the pack is heavy. It’s fine. It’s OK. This is a thankless activity. It’s not supposed to be fun. This is the way I’m going. I’ll turn around if I need to but for now, the trail sucks.

I don’t try to push away worries. That would be nuts. If something is wrong, I want to find out while I can still get back to the car. That’s just being responsible. I don’t want to talk myself out of things or cover up real issues. I want to know that my boots fit, I can carry my pack, my heart is working but not too hard. I want to respond to issues while I can.

I don’t want to underreact or overreact.

The only way to hit that sweet spot is to accept that I have feelings and allow them to be there.

Usually, when I acknowledge that the situation is difficult and uncomfortable, I start to settle in. Oh, we’re doing this uncomfortable thing that we’ve done before. Oh, that’s all it is.

At work, frustration over interruptions, feeling victimized by my schedule, feeling anxiety over distractions from the political or personal environment, shame over missed opportunities, or anger over mistakes is part of the deal. When I shove those feelings down, I invite problems. On a personal level, I make the job harder, I look for distractions to help me endure the effort of not feeling. Worse yet, I might be missing opportunities to mitigate issues. Just as refusing to recognize an uncomfortable boot makes you miss the chance to put on a blister block, refusing to acknowledge that you don’t, actually, want to work all night, can make you miss the chance to just reschedule that less important meeting. Before you can actually take the action of rescheduling, you have to know that you’re unhappy.

To know that, you have to notice your feelings. You might have to – gasp – stop working for a minute. Literally, a minute. Hang out there, with just your emotions for a minute. You won’t be able to swap war stories about it with your buddies, so there’s that. But you might just find that those feeling start to soften, to unwrap their own knots.

You might think: “I have a lot to do.” You might just push on working, not acknowledging the feeling of pressure against your solar-plexus. You might complain, or eat or drink or check your email. Now your work is more difficult and takes longer.

Or you could think: “I have a lot to do.” You notice that heavy weight. What is it? Resentment. I feel resentment. I feel resentment. It feels like a stone. I want to take action. I can hardly stand to sit with this resentment. It’s OK. I can spend a minute just here, recognizing the resentment. I can feel it. I feel resentment. It’s in my chest and my shoulders. My jaw is tight. It’s OK to feel it. I can bear it. This is what happens sometimes. Resentment. Nothing has gone wrong. I want to be with my child tonight. I don’t want to work late. Resentment.

Why bother with this exercise? Because over time, the resentment becomes subtler, you notice it quicker. You take responsibility for your feelings. You are literally – able to respond. You don’t have to overreact, throwing yourself to your office floor and pitching a fit. But you don’t have to underreact either, pretending you’re A-OK with giving up game night with your child so you can finish a report.

You can stop on the trail. Fix your boot.

You can look at your calendar and say no.

It’s so much easier to reschedule, to mitigate the issue, to accept the most recent draft of the report when you acknowledge the emotional cost.

The actions you take in response to all your feelings become more intentional. You start to understand – oh, that’s resentment. I need to stop and feel it. In that space, options open up for you. You begin to respond with skill. You adjust your pack, your shift your load. You prepare better next time, you care for yourself with more skill.

Here’s another thing. When a hiker acknowledges issues and responds, not by quitting and not by barreling on without thought, then she has what she needs. She remembers a map, turns back for forgotten water and then continues, prevents blisters, prevents injury. Then, nobody has to rescue her later, nobody has to traverse the mountains in the dark to save her. She is a responsible hiker.

When we take care of our own emotional needs at work, we’re like that competent backpacker. We don’t complain and make life harder for others, because we’ve acknowledged our feelings and take responsibility for them. We demonstrate solutions as we work to correct situations, empowering those around us to say no, and yes. Showing others that the work is tough, and sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but nothing has gone wrong. It can be done and done well without overreacting or underreacting.

All of that is amazingly productive and that’s not even the best part.

When you teach yourself to notice and sit with unwanted emotions, you also notice wanted feelings faster and more often.

On the trail, you look up, appreciate the warm breeze, of the brief section of good footing. At work you notice that you are focused and comfortable, that you like some of this stuff you slog through each day.

As you teach yourself to work with tough feelings, you also are training yourself to notice all your feelings. You notice impatience and validation. You notice frustration and fascination. Life starts to feel bigger, more vibrant. Better. You decide you’ll hike this trail again. You decide you are alright with the work on your schedule.

And that? Is a fine way get through the day.

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Get Strong

Think this is the soft stuff? Think again.

If there’s one thing I wish for you at Christmas, it’s compassion. Yeah, I know you wanted to master Ruby on Rails or get that full-stack gaming developer position outside Portland, but hey, anybody can have that. This compassion thing is way, way cooler.

Not buying it? I get it. Concrete skills are marketable, way fun, and useful. Compassion is the soft stuff, the fluff. It doesn’t pay the bills and it doesn’t get you true creds.

Still, if there’s one thing I wish for you at Hanukkah, Kwanza, or Winter Solstice, it’s compassion. If there’s room for one more gift, I wish you generosity – generosity of spirit, of wallet, of time.

With those two skills, compassion and generosity, your life will never lack meaning or joy. I’m pretty sure you can’t say that about any coding language or new technology.

And yes, I do mean skills, because as any monk will tell you, both of these grow with practice.

I would love to help you experience the power of creating these in your life. You can sign up for free 25-minute session here… Free Session. No strings, no hard sell. At the end, I’ll ask you if you’re interested in signing up with me. You say yes or no. That’s it. No sweat.

Compassion is our innate ability to recognize suffering in others and the desire to help. Generosity is freely and frequently giving to others. To learn more about how compassion increases physical well being, check out this article. Basically, generosity gives us greater pleasure in life, compassion gives us less inflammation and longevity. Cool beans.

That urge to quell suffering isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s not the soft stuff. No way. Compassion requires nerves of steel. That strength can yield big results at work.

In Fearless at Work, Micheal Carroll talks about viewing other people’s aggression as something separate from the individual. Rather than reacting to insults and threats, we can look through those behaviors and see the intent behind the behavior. Carroll isn’t advising this so that we can stay on the good side of a bully. He recommends taking the compassionate view so you can skillfully decide whether to “lend a hand, get out of the way, or end the confusion altogether.”

At work, this looks like keeping our cool when others are upset. It’s understanding and having sympathy for, the underlying situations and motivations that cause other people to lash out, to reply quickly and thoughtlessly, or to miscommunicate. Compassion is also holding people accountable, fairly, and thoughtfully, not allowing them to continue down a fruitless path. Compassion is the motivator for stepping back and shutting up when you have nothing to add. It’s the reason we step forward and speak up for the right things even when we’re scared. We do these difficult and sometimes frightening things because we see the suffering not doing so causes and we want to help.

That takes some serious mojo. Compassion is the only house big enough for that.

Compassion doesn’t just make us better work partners. It reduces our stress. Every minute we spend thinking about those around us, trying to lend a hand, is one less minute we focus on our own trials and tribulations. There is a world of suffering, an endless opportunity to help others and forget our own worries. Generosity of time shows us that we aren’t overwhelmed after all. Generosity of wallet proves that what we have is enough. Generosity of spirit gives others credit, support, and encouragement and in turn, we feel uplifted.

It’s almost impossible to help someone at your own expense. Every attempt just winds up back at your own feet, paying dividends that outstrip what you gave—everything you give boomerangs back.

In the biggest payback of all time, the more you practice compassion for others, the easier it is to have compassion for yourself. If you want more on that subject, click through and check out my blog – Mastering the Art of Self Compassion.

I hope you look back at this year and find achievements. I hope if you lost loved ones, your memories bring you more sweet nostalgia than tears. If you lost your job, or your business, I wish you a long list of strengths and skills, and the resilience to keep trying, to never give up. I wish you support and a hand up. I wish you friends, family, wildlife, and pets.

More than any of that, I wish you compassion.

And that? Is just the best I have to offer.

Namaste.

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Resilience and Emotions

Does a day at work leave you with the lyrics of The Animals biggest hit running through your mind? There’s a way outta that place.
Would you rather listen? Click the play button and I’ll read it to you. Enjoy!

Hello, world! Did you miss me? I took a two-week vacation from this blog because I needed a reset. I’m guessing that you probably do too.

There’s a certain rhythm to the work year, and right about now, we’ve had it. You’ve got projects you’re trying to shove through the door, reviews, holidays, and it’s all a hella-lot.

When clients in burn-out come to me, one of the first things we work on is remembering to stop. Last month, I stopped blogging on the weekends. The two-week delay is the result of me figuring out how to do this thing during the week.

What’s that? Bully for me? I hear ya. Stopping is great but our jobs often demand that we push on, do the long shifts, keep working through to deliver. That’s fine. That’s the nature of a lot of professional positions. Sometimes, we can’t “just stop”.

At some point, the weight of that relentless grind starts to take a toll on us.

That’s when we need a Big Reset.

A Big Reset is a way to get us back on the upside of our working life even when we can’t change our situation.

To accomplish a Big Reset, you’ll need two things – emotional awareness and a time affluent mindset.

Time affluence is the idea that you have all the time you need to do the things that bring meaning to your life, sufficient time to reflect, and time for leisure activities. When you have a time affluent mindset, you have a sense of time as valuable, and you’re less likely to spend time on unsatisfying activities. You’re also more willing to trade money for time, as in hiring someone else to shovel that driveway, mow that lawn, pick out your groceries, etc.

When you putting in serious hours at work, it’s pretty hard to feel time affluent. If your November was like mine, getting an eight hour night was a treat. It was get up and back on Zoom after that.

If you nodded your head, then I have a big NCIS slap to the head for you. That right there, is part of the problem. Turns out, when you tell yourself that you have no time, you’re already on the no-fun side of life.

To reset your perception of the time available to you try this – tell yourself that you have all the time you need for what matters most. For me, the mantra can trigger a calming response.

Another tactic is to do a true calculation. That’s what I did last week. A 24-hour day minus 8 hours to sleep leaves me with 16 hours. Even if I’m working twelve-hour days, I still have four hours. I sure as heck didn’t feel like I had four free hours a day. That sent me off looking at how I was spending those four hours. Turns out I was shredding them.

In Ashley Whillans’ new book ‘Time Smart’, she talks about the way our technology and distractions – emails, a quick google search, something on TV that catches our attention, a text from a friend, a quick phone call – fragment our leisure time into “confetti”.

To have a sense of more time, find ways to stop shredding your free time. A full hour spent doing a specific activity, without allowing yourself to be diverted is a sure fire way to act and feel more time affluent.

Another tactic to bring time affluence back into your world is to savor. Yes, savor. This morning, I had only one hour before I needed to start work. Normally, I get up three or four hours before my day job starts, but this week I’ve been working late. So, in that one hour, I changed my mindset. I still pulled on sweats and took the dog out for a much-shortened constitutional but while I was out there, I savored the feeling of the air on my face. I really looked at the bird feeders, noticed the birds waiting in the trees while I refilled their seeds. I smelled the air. I called my dog and when she came bounding over to me, I spent time with her. Not much, but I still threw her a party for coming when she was called. I doled out a couple of treats from my pocket, I praised her until she put her ears flat and ran in tight circles of canine joy, then we played a two minute game of tug. I made the most out of my ten minutes outside.

During a Big Reset – pay attention – decide to have a full hour break. Pay attention… enjoy what you do have – the soft rug under your feet, the brief minutes outside, the perfect English muffin you had for breakfast, and the achievements you and those around you deliver.

You’ll also need to expand your emotional vocabulary. I noticed an amazing I feeling that I really enjoy. It happens when I have a few things in a row to do, I know how to do them, I know what is needed to be done, and I’m so fully engaged that I’m firing on all cylinders. I gave this feeling a name – All Cylinders Firing. I love when I feel All Cylinders Firing. When I’m cooking, All Cylinders are Firing when I’m washing up pots and pans as the food is cooking, I’m putting away dishes while the microwave is going, I have my plate ready before the timer rings… I’m using every motion, fully engaged, and creating exactly what I want… a perfect egg sandwich and a clean kitchen. At work, this looks like firing off that email, keeping up the the important stuff, fitting work into the time allowed, with a slight smile and flying fingers.

Now I’m not saying you need to race around like a nut. The point isn’t for you to feel All Cylinders Firing. The point is … notice when you feel happy. Even on your busy days, even during the long grinds. What is it you actually are enjoying? The comradery of puzzle-solving? Do you just feel so grateful for the co-workers who are busting their butts with you? Do you love the feeling of putting up your feet on the couch while you clear out that in box? Notice these situations. Then find a more specific way to describe them than – good, happy, fun. Really notice, really define those moments. Without changing anything about your job, or the amount of time you have, you can figure out how to have more of the “I’m working but I love it anyway” moments, more of the “this is what I’m like when it’s good” feelings.

If you would like help doing a Big Reset – you can sign up for a free session with me – here.

We can’t change the situations we find ourselves in today. We can jumpstart a Big Reset by being time affluent – being upfront with how much time we do have, refusing to shred our time, and savoring the experiences available now. That Big Restart also includes noticing the moments that we enjoy even during the bustle of December and being hyper-precise with the naming of our experience so that we can find ways to add more of it into our days.

December can be a jam packed month. You might be working long hours.

You can still have a Big Reset.

And that? Is just good to know.

Do you subscribe to Eric Barker’s newsletter? You really should. He’s got a great one. My plan for this year tells me that the first Monday in December is “The Big Reset – How to notice and copy a feeling.” Ironically, Eric’s latest blog is a perfect dovetail. You can catch his blog here.

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Right Size Your Work

Thinking about the space your job takes up in your life is one way get more control.
Click here to listen to the blog, plus some riffs. Or click the video above to see the VLOG. As always, you can read the blog below.

I talk about space a lot. It confuses my coach. I say – I want more space in my life. I want more space around this task. I’m looking to add space.

“Wait,” she asks. “Are we still talking about work?”

I learned to think about time in terms of containers by reading Julie Morganstern’s book, Time Management from the Inside Out. She’s a professional organizer who translated cleaning out closets into a theory of time management. Now, I think about work in the same way.

Julie asserts that the size of a closet is finite. You get so many cubic feet and that’s it. At some point, you can’t put any more in. I like to add an addendum to that – within the space allowed, you have a finite amount of items you can put into your closet while still allowing enough room around them to keep the closet usable. Usability is flexible. There’s a maximum amount of usability – one item per shelf – and a minimum amount of usability – I can only take out the last thing I shoved in there.

When you get the most amount of items in the closet and can still use them all easily, you’ve right-sized your space. When you hit that, you can maintain order in your space easily for years.

Right-sizing your work is the process of shoving work back into the time allowed, or fluffing it out so that it fills your time nicely. Right-sizing your work is how you build for long-term endurance. Like managing an amazing pantry it’s a balancing act of things you really need and stuff you want to add in – and it’s totally possible.

Why Right-Size?

  1. Make sure you get to do the things that matter to you
  2. Ensure that you deliver peak performance at work, at an advantage to yourself.
  3. Because life is better when you’re not exhausted & missing out 
  4. Because life is better when you’re not beating yourself up for things you didn’t do
  5. To maximize your experience of work and life.

Are we still talking about work? I have a broad definition of work, as you might guess. I love work and so, I don’t groan thinking about adding in more. For me, work is anything you do, on purpose, to accomplish a return on investment.

What is Right-Sizing Work?

We all overwork and underwork in our lives. Some people overwork at their day-job. Some people underwork. Some people have side hustles they overwork. Some underwork at their small business. We invest time in relationships for a return of connection. Are you overworking or underworking that? What about your personal tasks?

When you overwork right-sizing means keeping work small enough to avoid diminishing returns – which occur when you are exhausted and it takes longer to deliver the same result. It also means making work fit inside the time you are willing to exchange for it.

When you underwork right-sizing means keeping work large enough to deliver returns on your investment. If you spend a lot of time worrying about work you aren’t doing, that’s a sign you are underworking. In this case, you want to focus on consuming the time you are willing to invest.

Is all this starting to sound like planning? It’s more than that.

Plan your time like you’re putting items into a closet. The space is finite so you have to choose what can go in.

How to Right Size your Work

  • Create positive boundaries – set cut off times that  allow for real benefits, recognize and celebrate all that you accomplish.
  • Set clear objectives for small blocks of time. Don’t plan to “work on a report”. Instead, plan to “create the first draft of my quarterly budget slide dec”.
  • Be willing to cancel, disappoint people and say no. When you overwork, you’re used to doing this to your friends. Be willing to do this with meetings and favors. When you underwork, you’re used to canceling on your work plans. Be willing to cancel on friends.
  • Have clear priorities. You’ll never get it all done.  At least I hope not.   So the only way to know which results to schedule is to have priorities.  They also help you say no. A lot.
  • Plan daily and weekly at the very least. The weekly planning session is where you face the hard fact about the space you have in your week for the things you want to do. Don’t make this about perfect, make this about learning. Plan your week, then at the end, review your progress. Adjust the next week’s plan. The daily planning session is where you quickly move tasks or time when the world throws you a curve.
  • Be kind to yourself. Always, always – this is the most important thing. It’s not about getting a A in planning, it’s about building a life that’s right for you, in every way.

And that? Is just a beautiful way to live.

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Stick a pin in it.

Think the future is too wide open to plan? Think again.

Everything I needed to know about suggestibility, I learned from the Breck Girl.

Ok before we get to the story… this entire blog is just a plea for you to get out an index card and write down five things you want to get done in the next five years. Then tape that on your computer monitor. Also, if you prefer to listen or watch, check out the links below. Ok, back to the Breck Girl.

The whole blog, with intro & outro, read to you….by me.
Want the white board and a trimmed down version? Here’s the Vlog.

During the 1970s and ’80s, Breck shampoo was a thing. They ran a campaign that featured pastel portraits of women with awesome hair.

My very-much-younger self took a liking to a Breck Girl ad. I tore the pastel portrait out of a magazine and tacked it inside of the door to my closet. Over the next five years, I’d see it every time I opened my closet. If you’ve met a teenage girl, you know I saw that ad – a lot. The Breck Girl had gleaming honey-blonde hair, no bangs, and loose curls.

I didn’t believe I could actually have hair like that – I just liked the picture.

Then one day I took it down. I looked at it. Really looked at it. Holy smokes. I’d turned into the Breck Girl. Yep, that there picture below is me. Best hair day ever.

I was astounded.

Forget the hair, I thought. This is how you get stuff done. You have a very clear image, you look at it a whole lot. You have positive thoughts about it and the next thing you know, you’re asking for hot rollers at Christmas and letting your bangs grow out. The impossible becomes something you move toward, little by little, year after year.

Over the years, I learned some more things… keeping a vision in mind, even if it seems far out of reach, leads to taking action when the opportunity arises.

A decade or so later, I was carrying an entire year’s earning in credit card debt. I was very literally, the working poor. We often had to charge our income tax bill to our credit cards. I worked seventy hours a week for a decade and just got more in debt.

I started to seriously consider the idea of becoming debt-free. It was ludicrous. But it was a pretty darn clear vision. I thought about it often. That’s where opportunity comes in.

For instance, when I was in the library, wondering what I might want to read, the idea of books on getting out of debt sprung to mind. Why? Because I was thinking about being debt-free, on the regular. I read a lot of books on personal finance. A lot.

Another example is when I was bringing in my mail and an offer for a 0% interest balance transfer arrived, I thought – how can I use this to get rid of some debt? I signed up for, and paid off, and canceled, a ton of 0% credit cards.

See what I mean? Having a clear, concise idea about something you want makes you primed for taking opportunities when they arrive.

Writing down goals and paying attention to them, even without a full-blown plan, can have significant positive results in your life. Of course, it’s way more effective with both a plan and an accountability partner. ( See the abstract from Dr. Gail Matthews’ research here.) The point I’m making is that just because you’re not ready for the plan and the weekly action, don’t put off setting up goals.

Look, 2020 won’t last forever. The world is always in a state of change. But the things we want most are pretty darn stable. So look dream a bit. Think about something that you really would like to achieve even if it’s impossible or ridiculous. I mean something that really matters. Let yourself dream a bit.

-How old will you be five years from now?

-What would you like to have accomplished by then?

-Write down four or five things on an index card.

-Put the start and end dates: 10/1/2020 – 10/1/2025

-Tape that card to your computer monitor.

Imagine what it would be like to be in 2025, and have all that. Enjoy the dream.

And just know, some of that is really going to happen. Why? Not because it’s magic.

Because now, you’re going to notice opportunities to move towards those goals.

Just like you notice blue Hondas when you’re thinking about buying a blue Honda, now you’ll notice ways to actually make the impossible, possible.

And that? Is just good to think about.

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Get Your Results Right

Think you control the results on your project? Think again.

3 ways to get this content – Vlog, Audio or Blog.

The full blog, read for you. Enjoy.

A meeting made me cry.

In a good way.

Ok, so crying at work is never really a positive. It messes with your makeup and then you have to buy more Kleenex. Tearful co-workers can freak people out, but a little sniffle of gratitude never hurt anyone.

Here’s the setup. It’s a big project, unplanned, unbudgeted, needs to be done in three months and four departments must agree to make it happen. I called a meeting. I invited everyone I could think of. I sent the invite in the afternoon for the following morning at 8:30 am. I wasn’t sure anyone would come.

Everyone came. A dozen people changed their plans and got on zoom.

Right now, at this moment, I still feel grateful.

Why? Because we all know, I was not in control of that result. That result was created by a team of people dedicated to getting things done.

I could influence the result by selecting the right people, picking a time that most people had open, and wording the invitation correctly. I could contribute to the result by acting quickly to get the meeting on the calendar, by showing up myself, and by doing my best to distribute a meaningful agenda. What I couldn’t do was control how other people responded. That was on them.

So the fact that the meeting happened and the project kicked off and got underway rapidly was a broad result made of up of lots of personal contributions.

Realizing that all those people measured themselves against a yardstick of being responsive, engaged, collaborative, and open-minded got me thinking. I thought – I’m proud to be one of them. I work with great people. I’m so impressed. I’m so lucky. Those thoughts give rise to a powerful feeling of gratitude. And yeah, I get a bit choked up.

That story is an example of the difference between results we control and results we don’t control.

Self-coaching is all about evaluating your own thoughts, feelings, actions and results so that you can have a better experience at work and in your life.

As part of that process, you look at your results and tie them back to your actions.

You tie actions back to feelings and, ultimately, to thoughts.

It’s important that you start that process by analyzing the right set of results. Personal results. Our actions create personal results. Our personal results can influence and contribute to broader results, but those broader results can’t be tied back to our own stack of thoughts, feelings, and actions. Only our personal results do that.

Why? Because other people influence and contribute to broader results and guess what? We don’t control other people.

Let me lay it out for you visually:

Situation: Three month deadline on brand new project.

Thought: I need to quickly know which teams are impacted and those teams need to understand the project.

Feeling: Urgency

Actions driven by the feeling of urgency: review my understanding of impact, schedule meeting for the following morning, invite representatives from many areas to ensure no one is missed, provide a concise, clear agenda. Acknowledge the inconvenient timing and express appreciation to the invitees. Send invitations.

Result: Everyone shows up.

For the purposes of coaching yourself, that result line is incorrect. It’s what happened but it’s not the result for me that the actions created for me.

To better find my personal result, I’ll take another look at the thought.

I need to quickly know which teams are impacted and those teams need to understand the project.

The result I created for myself after doing all those actions was: I acted gave myself the best chance to find out who was impacted. I provided meaningful information to other teams as soon as I learned it, something that matters to me.

Everyone showing up was the result of a dozen personal results, driven by a dozen different thoughts, which caused a dozen people to show up on zoom. It had very little to do with me beyond the invitation. That result, of the meeting taking place and the project kicking off less than a day after I learned of it, belongs to the collective.

Why does focusing on personal results matter?

If it seems selfish or self-centered to spend your time focusing on your results rather than the broader result, remember this. We still have to work hard to influence and contribute to the broader results. Tying our personal growth and job satisfaction to actions and results outside our control is losing game. You’re not going to be any better tomorrow at controlling other people.

The most control you’ll ever have is over your own thoughts, feelings and actions.

Results that are in your control, tie back to your own standards and are meaningful to you personally are the big engine of job satisfaction and engagement. Feeling like your work matters is huge. Feeling like your work matters to you, and knowing that you’re in alignment with your own standards the root of engagement.

So when you’re reviewing results, don’t forget to look at both sets. The broader results and your personal results.

And that? Is just a good thing to do.

Want to learn how to set your own bar, deliver your best results, and stop being overwhelmed by the chaos?

I’ve got a program for that: Reboot Your Day Job.

In six short weeks, you can get back control, make the big decisions you’ve been putting off and be more organized and productive than you ever thought possible.

Six weeks. $600. Everything changes.

Book a free 25-minute session to find out how my program can change your life.

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Mind-Body

If your Work Life / Biological Life balance has been hit by a truck, read on.

I’ve got a deep-dark secret I’ve never shared on this blog. Basically, because I feel ridiculous to say it out loud… but hey, public embarrassment is what blogging is all about. Here goes. This blog is about the problem of not having time to eat lunch, and, er, other things.

Here it is, the whole blog, read to you…. with a brand new intro. Oh, yeah, and riffs.

I’m talking about the issue of mind-body disassociation. I initially noticed the problem when I was working with my very first private coach. I would talk to her every week and pretty-much try to impress us both with how difficult my work life had become. To show her the profoundly pressured existence I found myself in, I would get right to the most basic of bodily functions – using the restroom.

I didn’t have time for it.

I would find myself not drinking liquids for hours. My fingers would fly over the keyboard in a mad rush to finish one more thing, while my bladder tightened and my whole body was thrown into a tense and hurried race. God forbid someone came into my office to interrupt me. My head would jerk up, eyes wide and frantic. Suddenly aware I couldn’t wait one more moment, I’d start heading out the door as I talked to them, finally saying…

“I’ll be right back.”

This, I thought was a profound example of the extreme demands of my job and my need to keep producing every second. I also thought it was a bit wackadoodle and I didn’t want to confess it to anyone. Now, years later, I understand that I am not the only person to experience this. Just last year, I watched a woman who’d built a million-dollar business in a few years confess to the same thing. And she’s a doctor.

So let me ask you, are you disconnecting from your own biology? Do you –

  1. Find yourself not willing to get up and get lunch, and when you do, you gobble it down at your desk?
  2. Find yourself doing one more thing, one more thing long after you’ve realized you’re profoundly uncomfortable?
  3. Start work early and find that it’s almost lunchtime and you haven’t had your first cup of tea?
  4. Head into bed in the evening knowing you haven’t exercised or even been outside?
  5. Work later than you want, feeling more and more pressured to work even later?
  6. Miss dinner with your family, even as you rush to get finished?
  7. Find yourself working late into the night, while lights go out, your family crawls into bed, and yet, when you finally walk into the bedroom, exhausted physically, your mind races on?

Dude. You are so not alone.

And Dude – understand this – you’re a carbon-based life form with some biological imperatives you will really enjoy following. And yeah, stick with me here. I know I just lost you on that biological imperative thing.

Long before I sat in the convention room in Texas and watched a woman with a two-comma business confess to my deep dark secret, I’d already resolved the issue for myself. It still felt great to realize that she’d been just as misguided as I had been.

Here’s how I broke free.

First, my coach and I really dug into some of the underlying beliefs I carried around.

This is something it’s much easier to do with a coach, so please, if you want help with this issue, definitely sign up for a free 25-minute session. You, basically, are the entire reason I’m a coach and I want to help.

As soon as she asked me what I would tell a teammate about this issue, the answer was way clearer than my annual objectives. I would say… “Go take care of yourself. Be late to the next meeting, leave this meeting early. Stop typing for Pete’s sake. “

Ask yourself, is there anyone in the world you care about that you would encourage to keep working when they were exhausted, hungry, ready to bust a gut or missing their children’s bedtime?

Please tell me the answer is no.

So step one is to find out why the heck you think it’s OK to do that to yourself. I’m not even going to make you turn this blog upside down to read the answer.

It’s not. You’re not different. You are a biological creature. If you dry up to a husk and pass out in your chair, you’re doing anyone any good. At some level you understand this because you’d shut your buddy’s laptop lid if he was doing this to himself.

Once I got through that thought process, I realized there was another problem. I’d decided it was OK to stop and use the restroom, to eat my lunch, to dance a jig at 6 pm if I wanted to… but I wasn’t doing it. Why?

I was so used to stuffing down signals, my body couldn’t reach me.

My body was literally phoning in and getting a busy signal.

Time to send in the construction crew to re-run the cable between my body and brain.

I literally had to train for this.

I made a plan and gave myself a mantra – Biology Rules.

Biology Rules – because it does. I’m not a brain on stick with some fingers and a thumb. I’m a human being. I’m a creature. I’m a mammal. If I don’t follow the biological rules that being a mammal encompasses, I’ll die.

I can’t swim underwater for hours and I can’t survive without physical exercise.

I can’t jump off a cliff and fly and I can’t go without water.

I can’t crawl across the ceiling and I can’t go without hitting the john.

PERIOD.

And neither can you.

We can’t do without sleep, without connection to other humans and we can’t think well for hours and hours. We just can’t.

To restring the connection between body and mind, I made a deep pledge to myself. Biology Rules. No excuses. The minute I noticed that I needed something BECAUSE of my biology – I just got up and did it.

Turns out, the world didn’t end when I would check into a meeting and say – I’ll be right back.

Nothing fell apart when I started eating my lunch outside.

My boss did not call me into his office because he’d noticed I’d been getting eight hours. I mean what was he going to say, I think you need to be on line until eleven pm? Of course not. He had no clue how late I was working; he was having his own problems disconnecting.

OK let’s get back to you.

You are a biological creature. You have some rules to follow. If you ignore them, your experience right now is miserable and you cut your life short.

To remedy this, admit that you’re human.

Agree you deserve the same basic advantages as any assembly line worker – the right to regular breaks and a right to stop working at the end of the day.

Plan on a mantra and a rule. – Biology Rules: My body’s needs that trumps all other demands. Or try this: Use it or Lose it: I’m not willing to bust a gut, shrivel and dry up or have a lack of sleep induced psychosis for my employer, who doesn’t even want any of that either.

Notice your body’s demands. Are you angry? Is it because you feel rushed? Do you feel rushed because your body needs something? What is it?

Then give your body what it wants.

I promise you, when you do this, you will see a productivity increase. I’ve seen this for myself and client after client. It’s the cruelest joke ever. We think we have to double down on work to get through everything. It’s not true. We have to double down on bringing our A-game. To bring our A-game, we have to honor our biological mandate.

And that? Is just a healthy way to work.

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The Big Loop

Got a brain? Well, then you probably have a big loop.

I yelled at my coach yesterday. I told her than every time I look at the news, I get upset. I told her that when I’m upset, I don’t follow through on my plans. She smiled. Not a big “I hear ya, sister” grin, but a half-smile. She wasn’t buying it. I tried to beat her to the punch.

“Uh, uh. No way I’m gonna sit in front of the TV and feel all THOSE feelings.”

“Forget that,” I said forcefully and loudly. Yeah. I was yelling.

“Sure, but you’re jumping to the worst-case scenario,” she said. “And that’s what’s driving the feelings and that is what’s keeping you from the results you want.”

I folded my arms over my chest.

She kept her poker face. It was game on, which meant she brought out the big guns. “You’re giving away all your power,” she said. “Which is fine. Is that what you want to do?”

Ok. So I’m not a medical professional or schooled in psychology. I’m an IT manager and a life coach. But one thing I know is this: I do not want to give up on anything I can control. I had to concede the match. By assuming that what I see on TV must generate the same feelings it always has before, I’m basically abdicating on myself. I -for sure – don’t want Wolf Blitzer and Bret Baier running my emotional show. Double true! So, I did me some research on ways thinking, the thing I rely on to get my work done and keep my life moving, can get itself sideways.

I’m a human and I have a brain. My brain does a lot of looping. Looping is one way of describing thoughts that come back over and over. Another way of saying it is – repetitive thinking. I’ve got a lot of it. Turns out, we all do.

Repetitive thinking isn’t good or bad. Like most things, it has two sides to it. After all, we’re pretty efficient creatures and if our brains have this behavior, I’d like to think it’s adaptive; it has its uses.

There are lots of types of repetitive thinking – rumination, worry, cognitive processing, emotional processing, solutioning, planning ahead, what-if thinking, level-setting expectations, worst-case analysis, reflection, self-criticism, post-mortems, goal setting, and day-dreaming. All of it involves us running scenarios or sentences over and over in our minds.

Not all of this is bad. In fact, when you look at the list, you can see why repetitive thinking might give a guy the edge. Planning ahead, risk mitigation, goal setting, thinking options through, picking up better health habits, recovering from depression, and getting through emotional trauma all come from this type of thinking.

You can also see how this type of thinking can cause us problems. Over-analysing, habitual worry, snowballing from small events to large future worse cases, self-judgment, negative self-talk and repeatedly triggering the body’s stress response system with our thinking are all linked to some pretty depressing outcomes. The list includes, you guessed it – depression, anxiety, and flat out poor physical health..

So how do we keep our positive patterns and reduce our negatives? Well, it turns out that positive outcomes from repetitive thinking are linked to our emotional state and the direction we guide our thinking in. Basically, the more you think about negative stuff, without giving it meaning and direction, the worse you feel. However, if you apply positive intent, have basic optimism about your ability to achieve your goal, and have a positive emotional state when you begin, repetitive thinking can predict a good outcome.

What?

Ok …. let’s get into the concrete examples here.

Say you work hard on a project, turn it in, and your boss changes something on every single gosh darn slide. You might engage in a bit of rumination, running the feedback he gave you through your thoughts several times. You might start to feel a bit down. Then you might think about the fact that you feel like crap. After about an hour of noticing your low energy and disappointment, you might beat yourself up a bit for letting your boss get to you like that. After a short break and a chat with a friend, where you have a candy bar and complain, returning to your desk, might bring you face to face with worry. What if you’re one step closer to getting fired? Or what if every project you do goes this way? How are you going to stand going through the whole year with this boss? By the time you get home, you’re not ready to listen to your spouse, not wanting to put in any more time on work and basically, good for nothing but ordering pizza and snapping through channels.

None of this sets you up for a great day at work tomorrow.

Let’s rewind. You work hard on a project but you know your boss has more experience. So you collaborate with your boss, ask his opinion and sure enough, he has something to add to every slide. You take it back to your desk and evaluate the suggestions, accepting some, and rejecting others. You have a call and discuss it. Of the rejections, you change your mind and keep a couple and throw out the rest. You turn the project in and engage in a bit of rumination. You wish you had thought of some of the changes yourself. You reflect on how you could have known to make them before your boss told you. For the ones you should have thought of, you make notes for next time. Of the ones you couldn’t have known, you tell yourself that’s why he’s the boss. By now, you’re exhausted and you feel it. You take a break, have a candy bar, and blow off some steam with your friend. Back at your desk, there’s a mountain of work still to do, but at least the presentation is off your plate and your job is safe for another day. By the time you get home, you’re tired but you’re glad to hear someone else’s troubles for a while. You let your spouse vent and then together, you decide to forget about fixing dinner. You get a pizza and put on some harmless feel-good show and watch together.

After a good night’s sleep, you’re ready to take on another day at work.

In both cases, the boss had input for every slide. In both cases, you work hard, are tired, and don’t make good choices about everything – indicating some stress and will-power fatigue. But in one case, the negative emotional tenor and the assumption that the boss’s input means something negative about yourself, cause the repetitive thinking to take on a depressing tone and gravitate towards less constructive ways of understanding. In the other, a more optimistic attitude – assuming the boss has good intentions, finding an explanation for why you didn’t know some things, and taking proactive measures for the future by trying to learn from the feedback, lead to a much better mental outcome.

The key here is to notice when you’re indulging in repetitive thinking. Notice the direction of the thinking. Notice your overall situation and emotional state.

After a long day at my stand-up desk, when I come out to cook dinner, I’m pretty low on mental resources. Turn on the news and let them rehash the same three issues over and over, and my brain might just pick up on the iterative loop of negative data. (Talk about repetitive!) Toss in a bit of repetitive thinking about how all this will play out over the next 80 days, and I’ve got myself a nice set up for a miserable night. Just maybe, I’ll yell at my coach about it.

Noticing that I’m tired when I leave my desk, mentally tired but physically sick of sitting still, I can predict that I’m going to do way better listening to a Ted talk than listening to the 24/7 cycle. Later, after a break, some exercise, some time with my dog and my husband, I’ll be a much better place to catch up on what happened in the world. Then I can use my brain to ruminate on how lucky I am, to reflect on what campaigns I might want to donate to and remind myself that I’m still on track, even if the talking heads are doing their best to convince me the rest of the world, is not.

If you want to work on noticing your thoughts and figuring out what and when to switch up the process, sign up for a free 25-minute session.

And that? Is just a better way to use our brains.

For more on repetitive thinking, check out this informative link “Watkins ER. Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychol Bull. 2008;134(2):163-206. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.134.2.163″

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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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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